If you want to understand how chicken fried steak became Dallas’ everyday dinner, start at the corner of Cedar Springs Road and Reagan Street.
In 1975, Gene Street and his partner Phil Cobb opened the first Black-eyed Pea there, in a brick building that dates to 1933. The food was what people’s mothers made, and in Street’s case that was literal. Many of the recipes came from his own mother in Salado. There were fried okra, squash casserole, warm rolls in a basket, and a chicken fried steak that covered most of the plate under a pour of cream gravy.
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