Chicken-fried steak is a culinary icon of Texas, or so it is said. Others say a rich Texas bowl of red might edge out this chicken-fried mystery in the iconography sweeps — a cage fight worth having.
Anyway, the odd thing about chicken-fried steak is that it has nothing to do with chickens; that is, if you don’t count chicken-fried chicken, which we didn’t. Sort of. While there’s no definitive evidence that chicken-fried steak originated in the Lone Star State, it was no doubt influenced by German and Austrian immigrants who settled here in the 1860s, bringing with them their Wiener schnitzel artistry.
What is definitive is that chicken-fried steak can be found in restaurants throughout the state, and it was the signature menu item of the once-prolific Dallas-based Black-Eyed Pea restaurants. There’s even a Chicken-Fried Steak Belt (the precursor to Tornado Alley) that differentiates between the dry coating favored in West Texas and the thick, egg-rich style in the east behind the Pine Curtain.
The foundational protein of this dish is tenderized cube steak dipped in a milk or egg wash, dredged through seasoned flour and deep fried or cooked-to-crispy in a skillet. It was common practice during the 1800s to use affordable and easy-to-come-by tough cuts of meat for this culinary flourish. Then, in the 1920s, one of the earliest known printed references to this dish appeared in The Lone Star Cook Book, which may be how it got its iconic Texas twang. We took the measure of this culinary drawl in selected spots in Collin County.
11/17
1910 N. Stonebridge Drive, Suite 180
McKinney, TX 75071
Opened in 2018, 11/17 is a cafe that bills itself as a zone where flavor meets passion. The name is a tribute to the birthdays of the children of 11/17 founders Justin Jones and Channa Jones, who claim the number 1117 is an angelic number, a powerful sign of spiritual guidance and divine intervention. But here, it mostly means scratch-made comfort food like fried green tomatoes, meatloaf and slow-cooked pot roast. And fried Oreos coated in pancake batter, deep fried and crowned in powdered sugar and chocolate syrup — chicken-fried divinity. Though it was tempting to go the Oreo route, we prefaced our chicken-fried steak with a spirited watermelon chiller (it was happy hour), a frozen masterpiece formulated with Tito’s vodka. It was a hefty slab with a crunchy exterior and a chewy interior with peppery gravy. We skipped the mashed potatoes and opted for the tots, which were invented in 1953 when the frozen food company Ore-Ida was trying to figure out what to do with leftover slivers of cut-up potatoes. Seemed like an optimal pairing.
Babe’s Chicken Dinner House
6475 Page St.
Frisco, TX 75034
“Warning! This Property is Protected by Fire Ants,” says a sign as you close in on the entrance of Babe’s. (ADT, eat your chicken hearts out.) You’ll also find a 1920s-era Hart-Parr tractor and a 1940 Simms Ford fire truck at the front of this chicken-dinner coop. Babe’s Chicken Dinner House in Frisco is marinated in history. It’s plopped near the Museum of the American Railroad, the Frisco Heritage Depot and the National Videogame Museum with the world’s largest home Pong console. But we came for the chicken-fried steak dinner, a big bang for the buck. You can sink your incisors into a hearty slab of crispy-coated beef slathered in a smooth gravy that works your taste buds into delirium. This crispy gut punch is saddled with the tastiest of sides: peppery green beans; grandma’s corn, flushed with an unobtrusive sweetness, and silky-smooth mashed potatoes. If the world’s largest home Pong console isn’t your game, you can enjoy Babe’s at nine other locations across the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolis.
Harvest at the Masonic
215 N. Kentucky St.
McKinney, TX 75069
If chicken-fried steak were a cinematic universe (and it should be), this is the Incredible Hulk. It’s a massive thing coated in a crispy, well-seasoned cloak, overlayed with a robust pepper pan gravy and bedded on a piece of honey-glazed Swiss chard, unleashing a flurry of pleasing contrasts: sweet, peppery, crispy, salty, chewy, wilted. Take a bite of it all and let the flavors and textures duel in your mouth — Punch Drunk Love in cinematic parlance.
