Jeffrey Yarbrough was sitting in Mary’s Cafe in Strawn, a small town just off I-20, when the question came to him. Mangoes had their own holiday. Why didn’t chicken fried steak?
Today is October 26, which makes it Texas Chicken Fried Steak Day. That’s Yarbrough’s doing, and fifteen years after the state made it official, he’s still the one pushing it.
Getting it on the books took some legwork. Before 2011, Yarbrough made the rounds to the beef council, the ag board and the restaurant association, looking for somebody who would make it an official holiday. Nobody would.
“I couldn’t really get anyone to carry the torch,” he says. “And I’m like, well, hell, I’m gonna have to do this thing myself.”
He took the idea to State Rep. Ralph Sheffield of Temple, who had come to the Legislature from the restaurant business. Yarbrough remembers him scratching his head before he answered.
“He said, ‘Yeah, bro, I can do that. I can walk that straight to the governor’s desk.’ So he did it.”
On May 30, 2011, Sheffield, House Speaker Joe Straus and Chief Clerk Robert Haney signed the resolution. Sheffield understood right away what a statewide food holiday could do for a cafe in a one-stoplight town as well as for a chef in the city. Yarbrough says he saw how it could help “small town, large town cafes and restaurants, and even chefs.”
The first year, more than 50 restaurants signed on officially, and hundreds more joined in on their own. Gilley’s reported its biggest day that wasn’t a concert and turned its special into a weekly one.
The holiday picked up a theme song along the way. Jimmy Baldwin’s “Peace, Love & Chicken Fried Steak” and its video caught on so well that Yarbrough went back to Austin, this time to State Rep. John Wray of Waxahachie, whom he knew from years in the bar business. In 2017, the song became the official song of the day.
The chefs are fully on board now. Yarbrough points to Michael Thomson at Michaels Cuisine in Fort Worth, where Thomson has been cooking what he calls contemporary ranch cuisine on West Seventh since 1992. He says this year’s reader picks are full of chef-run kitchens doing their own take on the dish.
For years, people kept asking Yarbrough to rank them. He kept saying no.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings,” he says.
Two years ago, his office staff wore him down. “They said, Jeffrey, just do a list,” he says. “Not your list of all your life. Just this year.” Then they suggested a readers’ choice list on top of it.
Now there are two. Jeffrey’s Top 20 is his personal ranking, and the Readers Choice list comes from the public. This year 198 nominations came in for the reader list, and the final version runs to 66 kitchens. Both lists come with a plaque so the winners can hang it by the register.
“When people come in,” he says, “they’re like, oh man, this is legit.”
Fifteen years in, he says the holiday has turned out the way he hoped, and the awards haven’t drawn the backlash he worried about. A couple of people asked why a certain place made the cut. Nobody asked who he thought he was. His real estate clients have caught on, too. They’ll tell him they serve a chicken fried steak, and he’ll ask if they’ve been to Jake & Dorothy’s or Mary’s.
Jake & Dorothy’s Café in Stephenville sits at No. 1 on this year’s Top 20. AllGood Cafe in Deep Ellum is right behind it at No. 2, and Mary’s, where the whole idea started, holds at No. 13.
Look at the hometowns on the lists and a pattern shows up. West Texas is crowded, and so is North Texas. South Texas has the fewest entries.
Yarbrough’s theory is that the dish changes as you get closer to Louisiana. When CraveDFW suggested it starts picking up Cajun habits that far east, he agreed. Out west, past Abilene and on toward Ozona, chicken fried steak has always been home cooking.
About a half dozen kitchens are new to the lists this year, and one of them has been around since 1926. Paris Coffee Shop on West Magnolia in Fort Worth came in at No. 9. Lou Lambert, Chris Reale and Mark Harris bought the old diner from the Smith family in 2020, restored it and reopened it in 2022. Yarbrough had been watching it since.
“The product was just spot on,” he says. “Lou is a West Texas Odessa fella himself. He’s got it nailed down.”
Another newcomer is Cuevas Drive In in Lubbock, at No. 19. Yarbrough is fairly sure the kitchen works with cube steak, and he likes that the sides run from fried okra to mashed potatoes to fries. “They are old school,” he says, “and just kill it.”
Ask him how to make one and he starts with the meat.
“The meat, first of all, is beef,” he says. “One can chicken fry anything, but chicken fried steak is beef.”
He wants a cutlet, usually round steak or cube steak, pounded thin. The thick ones tend to be tough. “I don’t want to say every chicken fried steak should be able to be cut with a fork, but it sure does help,” he says. Go too far the other way and you’ll know it, because a steak that’s too tender is usually too thin.
Some kitchens cut corners with ground beef. He doesn’t hesitate on that one. “It’s evil,” he says.
