Iowa’s Best Pork Tenderloin Is Waiting To Be Discovered

Now that we have announced the winner of Iowa’s Best Burger Contest, it’s time we shift gears and start voting for another state best.

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In early April, the Iowa Pork Producers Association launched its Iowa’s Best Breaded Pork Tenderloin contest and now there is less than a month left to nominate your favorite sandwich.

The first part of this contest is easy, you just go to the Pork Producers’ website and you can select a restaurant from a drop-down list of hundreds of restaurants. If the restaurant you are looking for isn’t there, you can add it to the list.

Kelsey Sutter, Iowa Pork Producers Association marketing and programs director said that in 2003, they only received 90 nominations- since then, the contest has really grown. In a Radio Iowa report, Sutter encourages people to cast their votes.

We get hundreds of restaurants nominated through this process. Last year, we had around 6,000 nominations come through the website for over 500 restaurants.

Nominations are being collected through June 6^th and people who nominate a restaurant are also entered to win a $100 prize.

After the nomination period closes, IPPA’s restaurant and foodservice committee will then visit the five restaurants with the most votes in each of the Pork Producer’s eight districts.

Spreading it out across our eight districts really allows us to make sure the entire state is captured. Rural communities have just as much of a chance as our larger cities in the state of Iowa. That's going to give us our top 40, and then we'll spend the summer as an organization with our members across the state, judging the top 40.

The judges will then narrow it down to the top five which a secret panel will visit. These finalists and the winner will be announced in October- just in time for National Pork Month.