This is a story about chicken fried steak.
Just the mention of the food can trigger a Pavlovian response — a tightening of the stomach muscles, a flaring of the nostrils. Maybe you even reached for a napkin to wipe away phantom grease and gravy.
Or maybe you've never eaten the battered and deep-fried slab of meat. Chris Simoes, who has lived in Austin since the early '90s, thinks there are fewer people these days who have.
"Why don't people eat chicken fried steak anymore?" he asked — even though he already had his own answer.
Simoes says the iconic places that served up giant pieces of fried goodness are just not around anymore.
"Threadgill's is gone, Nighthawk is gone. When I was a kid, it was so prevalent you could find it at seemingly almost every convenient food local as well as in high school," Simoes reminisced. "There were only two things you could get every single day. One of them was a hamburger and the other was chicken fried steak."
Restaurant scene expands
That's right folks, the streets of Austin were paved in battered cube steak.
You could get it just about anywhere — especially at places like the now-closed Lone Star Cafe. There were several locations of the home-cooking restaurant back in the day.
And it's not like you're going to find chicken fried steak on the regular menu at Austin's James Beard or Michelin-star-winning restaurants, either.
"No, it's too fancy there. Chicken fried steak was a very inexpensive cut of meat. It was breaded, it was fried and then it was served up," Simoes says. "And it was inexpensive. I'm not paying $25 for a chicken fried steak and that's what it is today. I don't think you can still find a $7 chicken fried steak."
You can't get anything for $7 anymore — and maybe that's part of the reason why you can't find chicken fried steak. It's just not fancy enough. Austin is no longer only a Tex-Mex and BBQ town. It's a big city, with big-city restaurants.
Local food blogger Jane Ko has seen Austin's food scene grow up.
"It's been very exciting to see the city of Austin's palate expand to so many different cuisines that would have never worked before," said Ko, whose Taste of Koko social media accounts have hundreds of thousands of followers. "And seeing the city hungry for more."
Ko is Taiwanese-American and grew up in Houston. She moved to Austin in 2007 to go to UT. When she first got here, she says, it was slim pickings on the food scene, specially if you wanted Asian food.
"There was no Asian food at all. I think there was one sushi restaurant on West Campus back then. And, it wasn't great," Ko said. "So it's been very exciting to see the broadened horizon of Asian food here in town."
The expansion of the food scene has, of course, followed the exponential growth of Austin itself. But Ko thinks the elevation of food here really happened because of the pandemic. Lots of restaurants went out of business, but afterward, the places that survived — along with new ones — were ready to take some risks.
Ko says Austinites, out of their homes for the first time in months, were also ready to try something new.
Trendy food led to trendy people talking about trendy food, which led to more trendy things happening and more trendy people moving here to do those trendy things.
"What's that trendy thing on the weekends now where you like, coffee and chill?" Ko said. "That's like the hot thing."
(As a man in his mid-50s, I had no idea what she was talking about.)
"There's like hundreds of people that come out and sit in cold plunges to drink coffee and chill, literally. Hundreds of people on the weekend," Ko said. "Those people are not eating chicken-fried steak."
There are no statistics on this, but Ko's analysis feels pretty spot on. Those people are probably not eating chicken fried steak.
But the dish hasn't disappeared. It's still a favorite at places like Moonshine downtown. So you can find it, if you want to. Or maybe I should say, if you need to.
A taste of home
Food fills a need, right?
You're hungry, you need fuel, you eat. You're sad, mad, excited, maybe a little drunk, etc., you eat.
But food is also a way to connect — with friends across a table or with memories miles and miles away.
I grew up in the Deep South, and a food staple there is the biscuit. My mom made them from scratch all the time. When I moved here 20 years ago, I wanted to find a taste of home, but it was pretty hard to find a good biscuit in Austin.
But as the city grew, so did the options.
KUT editor Syeda Carrillo first moved to Austin in 2008, and she had a hard time finding the kinds of foods that smelled like home.
"I was really craving this one food that's called haleem, which is like this slow-cooked dish with lentils and beef," Carrillo said. "It's usually like a thing that's on the stove all day long, and you smell it and it smells amazing and you can't wait to eat it."
Carrillo is Pakistani-American. She was born in the U.S. and grew up in Houston with the smells and tastes of her mother's traditional Pakistani cooking. So it was natural that she would look for a taste of home.
Indian restaurants? Plenty of those. Pakistani restaurants? Not so many.
"You know, it's probably like if you're really craving a pizza from a certain place, and somebody is like, 'Oh well, there's Papa John's right there,'" she said. "No shade to Papa John's, but maybe that's not the specific type of pizza you were craving."
She knows people mean well, and she does like Indian food. However, there are subtle but important distinctions, and if you grew up with specific food, cooked by your parents or grandparents, something close just isn't close enough.
So, why not just head over to mom's house and have her cook up something?
Carrillo's parents were in the U.S. on temporary visas. Eventually, the visas expired. Then, they were long expired. Her folks tried to get their immigration status fixed; they worked within the system. But eventually they got a final no. They were forced to leave the country when Carrillo was 17.
"I was just about to start college and so I ended up staying back here, when I was very young and have been here in this long-distance situation with them ever since," Carrillo said. "That's why my mom is on the other side of the world, and I miss her cooking very much."
Her parents are still in Pakistan, but they can't come back — which really sucked when she got married in 2024. Beyond the obvious disappointment of her parents having to watch the ceremony via Zoom, she didn't have her family around to help fix a traditional Pakistani meal for the reception.
But then she found it: Zavia Grill on Parmer Lane. The taste and the smell transport her to her mom's kitchen growing up.
Change isn't a bad thing
So maybe it's OK that Austin's food scene has changed. It might mean that Simoes has a harder time finding chicken fried steak. But it also means Carrillo can find a Pakistani place. And in a city this big, if you really need a chicken fried steak, you can find it.
But not at Hoover's on Manor Road anymore. After almost 28 years, the iconic home-cooking restaurant closed its dining room last month. For now, it will still run a limited catering and to-go menu a few days a week. But the chance to sit with friends and talk at a table over a chicken fried steak is over.
Luckily for me, I was able to head over and eat there before the changes.
I sat with a plate of crispy fried goodness, topped with gravy and accompanied by classic side dishes of mashed potatoes and fried okra.
Can you picture it? If you can, and if that makes you hungry, go find a chicken fried steak this weekend.
It's out there. You just have to want it.
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