Read time: 7 min.

Thirty-five years in, it somehow never crossed my mind to eat at MCL Restaurant & Bakery. Honestly, I’d forgotten Muncie even had one! With a speaking engagement looming there in a couple of weeks, I figured it was time to correct my oversight and see what I’d been missing. It was also a good opportunity to poke around the moribund Muncie Mall, so there was that, too. 

If you’re unfamiliar, MCL is a twelve-store operation of cafeteria-style restaurants that got its start in the Indianapolis area back in 1950. Muncie’s Mall location opened in 1975 to replace the Holland House¹. I must have passed MCL a hundred times over the years, but my ambivalence probably stemmed from its reputation for catering to, well, old people. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I confess that all I really knew about MCL came from my blogging friend Jim Grey, who stopped at one of the chain’s Indianapolis locations in 2012 during his Indiana Fried Chicken Tour. 

By the time my brother and I pulled up to the main entrance of Muncie Mall, I was absolutely starving. It’s a little embarrassing to admit since everyone I know has been eating at MCL for fifty years, but I had no idea how the place actually worked. John and I are both reasonably bright and capable, though, and MCL didn’t require any deep problem-solving: a friendly sign did the heavy lifting, pointing us straight to the trays and tableware.

John led the way through the line, loading his tray with a chicken thigh and leg, mashed potatoes and gravy, a cloverleaf farm roll, and a slice of pumpkin pie. I’d heard plenty of praise for MCL’s fried chicken, too, but I was wearing a brand-new shirt and didn’t feel like testing my luck. Instead, I went for the carved roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a side of green beans. The steamed Brussels sprouts and mac and cheese looked good, too! John grabbed an iced tea, and I opted for a Diet Pepsi. As we found a table, I took note of the room where I’ll be presenting in a week or so.

My brother and I are in our early and mid-thirties, so I figured that we’d dramatically lower the average age just by walking in. Instead, I was surprised- at 1:30 on a Thursday, MCL was nearly empty! There were a few older diners, sure, but I also noticed a young family and a couple of tweens eating alongside their grandparents. 

I was far too hungry to linger over sociological observations, so I dug straight into the mashed potatoes. They were thick and unapologetically buttery, but the gravy needed a shake of salt and pepper to wake up. The green beans were fine but forgettable: despite the tray being full of salty bacon, my serving only featured a single, lone bit. The enormous roll tasted exactly like something my grandma would’ve pulled from the oven, but the roast beef was the star of the plate: pink in the middle, tender, and full of flavor.

John went straight for the chicken. The meat was tender, the breading crisp without being heavy, and both pieces were juicy and rich. He said it tasted remarkably fresh and authentic- so much so that it reminded him of the fried chicken an old girlfriend’s grandma used to make! John pronounced the mashed potatoes fine, but not to his particular tastes. His slice of pie was pretty good, but with a heavier topping than he was used to.

Our waiter was attentive with refills, the atmosphere was relaxed, and both of our meals rang up to right around twenty bucks. That felt perfectly fair since we were plenty full as we left. We could’ve both shaved about five dollars off the total by going with MCL’s Blue Plate Special, but Thursday’s offering was liver and onions which was a hard nope from both of us.

After leaving MCL, John and I took a quick lap around Muncie Mall itself. I hadn’t been inside for a couple of years, and it was jarring to see how many stores were gone. A sign between MCL and Auntie Anne’s laid out the reality: three longtime anchor stores were missing from the map entirely, and the directory listed just twenty-seven storefronts and kiosks. What the sign didn’t reveal was that six were already gone or on their way out.

One of the casualties was FYE. The pop-culture and entertainment chain was scheduled to close in just four days. Now, it’s two. Inside, the store felt like a retail wasteland with bare shelves and empty spaces. We picked up a few small trinkets on deep discount, but nearly everything else was gone. 

What made the walk through Muncie Mall especially strange was how nice everything still looked. The concourses were clean and carefully maintained, but the place felt eerily hollow beyond holdouts like Books-A-Million, the Buckle, Hot Topic, and Zales. It was hard not to feel a twinge of sadness as we wandered.

Fortunately, there’s some reason for optimism. Muncie Mall’s new owner, Hull Property Group, has done more than string Christmas lights around the concourse. The company completed its due diligence and outlined a path forward: Hull plans to demolish the 105,000-square-foot JCPenney to the south², remove the 129,000-square-foot Sears to the north, and tear down the mall’s old movie theater to open up attractive space along Muncie’s main commercial strip³. We’ll see if it happens- and if it helps. 

In the end, my detour to MCL and the Muncie Mall checked more than one box: I finally scratched the cafeteria off my list of places to go, and it turned out to be exactly what it promised: down-home, scratch-made Hoosier cooking served without pretense. What’s more is that now I know where to go for my upcoming engagement.

Still, if you thought I wasn’t going to turn right back around the next day and order the chicken, you’d have been incredibly wrong. I went with a wing and a breast, paired once again with mashed potatoes but with a side of mac and cheese this time. The potatoes were every bit as outstanding as before, and the mac and cheese was the dense, casserole-style kind. As for the chicken, it was exactly as John promised: piping hot, perfectly crispy, freshly fried, and shockingly juicy without an excess of grease.

As I finished my meal, a nearby conversation caught my ear as an elderly couple quietly speculated about how long MCL could survive in Muncie Mall. I wondered the same! The cafeteria is one of its few remaining businesses, but the place still holds its own even after its surroundings have faded away. For now, at least, there’s comfort in knowing that as long as the lights are on and the line keeps moving, a small pocket of life still beats inside the mall’s quiet corridors. I can’t believe I hadn’t tried MCL sooner!

Sources Cited
1 MCL Plans Cafeteria in Muncie (1975, October 22). The Muncie Star. p. 8. 
2 Kramer, R. (2025, September 21). The Muncie Mall is about to change in a big way! Hull Property Group, a Georgia developer that owns 27 [Facebook]. Video.
3 (See footnote 2).