Christmas has hundreds of songs. The Fourth of July has a few that can still shake a stadium. Texas Chicken Fried Steak Day, which lands on Monday, October 26 this year, has exactly one, and it came from a Dallas guy who figured the world might get along better over a plate of cream gravy.
The song is “Peace, Love & Chicken Fried Steak,” written by Jimmy Baldwin, a Dallas singer-songwriter who spends his days in advertising and his nights with a guitar. By the blessing of the State of Texas, it is the official song of the official holiday. Not many anthems can show paperwork.
The holiday came first. Dallas restaurateur and former Texas Restaurant Association president Jeffrey Yarbrough was sitting at Mary’s Cafe in Strawn when it hit him that mangoes had a national day and chicken fried steak did not. A couple of state agencies turned him away in Austin, so on the drive home he stopped in Temple to see State Rep. Ralph Sheffield, a restaurant man himself, who told him he could walk it up the Hill.
He did. House Resolution 1419, signed May 30, 2011, made October 26 Texas Chicken Fried Steak Day. The resolution reads like it was written by somebody hungry, tracing the dish to German immigrants with their Wiener schnitzel and cowboys working a skillet.
Baldwin was Yarbrough’s partner in crime the whole way. His idea was simple: with so much shouting in the world, maybe the fix was a long table, a few chicken fried steaks and people talking until things calmed down. He turned that into a song, and when Yarbrough called to say the holiday was real, Baldwin got the invitation to come play it.
In 2017 the state named it the official song of Texas Chicken Fried Steak Day, and the two men held up the document like they had won the lottery and the Super Bowl on the same afternoon. Baldwin likes to say there’s the national anthem, and then there’s his.
It lasted because it’s a sing-along with a big front-porch chorus a whole room can pick up by the second time through. The message is that dinner can still fix a few things, which is about as Texan as philosophy gets.
The video was shot at AllGood Cafe in Deep Ellum, the holiday’s unofficial clubhouse, where Baldwin was back on the small stage for the 2024 celebration and the “World’s Best” Chicken-Fried Steak leaves the kitchen as fast as the cooks can bread it. Mike Snider built that room on food and music, and new owners John Pedigo, a musician and producer, and his partner, chef and restaurateur Robin Gill, know exactly what they inherited.
Fifteen years in, the holiday has outgrown one cafe. More than 50 restaurants signed on that first year and Gilley’s reported its biggest non-concert day. The official Texas Chicken Fried Steak Day site keeps the proclamation, a field guide to judging a proper CFS and Yarbrough’s Top 20 list for 2026, led by Jake and Dorothy’s Cafe in Stephenville.
So here’s the plan for Monday. Find a chicken fried steak, pan-fried at breakfast or deep-fried at supper, cream gravy or brown if you must. Post it with #TxCFSday. Then hit play, turn it up and let Jimmy Baldwin lead the room.
