Some of the best chicken fried steak in Dallas comes out of an Italian kitchen. That sounds like a setup for a joke, but anyone who has eaten at Prego Pasta House on Lower Greenville knows it is simply true.
Prego has been a Greenville Avenue fixture since September 1982, just south of Central Market at Lovers Lane. The roots go back even further. In 1956, Joe Barraco Sr. opened a grocery store at 2919 Bryan St., part of the stretch of bakeries, markets and shops that once made up Dallas’ Little Italy. When the family moved into the restaurant business, Joe’s wife, Rose, brought her recipes with her, and many of them are still on the menu more than four decades later. It is a red-sauce house in the best sense, with garlic bread, crab claws, veal, steak pizzaiola and pastas served with a salad, the way they have been for generations.
Then there is the steak. The story goes that a regular once mentioned how much he loved a good chicken fried steak, and the Barracos took it as a challenge. They went into the kitchen, took a sirloin strip, breaded it, fried it and ladled fresh cream gravy over the top. It started as an off-menu favorite for those in the know. Word got around, as it does in Dallas, and today the Chicken Fried Steak is one of the dishes people come to Prego specifically to eat. And it’s not on the menu.
Here is what makes it different. Prego starts with a 14-ounce New York strip, a far better cut than the round steak most places use, then pounds it thin, breads it and fries it until the crust is deep golden and shatters under your fork. Because it begins as a real steak, the beef inside stays juicy and tender, with actual steak flavor instead of just a vehicle for gravy. And it is big. The thing drapes over the edges of the platter, and nobody seems to mind.
The cream gravy is the other half of the story. It is rich, peppery and made fresh, and there is plenty of it. Plan on taking some of the steak home. Most people do.
Prego is a reminder that the Dallas dining scene is full of these happy contradictions. An Italian family, a Greenville Avenue dining room that has barely changed since the Reagan years and one of the city’s great chicken fried steaks, all under one roof. That only happens when a restaurant listens to its regulars.
We have written about Prego before, both its family history and its famous steak, and every visit confirms what the regulars already know. If you are working your way through the best chicken fried steaks in North Texas, this one belongs near the top of the list.
Prego Pasta House is at 4930 Greenville Ave. and serves lunch and dinner. Call (214) 363-9204 or visit pregopastahouse.com.