His breading is salt, pepper and flour with an egg or milk wash so it holds onto the meat. He goes heavy on black pepper because he likes the bite. The oil goes somewhere between 350 and 375 degrees depending on the thickness of the steak.
The tip that matters most comes at the dredge. Push the flour down into the meat with your fingers, he says, so it grabs hold when it hits the oil and the crust doesn’t slide off on the plate.
Skillet versus flat top doesn’t worry him much. Mary’s cooks hers on the flat top out in Strawn, and he calls the whole debate a matter of preference. At home, cook it on a griddle or in a skillet full of grease, whichever you like. Chicken fried and country fried are the same dish to him.
CraveDFW sees it differently. Order country fried steak outside Texas and it often shows up as a frozen food-service patty. Yarbrough knows that plate on sight, especially when it looks like a hockey puck.
The gravy comes from the pan drippings, and it gets made while the pan is still hot. “If you’re cooking at home, there’s no reason to cheat and use package gravy,” he says.
On the side, he’s a french fry man. His mother takes mashed potatoes. His three kids split, one for mashed and two for fries. He’d like the next round of reader voting to settle the side dish question.
He already knows his favorite fries. Jake & Dorothy’s cuts fresh potatoes into waffle fries on a wooden cutter the owner’s father built.
“They’re not those frozen-looking waffle fries,” he says. “These are like, oh wait, that just came off a potato.”
Mary’s went years without offering mashed potatoes at all. Her burger weighs a pound, and he says it takes about an hour to cook.
Beyond potatoes, he’s happy with green beans, black-eyed peas, pinto beans or red beans.
Then there’s everything else you can chicken fry. He brings up antelope and elk before he gets to his own favorite, duck breast. He takes the breast off the bone, pounds it thin like scaloppine and fries it.
“They are fantastic,” he says.
He once brought home sandhill crane and chicken fried it with chef Sharon Van Meter and a chef from Fearing’s. He says it ate like a chicken fried tenderloin.
Tenderloin is exactly what Mike Snider used at AllGood. Years ago, over a chicken fried steak lunch with Yarbrough and CraveDFW, Snider showed how he pounded out the tenderloin for it.
“I wish I could afford it,” Yarbrough says. “I’d eat it every day.”
Closer to home, he points to Prego Pasta House on Greenville, where the Barraco family’s secret chicken fried steak landed at No. 17 on his list. “He still kills it,” he says.
He also can’t understand why more Dallas diners don’t make the drive to Rockett Cafe & Club in Waxahachie, No. 20 on the list, with live music and a full honky-tonk.
Stephenville is a harder sell for Dallas, he admits. Fort Worth people go more. When he brings up Jake & Dorothy’s over there, someone usually tells him it’s their stop on the way to the deer lease.
As for today, he’s staying in Fort Worth. He and partner Camille McDonald are weeks from opening La Pistola across from Dickies Arena, aiming for mid-November, and he’d already made two Home Depot runs by 11 a.m. Lunch is at Paris Coffee Shop.
Dinner depends on what he wants to drink. It’ll be beer at Fred’s Texas Café or wine at Michaels.
“If I go early, I can do both,” he says. “Maybe I can do happy hour at one and dinner at another.”
Jimmy Baldwin thinks he’s coming to AllGood today. Yarbrough hasn’t called to tell him otherwise yet.
More chicken fried steak from CraveDFW:
Texas Chicken Fried Steak Day Is October 26. Here Is Where to Start
Make It a Bubba’s Weekend Brunch Before Chicken Fried Steak Day
Saddle Up for the Duke: Chicken Fried Steak at Bandera’s 105-Year-Old OST
Chicken Fried Royalty: Street’s Fine Chicken Does CFS Right
Texas’ Most Famous Gas Station Chicken Fried Steak
Judy’s Kitchen Is a Tasty Reason to Visit Garland
Ranchman’s Is Back in Ponder, and It Still Tastes Like 1948
Lounge Here Turns Chicken Fried Steak Into a Dinner and a Brunch Dish
Lufkin’s Cafe Del Rio Covers Both Sides of Texas Comfort Food
Why Fort Worth’s Vickery Cafe Still Draws a Line Out the Door
The Grapevine Restaurant Where You Eat Lunch Under a Vintage Car
Norma’s Cafe Turns 70; Dallas Should Make a Plan for June 24th
Celebrate Texas Chicken Fried Steak Day at Celebration!
Chisos Mountain Lodge (Big Bend) for a Great CFS
Celebrate Chicken Fried Steak Day With Fried Elk, With the Gravy King
Blue Bonnet Café: The Ultimate Home Cooking Experience in Texas
Rodeo Bar in Dallas for a Yeehaw Good Time
Gravy Up at Jonathon’s
How Jeffrey Yarbrough Grabbed His Place in Texas Chicken Fried History
