"Yeah. I said to him, 'I want to take you out for chicken-fried steak.' But he didn't know what a chicken-fried steak was. And I went. 'Kid, you know about hookers, but you don't know about chicken-fried steak?' That relaxed him and put him on a higher plane. He was going to become somebody else, you know. He was going to be made a man that night." - Bill Murray, commenting about the first time he worked with then newcomer Jason Schwartzman on the set of RushmoreNothing truly quite says Texas cuisine more so than a chicken fried steak. It's a man's man kind of meal. A cheap cut of meat, with some seasoned flour, fried up in a skillet of hot oil, smothered in a peppered milk gravy--it seems so simple, but tastes so good. Yet outside of the great state of Texas, the chicken fried steak seems almost as rare as finding water in the desert. During my time in Missouri, I searched far and wide for any acceptable version. Up there (and in just about any other place outside of Texas), they call it "country" fried steak. Blasphemy. About the only edible version I could stomach was from a chain restaurant coincidentally named Texas Roadhouse (although even more interestingly, the original restaurant was started in Indiana, of all places).
It was torture for the past few years not having a reliable supplier of my favorite comfort food. Of course, I'm back in Texas now, where you can't walk ten feet without running into a place with a decent chicken fried steak. So I went through a major chicken fried steak binge this weekend to make up for all those lost nights that I yearned for one for dinner, with the last place I went to today pictured above. Along with the staple sides of green beans, mashed potatoes, and rolls, it's a match made in heaven. About all I needed to make this perfect was a chicken fried corn on the cob. Yeah, I'm flirting with major arteriosclerosis, but you only live once, right? And how can you possibly go wrong getting all of this at a place called Bubba's?
Yup, it's good to be back in Texas.
2 comments:
Did I never take you to KT Fryers in Lenexa? Seriously, it was as good as chicken fried steak from Texas, AND you got free refills on the taters, green beans (with ham in them), rolls, AND sweet rolls. Man, the next time I hit K.C., I'm going to KT Fryers.
And Arthur Bryant's.
Houston is kind of hoity toity. Everything around here is like Sushi Fusion. I might need to go all the way out to Conroe to get some hillbilly food.
Funny you mention hoity toity Houston. I didn't put the rest of the Bill Murray interview in my post, but since Rushmore was filming in Houston, he took Jason Schwartzman to some fancy place called Ouisie's Table for that chicken fried steak where the Houston rich like to get their gourmet comfort food. Gourmet chicken fried steak kind of sounds like an oxymoron on so many levels, but I think I'll have to make you take me there, Firecracker George, whenever I get the chance to run down to Houston for a weekend. I actually thought about driving down this past weekend, but I ended up with a bad cold that had me hacking up a lung for that past few days.
As far as KT Fryer's, you did take me there. I had the fried chicken, though, not the CFS.
And Arthur Bryant's. Mmmmmmmmm.
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