Meat for dessert? Indy's top chefs get weird in chase for Meat King crown
Whatever you think it will smell like when you walk into a bar occupied by well over 50 different preparations of meat, I promise you, you're wrong.
You can only know by learning firsthand, which I did when I entered Half Liter BBQ late Sunday morning for the fourth annual Meat Cake Invitational.
Produced by Indianapolis-based food and comedy podcast Harder Brunch, the Meat Cake Invitational is more or less exactly what it sounds like. Competitors construct desserts primarily made of meat, which a panel of judges scores on design and flavor to crown the esteemed Meat King. Meanwhile, eager onlookers pay $40 to ogle and nibble.Obviously, I had to be there.
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This year’s competitors spanned from reigning Meat King and private chef Steven Amore to newcomers like Bluebeard pastry chef Youssef Boudarine. A bustling intersection of culinary disciplines and artistic vision produced 10 meat cakes, each with its own delicate balance of flavor and aesthetics.
But which was the worthiest of meat royalty?
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Amore defended his title by spreading Berkshire pork rillette on a chicken crust, draping the oblong oval over a sloped cutting board. Teriyaki beef jerky Roman numerals completed the melting clock pastiche, which Amore affectionately called Salvador Deli. No holding back for the 2023 champ.
“It’s a pressure that I’ve come to deal with as the Meat King,” Amore said. “And I haven’t abused my powers whatsoever.”
Circle City Sweets’ Cindy and Roger Hawkins teamed with chef Ian Stricklin to create the Gravy Train. Beef and pork meatloaf coated in mashed potatoes formed a locomotive with a wine cork chimney and biscuit wheels on jerky tracks. Several plastic king cake babies rode in a trough of spiced gravy, with a deep-fried Cornish game hen named Kevin Bake-hen as its venerable conductor.
Restaurant consultant Ashley Rose topped blood and bacon velvet cake with a blood and red wine buttercream frosting. 4 Birds Bakery owners Jenna and Steven Unrue paid homage to Chicago with three different meat towers sauced and seasoned to evoke tavern-style pizza, Chicago dogs and Italian beef.
And, of course, there was a fog-breathing charcuterie dragon, courtesy of Harder Brunch host Dyke Michaels and producer Zach Rohn.
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No amount of laborious description will do the cakes justice, so peruse the photos at your leisure. You’ll find the results of 10 teams of professionals braising, baking and smoking their gastronomic fever dreams into reality.
It’s nearly impossible to evaluate the cakes given their complexity. I wasn’t asked to be a judge this year — consider this my early bid for 2025 — so I was one of the ticket-buying plebeians determining the people’s champion. To be honest, I’m not sure I could have handled the responsibility of judging.
Should taste or aesthetics matter more? If the cake relies heavily on non-meat ingredients, does it count? What about the chefs who offered samples of the cake’s components, but not slices of the cake itself? How many animals had to — you know what, maybe I’m not as curious as I thought.
The best meat cake
Purely from a flavor standpoint, I most enjoyed the creation of veteran chefs Andrew Whitmoyer and Craig Baker, who currently operate the Chef’s Night Off dinner series. The duo shingled strips of sirloin cooked sous vide in duck fat, garlic, thyme and rosemary between layers of blue cheese bacon mousse and braised short rib jam. Dollops of foie gras buttercream adorned the top.
The sirloin was juicy, the herbs pleasantly pungent, the jam might have been a window to heaven and the cream wasn’t too shabby once I learned to prepare for what was essentially a mouthful of cold butter.
Still, I kept coming back to the Hawkins’ Gravy Train. The meatloaf was tender but required a fork to eat — a godsend after all the texturally indistinguishable mousse and pâté — and the gravy boldly sang notes of smoke and spice.
There was just one downside: I didn’t get to eat any of the actual train. Instead, guests sampled the locomotive’s constituent parts served in little paper boats. Though I thoroughly enjoyed what I ate, I still felt a bit slighted.
I ached to taste the creamy mashed potato facade. To chew the beef jerky rails. And, yes, I really wanted to bite into Kevin Bake-hen.
Still, I cast my vote for the Gravy Train. The Hawkinses spared no detail in fleshing out a delightfully absurd concept, which felt perfectly in the spirit of the competition. The samples were sufficient to convince me the cake was worthy.
What can I say? I’m a sucker for a good meatloaf.
Who won the Meat Cake Invitational?
After a man and a woman in flesh-colored spandex danced quite poorly but nonetheless vigorously to the entirety of Seal's “Kiss from a Rose” — the official anthem of Meat Kingdom, I learned — the emcee announced Whitmoyer and Baker’s sirloin cake as the people’s choice, while the judges awarded Amore his second consecutive title for Salvador Deli.
Despite insisting he was a benevolent dictator, Amore warned during his coronation speech that his recently born son might not show the same mercy.
“I had a son I was raising this year, and I don’t feel like I got to properly abuse being Meat King,” he said. “And now you all better look out, because there’s a meat prince.”
I left Half Liter digesting countless thoughts and a guilt-inducing amount of meat. As is often the case, I think I was best off not dwelling on it too much. Part art, part passion, part gluttony, the Meat Cake Invitational was nothing if not a reminder that good experiences often come to those who don’t take life too seriously.
Contact dining reporter Bradley Hohulin at bhohulin@gannett.com. You can follow him on Twitter/X @BradleyHohulin.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Gravy Train, blood cake, a dragon — inside the Meat Cake Invitational
