A Hoosier delight

Get a tenderloin any way you want it at Swayzee Loinz

By STU CLAMPITT
news@readthereporter.com

Swayzee Loinz, 7241 E. 146th St., Suite 100, Carmel, is a small restaurant with a big heart for giving Hoosiers exactly what we want. Everything on the menu, including the ice cream and beer, comes from right here in Indiana and is specifically designed to appeal to Hoosier taste buds.

Pick the tenderloin size you want, get it hand-breaded – regular or spicy – or unbreaded if you prefer, then walk down the line and tell the Swayzee meat masters exactly what toppings you want on your sandwich. If you’re feeling experimental, they also have tenderloin tacos and tenderloin pizzas. The taco uses a tenderloin as the shell and the pizza (you see where this is going) uses a tenderloin as the crust.

Yes, these carnivorous Hoosiers will build a pizza on top of a tenderloin.

The Reporter spoke to owners James and Allison Cruea about why they chose to let you have a tenderloin any way you want it.

“We didn’t start out with this business model and just end up here,” James said. “We have a food processing plant in Swayzee, Ind., and it was a meat market for many years. We converted it over, changed the business model back in 2015 and started mass producing the hand-breaded tenderloins based on the reception we were getting from a recipe we had which was like 130 years old.”

James and Allison said they couldn’t make these tenderloins fast enough in those days. They hired someone to make them eight hours a day, but that wasn’t enough either. So they hired two more people and still sold out every day.

“So we decided to switch the business model over and say, ‘hey, you know what, what if we just mass produce hand-breaded tenderloins, distribute them to wholesalers and see what happened?’” James said. “It was very well received.”

Swayzee became an Indiana Grown member, which led them to Piazza Produce, a Hoosier company that distributes to seven states. They also started doing on-site events for Indiana Grown, and they’d often have hundreds of people lined up waiting for Swayzee tenderloins.

The latest evolution is the Swayzee Loinz restaurant on 146^th Street.

“Just to be clear, all we use is number one pork loin, which is what tenderloins are made out of,” James said. “It’s all number one pork, no hormones, no antibiotics, the last six months of life. It’s the freshest meat you can find.”

And everything on the menu is made in Indiana. The dips, the side dishes, even the desserts.

“We have some great sauces that nobody else offers,” James said. “The bourbon mustard, the fire roasted ranch, and even just the plain ranch, they’re all locally made. They’re all from local Indiana companies. Even our beer is a local beer with Garfield Brewery. The ice cream is from Heartland Homemade Ice Cream out of Beech Grove. The ice cream is phenomenal because it’s made with real lard.”

If everything goes as planned, there could be five locations spread across Hamilton County by the end of this year. The Reporter does not recommend waiting for one to come to your neighborhood, however. Just stop in at their 146^th Street location once and your Hoosier taste buds will lead you back again and again.

You can stop by Swayzee Loinz at 7241 E. 146th St., Suite 100, Carmel, seven days a week from 10:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Follow along on Facebook and Instagram @SwayzeeLoinz.