You can get anything you want - at Mary's Cafe in Strawn

"Walk right in, it's around the back, just a half mile from the railroad track."   -- With apologies to Arlo.

In Strawn, Texas, population 739 people, about a half mile from the railroad track on Highway 16 is Mary's Cafe, widely acclaimed to have the best chicken-fried steak served anywhere. Anywhere. Mary's has been written up in most of the major Texas newspapers; Texas Monthly named it one of the best, and its fame has circled the globe (one family from Abilene heard about it while visiting in China). And Strawn just happens to be on the way to the Lake Cabin at Possum Kingdom. Heh, Heh.

I carefully set our departure time on our recent trip to put us in Strawn just about 1pm - late enough to miss the church crowd. What I didn't realize was that Mary's IS the church crowd in Strawn. We got there at 1pm to find that about 80 of our closest friends were standing at the door, waiting for a table!

I asked the guy at the desk and the liar said the wait was 20 minutes, so I convinced my already-dubious wife that this was a wonderful opportunity to check off a bucket list item and besides it's not that hot, sitting out here on a pipe rail, breathing in the smoke from the latest wildfire thirty miles up the road. Thirty-five minutes later, we got 2 spots at a table, along with another couple.

The waitress took our order - "Two small chicken-fried steaks, please." I knew better than order the large; that's multiple pieces of steak that cover a platter about the size of a large pizza. Barb was not present when the waitress said, "Hon, we're short-handed in the kitchen today and this will take a while, but I'll get your order out the instant it is ready." Later, when I fessed up about the delay, she said, "So what? This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and by that I mean we aren't ever going to do this again."

Mary's will seat, by my estimates, about 100 diners. There is a patio around back that will seat many more. For some reason, it's very popular with the biker crowd, and I'll admit that timing our trip to coincide with the opening of dove season was not a good idea. The menu is extensive and the reviews say that all the grub is good at Mary's. Almost all the tables are the standard 8-foot banquet table; the decor is early remodeling. In the picture above, you can just see the front desk and cashier stand on the left, plus the drink fountain area behind it - glasses of ice and canned beverages of your choosing. And I think about half of the population of Strawn works there.

The couple at our table both ordered large orders; the waitress brought the take-home boxes at the same time as the steaks. Turns out that they live in Ft Worth and come down every couple of months to eat their fill and cart the rest back for sandwiches for the next couple of weeks.

Was it worth nearly two hours added to our trip to dine on chicken-fried steak named the best anywhere? I'll be honest. It is very hard to ruin chicken fried steak, and I'm not a real gourmet. It was good. It was very good. The steak was thin and cooked nicely, with crisp highlights of batter. The pepper gravy (served on the side) was excellent - really the best part of the meal. The sour cream and butter for the baked potato came out of plastic packets; the salad dressing was in a ubiquitous squeeze bottle. But when all was said and done it was a chicken-fried steak. A very good chicken-fried steak.

And I'm thinking, if the next time we drive by Mary's and the line is down to oh, 40 or so, and if they say the kitchen is fully staffed, I'm thinking... I'm thinking... how am I going to convince my wife we should stop again?