Rick Kissel,
who runs the Darmstadt Inn with his brother Randy, was frying up beef brains
last week to get ready for a lunchtime visit from The Brain Trust.
A dozen or
so of the informal lunch club's members occasionally visit the family-owned
restaurant to taste a delicacy that is slowly disappearing from Southern Indiana
menus.
After officials found mad cow disease in
Washington late last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture banned the sale of
several beef products - including some brains - in an attempt to keep infected
materials out of the human food supply.
The ban is threatening connoisseurs' search
for brain sandwiches made the traditional way - beef brains molded into a patty
and deep-fried in a batter.
"We've had this place 49 years, and nobody's
ever got sick from anything," said Randy Kissel. "Parties of a dozen come out
and all they eat is brains. Most of it is old-timers. The young people don't
know what it is really."
The few restaurants like the Darmstadt Inn
that haven't dropped the sandwiches off their menus are relying on an dwindling
supply of beef brains or are starting to use pork brains - an inferior
substitute, according to some brain sandwich cooks.
Even the West Side Nut Club's annual Fall
Festival will have to make some changes. This year, vendors who had previously
sold beef brains are planning to switch to pork.
The beef brain sandwich has been a staple on
the Darmstadt Inn's menu ever since the Kissels' grandfather opened the place
decades ago. The dish has been passed down through generations of German
families who settled around Evansville.
In January, the USDA banned materials that
posed a "specified risk" for carrying mad cow disease. Those materials,
including eyes, spinal cords and brains were deemed unfit for human consumption
if they came from a cow older than 30 months.
The rule effectively halted the sale of all
new beef brains and forced many restaurants to find an alternative for
customers' brain cravings. Many suppliers pulled out of the beef brain business
and convinced their customers to serve pork brains instead.
The results have been mixed.
At Hagedorn's Tavern, owner Keith Wurth said
his supplier quit selling him beef brains shortly after the USDA issued the ban.
He's been using pork brains for the six to seven brain sandwiches he serves each
day.
"Well, they said we couldn't get any because
of mad cow disease," Wurth said. "I haven't had any complaints over the pork
brains. No one minds too much."
But at least one restaurant not satisfied
with the pork substitute has taken brain sandwiches off its menu entirely.
After Tyson Foods told the Hilltop Inn it
would no longer supply the restaurant with beef brains, cooks tried
experimenting briefly with pork brains in their sandwiches.
It didn't work out.
"We haven't served any in several weeks,"
Hilltop Inn owner Don Snyder said. "We tried serving pork, and it didn't go over
too well. Sometimes they would fall apart, and we'd have to re-cook them. We
weren't proud of them."
Snyder said he decided to take the brain
sandwich - in all its forms - off the Hilltop's menu.
"We opted not to serve something we weren't
proud of serving," Snyder said.
Other restaurants, including the Stockwell
Inn, located some beef brain supplies produced before the USDA's ban took
effect.
"As soon as we found out they were going to
stop supplying them, we stocked up on them," said manager Andrea Will.
About 15-20 customers a day order an
original beef brain sandwich at the restaurant.
"We're good to go now for a while," Will
said.
The Darmstadt Inn recently acquired what's
likely to be its final supply of beef brains, Rick Kissel said.
"The last ones are in," he said. "After
that, I guess it's just a tradition that will go out."
The restaurant's remaining beef brains will
probably last a little more than a year, Randy Kissel said.
The Darmstadt Inn bought its last few boxes
of beef brains from Goshen, Ind.-based Troyer Foods.
"I checked last week or two weeks ago, and
they are completely out," Rick Kissel said of the supplier. "That's the last
one."
Don Hixenbaugh, director of purchasing for
Troyer Foods, said the company sold ten 30-pound boxes of beef brains each week
before mad cow disease hit the United States. Most of the company's boxes were
shipped to the Evansville area.
"We are out of them now," Hixenbaugh said.
"I've been out for a month or so. We can't get anymore."
Troyer's beef brain supply was produced
before the USDA's ban took effect, so the company was allowed to sell its
remaining boxes, Hixenbaugh said.
"It's going to be a thing of the past,"
Hixenbaugh said of the beef version of the delicacy.
The sandwiches are a mainstay at the annual
West Side Nut Club's Fall Festival, and they'll still be available this year,
but probably not in the original beef form.
The Daughters of the Nile Night Patrol,
which served brain sandwiches at last fall's festival, will be making the switch
to pork brains this year. The group had a test-run and decided pork was the best
alternative.
"We aren't able to find a supplier" for beef
brains, Night Patrol President Donna Duncan said. "Some of the restaurants had
told us there's not much of a difference (between pork and beef brains), and
that's what our trials proved also."
While the sandwiches will still be available
in pork, Rick Kissel said the dish probably won't be the same.
"I haven't had one myself," Rick Kissel said
of the pork brains, "but they tell me the taste ain't there. It's smaller and
harder to clean."
Darmstadt Inn customers seem to prefer the
beef brain version, Randy Kissel said.
"People ask if they're pork or beef," Randy
Kissel said. "We tell them beef and they never say 'No thanks.'"
"I'm not too happy about it," Rick Kissel
added. "This is something my grandpa and grandma started. We've got people out
looking (for new supplies), but it doesn't look too good."
