Chicken Fried Face-Off: AllGood Café vs. Norma’s Café

Chicken fried steak holds a sacred place in the Texas dining canon. It’s a dish that straddles the line between working-class necessity and Sunday supper indulgence—breaded beef, fried like chicken, drowned in gravy, and typically served with enough starch to anchor a boat. In Dallas, two long-loved restaurants take this dish seriously: Norma’s Café, a bastion of down-home tradition, and AllGood Café, a Deep Ellum diner with a little more swagger and a lot more nuance. I ordered both. I ate both. I took a nap. Then I made a decision.

Let’s start with Norma’s Café, because that’s where most people would expect the standard-bearer to reside. Their chicken fried steak is Texas classicism at full volume. It’s a generous, plate-consuming portion, breaded and fried to a textbook golden brown, then blanketed with thick, creamy gravy flecked with black pepper. The beef is tenderized, not fancy, but deeply familiar—comfort food at its most literal. Mashed potatoes and a vegetable complete the scene. There’s nothing surprising here, and that’s part of its appeal: it’s like visiting your grandmother, if your grandmother had an industrial-grade fryer and a commitment to excess.

Then there’s AllGood Café, which does something a little different. Their version begins with a flattened beef filet—a leaner, higher-quality cut that’s gently pounded to achieve a thin, broad surface. The breading is applied sparingly but crisps up beautifully in the skillet, resulting in a crust that shatters rather than crumbles. The gravy is cream-based but more refined than Norma’s, with subtle herbal notes and a pourable consistency that complements the steak without drowning it. The meat stays juicy, and the texture throughout is light, not leaden. You can finish the plate without feeling like you need a wheelchair. Add in just-made mashed potatoes and well-seasoned fresh green beans, and you’ve got a version of the dish that’s both comforting and thoughtful.

Tasting them back to back, the contrast is clear: Norma’s delivers maximum nostalgia and calorie density; AllGood brings sharp execution and actual balance. One is a full-on belly bomb (bless it), the other is a well-composed dish that happens to be fried and covered in gravy.

In the end, AllGood Café takes the win—not by out-Texasing Norma’s, but by evolving the dish without losing its identity. They take a rugged classic and refine it just enough to keep the soul while giving your arteries a fighting chance. It’s still unmistakably chicken fried steak, but with better structure, a better cut of meat, and the kind of attention that says, “We care about this.” In a state where tradition is often worn like a badge, AllGood earns its victory by proving that even the most sacred dishes can get better with a little love and a smarter skillet.