Cowboy Up 

There once was a cowboy named Chuck

Whose steed was a shiny new truck

It burned loads of gas

But was good for Chuck’s ass

Insofar as Chuck’s truck didn’t buck

That little limerick is my contribution to the cowboy poetry oeuvre. Until the recent presidential election, I’d not considered joining in the cowboy fray. But when my man John Kerry got smoked by a faux Texan a couple weeks ago, I decided it was time to “cowboy up.” It suddenly dawned on me that I live smack dab in the middle of a red state surrounded by lots of other red states. And so if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. I am going to become a cowboy just like George.

I thought the Cowboy Poetry Gathering & Buckaroo Fair (CPGBF) in Heber City would be a good place to start. So last week, I threw a new battery into my old mustard-yellow 1970 Chevy C10 pickup—since all real cowboys drive pickups—and headed to Heber to commune with my fellow buckaroos.

Now before you say, “Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute. Cowboys don’t eat sushi and drink Burgundy,” you should know that I was born in Montana. My mother was a horsewoman who competed in rodeo barrel racing. I rode horses before I got on a bike, and I was so young when I mounted my first horse that I’d have been stomped into gruel if I ever fell off.

With the passage of time, however, I’ve come to feel more comfortable in Armani, Cole and Canali than in Wrangler, Levi and Lee. In that sense, I’m a wannabe cowboy, just like our president.

The lack of pickup trucks at the CPGBF surprised me; the parking lot was mostly full of late-model SUVs and foreign-made sedans. For that matter, the only cowboys I detected at the CPGBF were onstage. The crowd was mostly senior citizens and NPR-listener types. I only spotted one teenager, a Goth girl who looked about as miserable as John Kerry the day after the election. Apparently the real cowboys and ranchers were too busy working and tending to their cattle to pay any attention to poems about their exotic lives.

Aside from poetry and music from the likes of Curly Musgrave, Doris Daley, Brooke Turner, Belinda Gail, Bar J. Wranglers, Riders in the Sky (“Woody’s Roundup” from Toy Story 2) and Michael Martin Murphy, it was Eddie Deen’s BBQ that attracted me to the Cowboy Poetry Gathering & Buckaroo Festival. Who is Eddie Deen? Well, Eddie is renowned for his East Texas BBQ and was the official caterer of the 2000 presidential inauguration, serving more than 32,000 people over the course of the 11-day celebration. That’s a lot of ’cue!

Last year, Eddie Deen & Co. catered more than 4,000 events, and he might be spreading himself a bit thin. Long lines for food at CPGBF and mediocre barbecue (dry meat, bland sauces) left me hankerin’ for some real cowboy grub.

Since I was tiring of cowboy schmaltz anyway, I decided to mosey over to where I knew I’d find real cowboys and ranchers: Chick’s Café on Heber’s Main Street. Although I’ve had delicious sandwiches (the hot ham and cheese is especially good), decent steaks and killer homemade pies at Chick’s, the place is really known for one dish. For 50 years now, Chick’s Café has been Utah’s Mecca for chicken-fried steak.

I’m not sure where chicken-fried steak originated. Some food historians say it was a Southern cooking invention; others attribute the dish to Texas. Certainly, chicken-fried steak has become as synonymous with Texas as beleaguered war presidents.

If you’ve never experienced the culinary delight that is chicken-fried steak, the first thing you should know is that it’s not chicken. Chicken-fried steak is usually made from beef cutlets (often from round steak) which are tenderized, dipped in egg, and coated with flour and/or breadcrumbs. The cutlets are then deep-fried à la fried chicken and typically served with white gravy.

At Chick’s Café, an order of chicken-fried steak can be an intimidating thing. It’s massive. First, there’s the option of soup or salad. Always choose the soup. I recently slurped a hearty cup of homemade split pea soup with shreds of ham at Chick’s that was as good as I’ve ever had. And I’ve also enjoyed great versions of potato soup and chicken noodle there as well.

The key to chicken-fried steak at Chick’s is the crispy crust; it’s perfect. Somehow, even under a coating of homemade gravy, the steak stays crispy and crunchy. The “steak” is large enough to take up most of a dinner plate, but there’s just enough room for a mound of Chick’s homemade mashed spuds, which are lumpy and luscious.

As if that wasn’t enough, with each order of chicken-fried steak at Chick’s Café comes a hot Utah scone about the size of my head. Smeared with a hefty dollop of butter (Why start worrying about cholesterol at this point?) and spritzed with sticky honey, the sweet scone serves as a nice counterbalance to the salty chicken-fried steak and gravy. I tend to count the scone as dessert. But convincing yourself that the scone is really just a serving of starch will allow you to indulge in a slice of Chick’s homemade pie. I’ve never tasted one that wasn’t superb.

For a culinary cowboy like me, wrangling up a plate of chicken-fried steak at Chick’s Café means happy, happy trails indeed.

CHICK’S CAFÉ 154 S. Main Heber City 435-654-1771 Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner