Chef Alain is Serving Noodles for Breakfast in South Bend

Bright sun streams through floor-to-ceiling windows as the smell of rich umami-packed broth fills the air. It’s a new day in South Bend, Indiana, but this isn’t another classic American breakfast joint. Instead, it’s an invitation to experience something new.  

What defines breakfast? Inside the freshly renovated storefront of Dainty Maid Food Hall sits The Breakfast Club, questioning our midwestern American understanding of the meal and inviting us to cross dividing lines to experience the first meal of the day from another’s perspective.

Alain Helfrich, chef-owner of FATBIRD, Oak & Ash, Propaganda Pizza, and The Breakfast Club, started menu development by asking how the world experiences breakfast, discovering that a billion people start their day with noodles.

“A billion people eat noodles for breakfast—probably more. That’s a lot of people who are on average far more healthy than us. Four billion people eat rice to start their day. There will be rice dishes at some point.”

Alain thoughtfully infuses his doctorate in philosophy into each dish on his menu: “I don’t want boundaries in terms of borders … With my background in philosophy, I want to use it in the real world. Not some academic bullshit … When you name a place The Breakfast Club, to only identify one kind of breakfast as French-influenced eggs benedict bullshit, it doesn’t become inclusive. I’m not interested as a chef in not being inclusive.”

In just a quick read, The Breakfast Club menu confronts guests with a fresh take on dishes with deep roots from across the globe: pozole from Mexico, breakfast ramen from Japan, and french toast from Hong Kong.

But something unseen on the menu is the hundreds of hours of research, development, and testing that the chef has poured into producing dishes with reverence for the cultures from which they originate. 

Some of the most meaningful recipes on Chef Alain’s roster originated during his experiences traveling the world, being accepted, fed, and taught by people from cultures different than his own.

“Food is the language of communication. I don’t have to know your language, you don’t have to know mine, yet we can share a meal together. Everyone just wants to share who they are and where they came from.” 

He talked about his experience visiting his friend Jesús’s grandmother in a small town outside of Mexico City. The recipe for molé featured on The Breakfast Club menu came from his time learning from her and being humbly accepted into her home. “I’m extremely honored that this recipe was passed on to me.”

Recipes take an exhaustive journey to earn a spot on Alain’s menu, starting as just a seed of an idea scrawled out on the pages of a black Moleskine notebook. Stacks on stacks of these notebooks sit methodically organized in his home, overflowing with experiences and ideas.

According to Alain, meticulous, rigorous research sets chefs apart. When considering a dish for his menu, he pulls it from that library of notebooks and begins countless hours of study into its culture and significance before even entering the kitchen.

“It's a massive amount of research, diving deep into what the purpose of the dish is, what its variations are across countries, cities, or food booths. Then I buy the books—anyone who has a cookbook—and study, and study, and study. That’s when I fall in love.”

While researching ramen for The Breakfast Club, Alain found any recipe he could on YouTube, recording them in Japanese and plugging it into a translator to uncover special techniques and cultural traditions.

As a dish enters the kitchen for testing, Alain’s vision begins to take form. Many items are tossed out during this phase, however, the ones that earn a sacred slot on The Breakfast Club menu are significant, thoroughly-researched, and undeniably delicious.

“A lot of what I want to share are things that people are just missing out on. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met who have gone nowhere, haven’t been past the Mississippi, or never even left the greater South Bend area. I’ve been accepted by a lot of different places by just being humble and learning. We’re not trying to go to some remote island. Borders are open. Meet your neighbor. We don’t even wave at our neighbors anymore.”

Noodles for breakfast may be an unusual concept for South Bend, but for roughly one billion people living on our planet, it’s part of everyday life. The Breakfast Club is a celebration of the first meal and, more significantly, an invitation for all of us to begin our day open to another’s perspective.

Visit The Breakfast Club inside Dainty Maid Food Hall at 231 S Michigan St.