One of my favorite restaurants in Texas!
Texans drive miles for chicken-fried steak at Mary's Cafe | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Cooking tips | Food | Dallas Morning News
Texans drive miles for chicken-fried steak at Mary's Cafe
06:35 PM CDT on Tuesday, July 22, 2008
By KIM PIERCE / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
STRAWN, Texas – Two hours west of Dallas, Mary's Cafe in sleepy Strawn is destination dining.
Photos by EVANS CAGLAGE/DMN
At Mary's Cafe, chicken-fried steak is made without a vat of hot oil.
Hunters such as Joe Brownsted of Plano stop by on the way to or from nearby leases. Russell King's Christian camp brood is in from Springtown, north of Weatherford. They're part of a steady stream of diners, ranging from bikers in sleeveless T-shirts to women in seersucker shorts, who are of a single mind when it comes to Mary's.
Texans flock to this low-slung building – a former 1920s service station built of stone and flanked by large, boxy wooden additions – to partake of Mary Tretter's home cooking in general and her chicken-fried steak in particular.
Based on reader comments after we wrote about chicken-fried steak earlier this year, Mary's Cafe appears to be the closest restaurant to Dallas that still serves authentic chicken-fried steak. Is it worth a drive to southwestern Palo Pinto County? That depends on how much you like chicken-fried steak.
A vanishing Texas breed, Mary makes chicken-fried steak the old-fashioned way, although she cooks it on a flat-iron griddle instead of in a cast-iron skillet. These days, most restaurants batter and deep-fry the Texas classic, and the last known Dallas restaurant preparing it the traditional way closed in 2005. At Mary's, the only deep-fried foods are things such as hand-cut french fries, breaded okra, tortilla chips and calf fries (bull testicles).
"We find every excuse we can to come here," says Mr. King, who has four kids in tow. "It's the best chicken-fried steak I've definitely had anywhere."
Cafe owner Mary Tretter is so protective of her recipes that employees must sign a legal agreement to not share them or discuss the way meals are served. "Our chicken-fried steak is our own recipe," Mary says fiercely. She's been offered good money to share it, she says, but the answer is no. The cream gravy made from drippings is her recipe, too. She says men often say that her chicken-fried steak and gravy are just like their mamas made.
Mary is so protective of her chicken-fried steak and other dishes that employees must sign an agreement drawn up by a lawyer not to share the recipes, nor even the way the restaurant plates meals.
"I don't want anybody else copying us," she says, adding that one former employee tried.
She lets a photographer and videographer show the steaks sizzling on the griddle, but they're not allowed to so much as peek at the batter.
To get the classic flavor, chicken-fried steak is cooked on a flat-iron griddle. With mocha-toned skin and high cheekbones from her Mexican-German heritage, Mary is a firecracker with a face framed in ebony curls. She stands still for a videographer's questions, but once customers arrive, the petite restaurateur becomes a blur. And when she's delivering platters of chicken-fried steak or chicken-fried chicken livers to one of three dining rooms, you don't want to get between her and a table.
The cafe's crowded entrance doubles as the beverage staging area, with six-packs of beer stacked between the Big Buck Hunter arcade and the blinking, stuffed-toy claw-grab. Next to the coffeepot on the opposite wall are Miller Lite bottle sleeves, Budweiser boxes and towers of plastic glasses. The cashier's stand and two long overflow tables also are squeezed into the space, plus a table near the front window mounded with various styles of Mary's Cafe T-shirts, including one in a pink camouflage print.
The restaurant's decor amounts to unlit neon beer signs, framed and faded newspaper clippings, and hunting photos such as one of Mary's son, Alan Lynn, with a 400-pound feral pig. A welder now, he was 5 years old when his mom bought the business 22 years ago. Two years before that, Mary started waitressing at the cafe. She looks remarkably younger than her 51 years.
The first year and a half were a struggle, Mary says. During the early, lean years, she says, she depended on overflow customers from Flossie's Cafe across the street to keep her going.
Mary still arrives at 7 a.m. to start the daily prep. Although pre-cut, pre-washed and pre-breaded have become restaurant staples elsewhere, "we do nearly everything from scratch," she says. "It's cheaper. We are not modern."
She's quick to point out that it takes a team including her staff and even suppliers to maintain the restaurant's sometimes brisk pace.
One weekend, from Friday to Sunday, Mary says, "we did over 1,100 pounds of chicken-fried steak." She is ever-so-slightly apologetic that diners have to wait longer for her food than they do at other restaurants. But that's because each steak, each bowling-ball-size bowl of Frito pie and each platter of nachos is cooked to order. There are no heat lamps at Mary's. And if you don't want to wait as long as an hour for a table during peak times, you can call in advance and have the food and a table waiting when you arrive.
Mary is driven to provide a good experience, she says, because out-of-town customers make up 98 percent of her business.
With the high price of gas, "I don't want them to drive down and be disappointed," she says.
But then she slips back into her saucy side, the one that could charm a water moccasin, and adds with a twinkle in her big, dark eyes: "The folks say that if you leave Mary's hungry, it's your own fault."
Kim Pierce is a Dallas freelance writer who wrote the chicken-fried steak entry for the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink.
GETTING THERE
Mary's Cafe is on State Highway 16 (exit 361 to Strawn) off Interstate 20 about 50 miles west of Weatherford. A two-lane, blacktop road leads into town, past Mount Marion Cemetery. Mary's Cafe, 119 Grant Ave., is on the right; 254-672-5741. The cafe is open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week. It closes on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Credit cards (except American Express) and personal checks are accepted. Smoking is permitted throughout the restaurant
THE CHICKEN-FRIED STEAK
Would you drive 110 miles for the perfect chicken-fried steak? If so, you'd find it at Mary's Cafe, the temple of chicken-fried steak with Mary Tretter as high priestess. The steak comes in three sizes: small (1/4 pound, $7.50), medium (1/2 pound, $10) and large (3/4 pound, $11.50). The thwack-thwack-thwack of the meat mallet echoes through the restaurant as steaks are pounded in the kitchen, so thin and tender they cut with a fork. Griddle-fried, the batter hugs the meat and, as it cooks, it's transformed into a nubbly, stippled crust with just the right seasoning. Add cream gravy made from drippings, and this is the glory that is Texas chicken-fried steak.
Kim Pierce
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Mary's Cafe in Strawn Texas in the Dallas Morning News
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