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<\/p>\nThis is a story about chicken fried steak.<\/p>\n
Just the mention of the food can trigger a Pavlovian response \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy don\u2019t people eat chicken fried steak anymore?\u201d he asked \u2014 even though he already had his own answer.<\/p>\n
Simoes says the iconic places that served up giant pieces of fried goodness are just not around anymore.<\/p>\n
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Gabriel C. P\u00e9rez<\/p>\n
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KUT News<\/p>\n
Theadgill’s, which had the iconic dish on its menu, closed in 2020, during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cThreadgill\u2019s 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,\u201d Simoes reminisced. \u201cThere were only two things you could get every single day. One of them was a hamburger and the other was chicken fried steak.\u201d<\/p>\n
Restaurant scene expands<\/p>\n
That\u2019s right folks, the streets of Austin were paved in battered cube steak.<\/p>\n
You could get it just about anywhere \u2014 especially at places like the now-closed Lone Star Cafe. There were several locations of the home-cooking restaurant back in the day.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not like you\u2019re going to find chicken fried steak on the regular menu at Austin\u2019s James Beard or Michelin-star-winning restaurants, either.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, it\u2019s 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\u2019m not paying $25 for a chicken fried steak and that\u2019s what it is today. I don\u2019t think you can still find a $7 chicken fried steak.\u201d<\/p>\n
You can\u2019t get anything for $7 anymore \u2014 and maybe that\u2019s part of the reason why you can\u2019t find chicken fried steak. It\u2019s just not fancy enough. Austin is no longer only a Tex-Mex and BBQ town. It\u2019s a big city, with big-city restaurants.<\/p>\n
Local food blogger Jane Ko has seen Austin\u2019s food scene grow up. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been very exciting to see the city of Austin\u2019s 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.”<\/p>\n
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Jane Ko has been blogging about Austin’s food scene since 2010. She says it’s been exciting to see the growth of food options in the city.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no Asian food at all. I think there was one sushi restaurant on West Campus back then. And, it wasn\u2019t great,\u201d Ko said. \u201cSo it\u2019s been very exciting to see the broadened horizon of Asian food here in town.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 along with new ones \u2014 were ready to take some risks.<\/p>\n
Ko says Austinites, out of their homes for the first time in months, were also ready to try something new.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s that trendy thing on the weekends now where you like, coffee and chill?” Ko said. “That\u2019s like the hot thing.”<\/p>\n
(As a man in his mid-50s, I had no idea what she was talking about.)<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s 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.”<\/p>\n
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Photo courtesy Coffee and Chill ATX<\/p>\n
Austin is now home to trendy pastimes like jumping in an ice bath while drinking hot coffee. <\/p>\n
There are no statistics on this, but Ko\u2019s analysis feels pretty spot on. Those people are probably not eating chicken fried steak.<\/p>\n
But the dish hasn\u2019t disappeared. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
A taste of home<\/p>\n
Food fills a need, right?<\/p>\n
You\u2019re hungry, you need fuel, you eat. You\u2019re sad, mad, excited, maybe a little drunk, etc., you eat.<\/p>\n
But food is also a way to connect \u2014 with friends across a table or with memories miles and miles away.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
But as the city grew, so did the options.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
![\"Ben](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781817263_238_.jpeg\"\/)
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Deborah Cannon<\/p>\n
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KUT News<\/p>\n
Syeda Carrillo talks with Ben Philpott about the Pakistani food her mother cooked when she was growing up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was really craving this one food that\u2019s called haleem, which is like this slow-cooked dish with lentils and beef,\u201d Carrillo said. \u201cIt\u2019s usually like a thing that\u2019s on the stove all day long, and you smell it and it smells amazing and you can\u2019t wait to eat it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carrillo is Pakistani-American. She was born in the U.S. and grew up in Houston with the smells and tastes of her mother\u2019s traditional Pakistani cooking. So it was natural that she would look for a taste of home.<\/p>\n
Indian restaurants? Plenty of those. Pakistani restaurants? Not so many.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, it\u2019s probably like if you\u2019re really craving a pizza from a certain place, and somebody is like, ‘Oh well, there\u2019s Papa John\u2019s right there,'” she said. “No shade to Papa John\u2019s, but maybe that\u2019s not the specific type of pizza you were craving.”<\/p>\n
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\u2019t close enough.<\/p>\n
So, why not just head over to mom\u2019s house and have her cook up something?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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,\u201d Carrillo said. \u201cThat\u2019s why my mom is on the other side of the world, and I miss her cooking very much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her parents are still in Pakistan, but they can\u2019t come back \u2014 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\u2019t have her family around to help fix a traditional Pakistani meal for the reception.<\/p>\n
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Deborah Cannon<\/p>\n
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KUT News<\/p>\n
Carrillo says Zavia Grill on Parmer Lane is her favorite Pakistani restaurant in Austin. The taste and the smell transport her to her mom\u2019s kitchen.<\/p>\n
But then she found it: Zavia Grill on Parmer Lane. The taste and the smell transport her to her mom\u2019s kitchen growing up.<\/p>\n
Change isn’t a bad thing<\/p>\n
So maybe it\u2019s OK that Austin\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
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