The Gin Prosper
204 W. Broadway St
Prosper, TX 75078
The Gin began life as The Cotton Gin Cafe in 2001 to service the 3,000 or so residents of this North Texas municipality. Its population has since grown to 37,746. Maybe that’s why The Gin is so huge, with a used-brick and worn-wood demeanor and lots of guitars hanging on the walls. Disembark the flatware enclosed in little paper envelopes and get ready to carve up one of the best chicken-fried steaks west of the Pine Curtain, Texas wagyu style. It’s swathed in an aggressively seasoned smooth gravy and served with chunky garlic mashed potatoes and a rough-cut coleslaw. The steak is beautifully crisp and pleasantly chewy — the fix for your chicken fried jones.
Haywire
5901 Winthrop St., Suite 110
Plano, TX 75024
If there were a cage match approaching a Mark Zuckerberg vs. Elon Musk level of excitement, it would pit the chicken-fried steaks from The Prosper and Haywire against each other in a brawl. This interpretation is so God-awful good that we were ready for seconds — unheard of in the chicken-fried steak arena. It’s a beautiful Texas wagyu thing with a kinetic crunch; tender, juicy meat and a sassy jalapeno sausage gravy speckled with chives that unfurls flavor until the wagyu steers gallop home. This slab crowns a bed of sauteed green beans and red onion slivers and is sided by a metal ramekin of velutinous, buttermilk-whipped mashed potatoes. Musk has bragged that he has a cage match move called “The Walrus,” where he just lays on top of his opponent and does nothing. He must have come up with that after downing a Haywire CFS.
Celina Star Cafe
709 E. Pecan St.
Celina, TX 75009
Celina Star Cafe is clean and homey — the near-perfect small-town, old-school diner with a classic greasy spoon vibe, sans the griddle lubricant mist in the air. It’s kitchen-cozy, with cutting boards hanging on the walls along with pictures of strawberries and forest greens. The hand-breaded chicken-fried steak is served on a white rectangular plate with a small dab of gravy draped over its crunch. You can also get your chicken-fried steak as a steak-and-eggs impersonation, a take on the traditional NASA astronaut’s breakfast, first served to Alan Shepard — sans the chicken-fried part — before his Mercury flight in 1961.
TwoRows Classic Grill
711 Central Expressway S.
Allen, TX 75013
“Love, Peace and Bacon Grease.” An outlet with this slogan on the wall must have something going for it. And it does. TwoRows used to be a frothing brewpub with locations in Dallas, Addison and Houston. But the Dallas location shuttered in 2008, with the Houston outlet buttoning up in 2010. The Addison spot ceased suds-making around the same time — this TwoRows is the last of its ilk. It’s equipped with a wood-fired pizza oven for pies that include the Hawaii Five-0, assorted burger options and chicken-fried steak. But we departed from chicken-fried steak tradition and took a stab at their chicken-fried chicken interpretation, dubbed cowboy chicken. It’s a hand-breaded chicken breast deep-fried and slathered in BBQ sauce, with melted Monterey Jack and cheddar cheese welding crumbles of honey pepper bacon and chives to its crispy sheath. The chicken is moist and tender, and the culinary confetti injects inexhaustible bursts of flavor on the front that hang on for a long finish. Greased love and peace indeed.
Jocy’s Restaurant
300 W. Princeton Drive
Princeton, TX 75407
Launched in 2018, Jocy’s is a classic hole-in-the-wall country cafe with wooden tables and mix-and-match wooden and metal chairs. It’s got old Americana-esque artwork on the walls: an old circa-1949-ish rusting Chevy pickup, a couple of Volkswagen Beetles and a VW bus with a peace sign and a “peace” license plate. And if you think VWs are too Germanic to be Americana, imagine the Summer of Love and “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” without the Beetles. At Jocy’s, you belly up to the counter, order and wait for delivery. The menu is heavy on breakfasts, burgers and tacos, but the specials include fried catfish and shrimp, chicken-fried chicken and chicken-fried steak. The latter is pleasantly brittle on the outside and tender on the inside — a rarity for this genre. The gravy is satiny and demure — no pronounced spice kicking around the slather. The Wiener schnitzel is strong with this one.