Industrial Park Cafe serves up hearty meals and award-winning soup

This article was originally published on March 4, 2019. It has since been updated.

The Industrial Park Cafe, located at the corner of Hodsman Road and McDonald Street, remains foreign to most Reginans. But among workers in the area, the restaurant has built a loyal following over its five-year lifespan. Last week, I visited the IPC for the first time, and I quickly discovered why.

When you walk in, you'll notice it's tailored to its clientele: toolbox condiment and cutlery caddies on every table, steel sheeting on the bathroom doors, and cheeky industrial names for menu items. There's a "Crispy Butt Seam" fried chicken sandwich. The BLT is called the "PVC." There's a "Blown Gasket" beef dip, and a "Crescent Wrench" breakfast croissandwich. For truckers and labourers with big appetites, all meals come with unlimited hash browns or french fries.

"Being out here in the industrial area, we really wanted to connect to all the workers out there, all the different tradespeople, and cater to their needs," says Dan Taylor, owner and executive chef of the IPC.

"Most of our customers are in a hurry at lunch," says Dan. "They only have an hour. They're in and out. But for the most part people are really enjoying it."

I went for lunch with my brother and my nephew. My brother had the "Mozza Mushroom Tandem" burger with fries. I had the toasted Denver sandwich (called "Skipper's Cheesy Mate") with IPC's signature "Piston Broke" soup. Both were excellent. My nephew had the soup of the day (beef barley).

It tasted good. Balanced. Definitely made from scratch. It had a beef gravy taste. I also had half of my brother's burger and it had a nice spongy bun and a big juicy patty. The fries were fresh cut and twice fried. All the food was very good.

True to form, the service was prompt and the food came out quickly. We were in and out in 40 minutes.

How did I hear about the IPC? Two reasons. One, a couple of my co-workers at Farm Credit Canada told me the IPC is the toast of the Great Saskatchewan Mustard Festival and that the owner is the former chef of BarWillow (both are true.) Two, I follow the Italian Star Deli on Instagram and I'd seen the IPC's soups featured on their feed.

The Piston Broke soup is one of the IPC's claims to fame. Dan says he honestly just threw it together: roast pork, sauerkraut, mustard, potatoes and cream. It's creamy but not heavy, with a sharpness from the mustard, and a touch of sauerkraut to counter the richness of the cream. It won the Fan Favourite Award at the 2006 Great Saskatchewan Mustard Festival, so when Dan eventually opened the IPC in January 2014, they put it on the permanent menu.

Dan has won the Fan Favourite Award at the Mustard Festival in four of the last five years, in addition to that 2006 win.

He had me taste the beef noodle soup (also known as "lasagna soup"), which owesits origins to the IPC lunch buffet. Dan would take the leftover lasagna from the buffet and turn it into a "hearty and meaty" soup the following day. The people liked it, so they kept it around.

To create the IPC's "creamy lasagna" soup, they took what was left over from the beef noodle soup and added cream to it. Dan added cream to my bowl of beef noodle soup and the transformation was remarkable. The richness of the cream offset the acidity of the tomato and took an already beefy and zesty soup to a new levelthis is comfort food.

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The soup is so good, some customers come to the IPC just to eat it.

So I asked Dan why he cares so much about soup. He confessed he's not a big soup guy. "I just careabout good flavours, more than anything. And I know that soup is a base to use up a lot of ingredients in the kitchen."

But he learned from some talented chefs and soup makers over the years, particularly when cooking at the Regina Inn (now called the Doubletree by Hilton) many moons ago.

"They taught me how to make the flavour components come out, the ingredients, how to do things properly and more importantly, I just want to make sure the customers are happy so that's generally where that came from and it just took off ever since."