Battered Cattle and Hot Grease

"What do you want? The double-double?"

"I don't know what that is... I'll just look at the menu when we get there."

"I have to call it in. We don't have time order it when we get there."

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Photo stolen shamelessly from the internet

That's how my first trip to Mom's Place started. I was a sophomore at Stillwater High School in North-Central Oklahoma. I was 15. I had to hitch a ride - and that ride came with strings attached. It hinged on my buddy breaking out of class and placing a call to the restaurant just short of the exhaustion of third period, maximizing our lunch break. Timing was crucial, as I was told that fifteen to twenty of our allotted forty-minute lunch period was going to be spent in transit. I didn't even know where Mom's Place was. I wasn't sure how I got invited. I was just glad not to be walking to Big Ed's, a strip mall burger joint caddy corner of our high school, which necessitated a harrowing sprint in the crosshairs of our parking lot's inventory, in which traveled the popular and those who had the advantage of celebrating their sweet sixteen early in the school year - the pretty and the licensed. The fact that I was traveling with upper classmen, a perk not secured by my status but rather by my friendship to a classmate with an older brother, was a bonus.

****

"What are you getting?"

"Double-double."

"I guess I'll have the same."

****

Present day Stillwater High School is voluminous - its athletic facilities, auditorium and performance hall rivaling those of a small private university. Although the footprint is the same as when I attended, it's become nearly unrecognizable with its massive brick structures wedged into what used to be an acre of parking lot. It's intimidating to a degree. This is considered great progress.

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"What is the double-double? A burger?"

"No, chicken-fried steak. It's double steak, double mash."

"What's double mash? Mashed potatoes?"

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In the late eighties SHS was a low slung affair, mid-century in feel; a split-level brick structure built to withstand the consistent whipping of prairie winds. Its public face was unremarkable, mostly a sea of asphalt. Stingy with decor, there was little to suggest to an outsider that this structure was anything other than a correctional facility. The singular clue was a small raised bed with a three quarter-scale covered wagon, a nod to our moniker, the Pioneers. 

We had an "open campus" back then, which meant that we were allowed to leave the school grounds for lunch. This was probably a bad idea. The freedom associated with an open campus would later encourage many of us to use that time to experiment with cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana and sex. But on this day, in my sophomore year, I just wanted a ride to lunch.

****

I have been told that my grandmother made the best chicken-fried steak in Noble County, where I spent my primary school days before moving to Stillwater. I am certain I never tasted it. As a child I had a peculiar affection for language and I could not reconcile what my grandmother frying a batter slathered steak had to do with a chicken, and quite honestly no matter how many times it was explained to me, the whole concept was unnerving. However, I do have pleasant memories of her prepping it as I did homework at the table in her kitchen. She pan fried the perforated cut of meat in a red-orange electric skillet, mashed her potatoes by hand, and somehow conjured a skillet full of gravy, some bizarre culinary alchemy, from the cast off bits of the main course by adding flour and milk and whisking like hell. By the time dinner was ready the house smelled like a diner. Once plated, the main course was often joined by green beans warmed from a can, slices of white bread with a coat of margarine and iced tea with or without saccharine. 

Iced tea, it should be noted, is the perfect beverage accompaniment to chicken-fried steak. Its tannic qualities cut through the grease and gravy, effectively prepping your mouth for another attempt at finishing a dish that more often than not, is scarcely contained on an oval plate roughly the size of a state-issued license plate. I should note that I am a huge proponent of drinking alcohol with any and every meal, but I am afraid that pairing wine with a quart of cream-gravy-covered ranch-hand grub would vex even the most forward thinking of sommelier.

****

"This is going to be awesome."

My friend and I bolted across the courtyard towards a breezeway maybe 20 feet in length that led to the soccer pitch of blacktop where his brother would pick us up to make our way to Mom's Place - which as it turns out was across, and nearly out of, town.

"I don't think I like chicken-fried steak."

I could see his brother's convertible Bronco jockeying for departure in the crowded lot - in fact, because of its impressive stereo system, I heard it before I saw it.

"What? Who doesn't like chicken-fried steak?"

We climbed up the side of the beast and into the backseat.

"Maybe me."

****

Mom's Place was an unimpressive establishment in a chaw-spit of a strip center at the edge of town. If you didn't know it was there, you would pass it without a thought. It was hidden in plain sight. There was a marquis in the parking lot to recommend it, but I rarely remember any effort made to do such a thing. It was hole-in-the-wall before hole-in-the-wall was co-opted and brought squeaky-clean into mainstream, chain restaurant dining; it was a dive before the Food Network came to base a good deal of their programming promoting such things.

Once inside, what first struck you was the energy. It was loud with talk. Man talk, mostly. Farmers, ranchers, oilmen and utility workers were its base clientele. Men who chose their lunch spot by word of mouth. Men who didn't give a thought to the warnings on the sides of cigarette packs, much less cholesterol or saturated fat. Men who needed to secure a 2400-calorie lunch in order to make it through the rest of the physically demanding workday. Men, I thought, who had grown up eating this sort of stuff. Men, whose mothers, grandmothers and wives could make this dish blindfolded.

I was a little preppy kid who had never even tried chicken-fried steak, never smoked a cigarette, never done manual labor, never slept with a woman. I was out of my element.

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Lamesa, Texas claims the right to the invention chicken-fried steak; they even started a festival in 2011 celebrating the 100th anniversary of the creation of the dish. In specific, their story claims that the recipe's inception was brought about by a short-order cook, Jimmy Don Perkins, who mistook separate orders of fried chicken and pan-fried steak as one bizarre epicurean marriage of beef, batter and fat. 

