Harvest House

Wow… Wow… Did I say wow?

Sustainable farming, slow food, local eating, etc are often, and often justifiably, accused of being elitist, impractical, expensive, utopian.   I agree with  lot of that criticism.  The idea that we’re going farm vacant urban lots or create vertical gardens and feed the world is just dumb.

Utopian dreams aside, there’s a lot I agree with in the whole ecotarian movement.   You should eat locally when it makes sense.  Sustainable agriculture makes sense (Well, duh.  Who’d be in favor of unsustainable agriculture?).  Cooking at home from scratch is sensible.    You don’t have to go off the deep end and vow to only eat locally for a year, insist all chickens be allowed to run free, or never let anything containing white sugar pass your lips.  There’s a sensible middle ground.

Harvest House exemplifies that middle ground for a restaurant.  You step into Harvest House and it’s nice. The decor is pleasant, and it’s spotlessly clean. Nice. You look at the menu and it has what you’d expect in small town breakfast and lunch place. Soups and salads, sandwiches and a white board with specials.  Nice.

Then you get your food and take a bite and you realize it’s a lot more than just nice, it’s something special.

I had a breaded tenderloin with ‘Harvest House chips.’ Pretty standard fare for Northeast Indiana. We love our breaded tenderloins. Breaded, salt-laced, deep fried delights with only the barest hint of pork under all that breading and grease.

The Harvest House menu advertised their tenderloin as hand breaded. And it was. It was a piece of real pork, tender and moist, not pounded paper thin, but a tasty quarter inch slice. The breading was panko-like and fried to a perfect light golden brown.  It’s OK to eat meat.  It’s even OK to eat breaded, deep fried meat.  It doesn’t have to be an overly processed, overly breaded, overly salted, overly fried gastronomic nightmare.

The Harvest House chips were like homemade potato chips. A bit thicker than commercial chips, and unlike commercial chips they actually tasted like potatoes.  Like the tenderloin, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a fried potato with salt on it.  It doesn’t have to be the smallest wafer of potato possible that hold together when fried in whatever is the cheapest oil available (i.e., commercial potato chips.)

There’s a little information available about Harvest House on the web. It talks about their commitment to and use of recycling, sustainable farming, and local produce. Their restaurant is living proof that these concepts aren’t unaffordable uptopian dreams, but something that could be, and is, happening today right in our backyards.

If you find yourself anywhere near Albion, Indiana at breakfast or lunch time (seven days a week), you should stop at Harvest House.  I’d provide more explicit directions, but honestly, if you can’t find something in Albion you need more help than I give you (hint, it’s by the stoplight).