Mr Pork Chop

Mr Pork Chop

Mr Pork Chop

One of the vendors on Ragbrai

Mr Pork started serving back in 1982 when it passed though Paul Bernhard’s hometown of Bancroft. He was asked to serve his pork chops. The next year it passed close to his home town and again he was asked to serve his pork chops. The riders just loved his pork chops and said he should follow the riders and serve the pork chops. So he did. They have been serving Pork Chops ever since that. Paul’s son Matt helped him for many years and then took over the business. Paul has retired but still makes appearances on some of the stops. Paul has been known to yell “Get your po r k chops”, where you can hear it down the road.

You can find Mr Pork Chop everyday on some part of the ride. “Location is everything” says Matt. He tries to find a location on the top of a hill, visible from the road, where you can see and smell the pork chops for miles. Got to have great shade for the riders to want to stop. Matt also tries to find a place near the meeting town. The weather can affect the amount of pork chops sold each day. About 800 pork chops are sold each day on a good day. About 40% of Ragbrai riders stop to eat his pork chops at least once during the week. He loves to hear people talk about his pork chops and how they just had to stop. Out of all of the vendors, Mr Pork Chop is the most known and most talked about on the ride.

Matt talked a little about how they cook the pork chops without giving away all of his secrets. The frozen pork chops are put into a metal grate which has another grate that closes over them so they can flip all of them at one time. They use corn cobs for fuel to cook the frozen pork chops. The cobs burn at a higher temperature to seal in the flavors. You can’t miss the pink pig old school bus parked next to the road. Next to the bus are the grills with big bellowing smoke to catch the bikers eyes. The bus is filled up like a silo full of corn cobs for the whole week.