Although Lamesa's claim is colorful, it's likely not true. There are instances of the dish in regional cookbooks pre-dating Jimmy Don's timeline. In fact, most food historians believe the dish to be an iteration of the German dish wiener schnitzel, a breaded veal cutlet smothered in cream gravy laced with salt and white pepper. As endearing as Jimmy Don's story may be, the migration of German immigrants to Texas hill country in the late 19th century coupled with the need to make tough cuts of beef palatable makes more sense. 

Chicken-fried steak is a big deal in Texas. In fact, the Texas State Legislature enacted a "Texas Chicken-Fried Steak Day" in 2011. It is worth noting however, that Oklahoma added chicken-fried steak to its list of foods comprising "The State Meal of Oklahoma" in what I now refer to as "The Year of the Chicken Fry," my sophomore year in high school, 1988.

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We sat at the counter, four of us, shoulder to shoulder. An older lady, our waitress, came to take our order and we explained that we had made prior arrangements by phone. While our server checked on the status of our meal, my friend's brother shot a look at us down the counter and said, "If you little fuckers didn't get this order in, we are leaving you here and you can walk back." It was a fair enough punishment, hypothetically speaking.

The service we received that day was consistent with the service I would receive every other time I ate at Mom's. Which is to say, it was shit. There was no small talk, no query as to our level of satisfaction; no offer to split up the tab. Maybe it was because we were kids. Maybe it was because we didn't belong. Maybe it was because the food was that good.

Our server returned (I was told after the fact that it was "Mom," herself). She slapped down our plates and retrieved some glasses of iced tea for our group. I surveyed the landscape of my plate:  two irregular discs of battered-fried beef about the size of a hamburger patty perched atop toasted white bread, two ice cream scoops of mashed potatoes and so much cream gravy that the plate's rim was employed merely as a spillway for the counter. 

Before I dove in to my first chicken-fried steak, I needed to warm up to the idea. I decided to start with the potatoes. Reaching for the pepper shaker, I caught a glance of disapproval from Mom. "How do you know it needs pepper if you haven't tasted it yet?" she asked. She had a point, but the fact is that unlike salt, you can see pepper, and I knew I needed more. "I like a lot of pepper," I answered.

Photo courtesy of Mitch Harrison

The potatoes were largely forgettable. The flavor was good, but the texture was too homogenous and smacked of boxed flakes. The gravy was the saving grace. It was smoky and smooth, creamy and briny, and I had been right to pepper it. The main feature more than made up for what the potatoes lacked in texture. The steak, protected from the soggy intentions of the gravy by a mantle of crust, was rich and earthy. I don't know if the meat was locally sourced as is now the hallmark of haute cuisine, but I'd say that given the flavor and the restaurant's geographical proximity to a number of cattle farms, it wouldn't have been out of the realm of possibility. The white bread toast beneath the steak was an unusual foundation for the dish, but provided a soggy starch that cleaved to the underside of each bite in a way that cushioned the crunch of the fried batter. The contents of our plates stretched the color spectrum from off-white to beige. The meal was life altering. It pressed me to seek out chicken-fried steak on future menus. For the first time in my life, I experienced comfort food. For the first time in my life I felt lousy for missing out on my grandmother's version before she had passed away.

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A lot of things have changed in Stillwater, Oklahoma since 1988 - mostly for the better. Most obviously, the high school and college have been fed a steady diet of brick and mortar. Perkins road chain restaurants and their fraternal box-store sidekicks have arched their way North toward the boundaries of town. Hotels stretch out on the west side begging game-day patrons to make a weekend of it. Stan Clark's Three Amigos still remain packed despite minor geographical realignment. Downtown has been brought back to life with coffee, food, wine, shopping and even housing opportunities. 

But Mom's Place is gone, apparently the victim of a self-inflicted and extremely flawed accounting strategy. If one is to believe the message boards, the owners neglected to pay taxes for a five-year stint, leading to a shut down by the tax commission until the debts and penalties are repaid.  I'm sure that the place looks exactly the same from the outside whether it is open for business or closed on account of tax fraud. My guess is, at least twenty people a day ignorant of the seizure, test the door or are super- excited to find themselves the first vehicle to pull into the parking lot out front.

Regardless of where you fit into the political spectrum of the tax issue, one thing is certain; Stillwater has lost another unique dining experience. Put it in the books with Latigo's, The Ancestor, Bobo's, Bill's Italian, and to a lesser extent, Del Rancho. In the case of Mom's, you can't blame IHOP or the other Any Town, USA chain eateries for watering down the local flavor - they did this to themselves, and more indirectly, to us.

There's a faction of the Stillwater population campaigning to bring Mom's Place back - there's a Facebook Page, of which I am a follower. I don't know whether they plan to put their money where their appetites are and ante up to pay the back taxes and penalties, or if they are even aware of the owners' desires at this point, which is to say, do the owners even wish to re-open? But, it seems a worthwhile effort to take the temperature of those in the area and maybe attempt to reclaim one of the more unique dining experiences in Stillwater. I hope it goes well. I hope we can all meet up there again and have a meal and a laugh together. Because when you think about it, we have lost a lot more than chicken-fried steak, we've lost a bit of our youth - the really sweet and innocent part that just wanted a ride in a car, to the outskirts of town, to eat something in a diner, that maybe reminded you of something you’d get at home.