The Breaded Pork Tenderloin Sandwich – Grove Inn, Quincy, IL
Part 2 is here | Part 3 is here
I grew up in a town in West Central Illinois called Quincy, and there are a couple of things you can pretty much take for granted are going to be on every tavern menu in town. One of them is the Springfield specialty, the Horseshoe, which I won’t call a sandwich here but is often referred to as such. The other is a more regional specialty, the breaded pork tenderloin sandwich. However, in the Chicago area where I live now, you almost never see either*.
The Breaded Pork Tenderloin, or BPT, is in fact common over much of the Midwest from what I understand. There’s a guy named Davydd who used to have a website detailing his pursuit of this sandwich–his website isn’t around anymore, but he’s still active on Twitter as @Davydd. There’s another blog on WordPress dedicated to these sandwiches. There’s a long-running thread on LTHForum about them.
I liked these sandwiches when I lived downstate but it’s like they say (“they” being the band Cinderella I guess), you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone. These days I try to get out to a tavern and have a tenderloin whenever I visit my family back in Quincy.
I went back to Quincy over this holiday weekend to participate in my family’s annual hog roast (which I might do a separate post about, even though I didn’t technically eat any sandwiches there), and while out and about Saturday afternoon I decided to meet my buddy Mike at the bar about a block from his apartment to drink a pitcher and get a tenderloin. However, when I got there, they weren’t serving food, so Mike called a “tenderloin expert” he knew–his cousin–to find out what place he thought served the best tenderloin in Quincy. “Go to the Grove. Get the Jumbo” was the response.
The Grove Inn is a small place out east of Quincy proper on Broadway, just past the expressway ramp and all the big box stores. Their main claim to fame is having a bunch of volleyball courts out back, where they put on frequent tournaments. Also they have a bunch of video poker machines, which is more likely why Mike’s cousin frequents the place. I called to check that the kitchen was open and we headed out there.
The Saturday afternoon crowd at 2pm was a single old guy sitting at the end of the bar, though a few small groups filtered in during the hour or so we were there. We ordered at the bar and took a table near the front windows. We split a pitcher of one fizzy yellow macrobrew or another, don’t quite recall, and talked nerd talk while we waited.
The Jumbo was in fact not as big as many pork tenderloin sandwiches I’ve had. It still spilled over the bun, as these things generally do. I ordered it with mustard and pickles on the side, as the wet ingredients can make the breading mushy, so I prefer to pat my pickles dry before adding them to the sandwich.
The Breaded Pork Tenderloin sandwich at the Grove
Mindy split the sandwich with me and immediately stated that she didn’t like it. I get where she was coming from. Pork tenderloin is often a pretty mild-flavored piece of meat, but this one had a somewhat gamey flavor. That didn’t bug me quite so much after the first couple of bites, but there were other reasons why this particular sandwich wasn’t as successful. It wasn’t pounded quite as thin as I like either, but that’s a balancing act–too thin and you dry it out, so I’m not a huge stickler for that. It was cooked just fine, with a moist interior and crisp breading.
The breading though was another problem for me. My favorite tenderloins tend to be breaded with cracker crumbs, whereas this seemed more of a straight-up bread crumb coating, and kind of boring. The fries, also, were lukewarm by the time they got to the table–crisp enough, even if they seemed to come out of a freezer bag, but they had obviously sat for a while waiting for the tenderloin to finish cooking.
This was a decent tenderloin, even if it wasn’t my favorite, but the quest continues. Next time I visit Quincy I’ll either head back to this little joint I like near Mike’s house, or try one of the heavy hitters in the town’s tenderloin game & see if they’re really all that great.
The Grove Inn Tavern
6510 Broadway St
Quincy, IL 62305
* The restaurant closest to my house serves a grilled tenderloin sandwich but why would I want that? Fried ’til I’ve died, dudes.
I like sandwiches.
I like a lot of other things too but sandwiches are pretty great
I have been hunting for a good tenderloin sandwich for my mom, who grew up on Millie’s sandwiches in Iowa. I tried “The Silo” up in Lake Bluff, and it was overcooked, dry, not much flavor. It could have been just a bad night for the cook, but it’s too far for me to make a second trip. I’m going to try “Machine Shed” in Rockford – they have locations in Iowa, so that sounds promising. Good luck to you, let us all know if you find a good one!
I’ve heard about the Machine Shed but haven’t been there–Rockford is a little outside my usual stomping grounds but might be worth a trip if the tenderloin is good. Breaded pork tenderloin sandwiches definitely do not seem as prominent in Northern Illinois as they are downstate where I’m from. I have a favorite in Quincy but I feel like I need to try as many others as I can before crowning it the best BPT in town. Every so often I hear about one being available in Chicago but they don’t seem to hang around long.