Confessions of a Line Cook: best chicken fried steak in town

Thursday, February 25, 2010

best chicken fried steak in town

so i'm sick of doing movie quotes.  it takes me forever to think of them and most of the time i get them slightly wrong.  i know song lyrics better.  anyway, i'm done with it unless one of you puts up a helluva stink.

so work has been good.  we're getting busier, and we're kind of the new downtown spot for business to have their functions and work parties.  we just did the missoula downtown association's anniversary (birthday?) party.  that was tuesday.  el chefe and i knocked out hours upon hours worth of chop and slice.  there was 60 on the books for five o clock, and even though most of them ordered off the menu, we had tons of appetizers laid out for everybody.  i made a batch of pico de gallo so big it i diced a whole case of tomatoes for it.  fresh fried tortilla chips and ten pounds of pico made for a happy bunch of folks.  there was also tons of mozz sticks with fresh marinara in bread bowls, and turkey & asparagus deli rolls for people to munch on.  it was nice.  i didn't stick around for the party cause i had worked almost nine hours but it went off without a hitch and we once again showed how we throw down.

wednesday was good, pretty busy in the afternoon, actually.  i was supposed to come in at 8 and el chefe wasn't going to come in until 9 to see if i opened the kitchen right but nobody was there to let me in at 8 and i don't have a key so i had to call el chefe and have him come down anyway.  he was only around for about an hour, he said he was going home to shower but we kind of made him stay home cause he's been at the restaurant day in day out for weeks straight...he needed a day on the couch.  so i held the fort down, got everything ready, made a soup (cream of asparagus...didn't like the texture but the flavor was great), and only cooked a couple of breakfast tickets but had more than a few for lunch and then a busy afternoon.  it was nice.  good ol day in the kitchen.

now i got today off, and i'm glad.  i too need a day on the couch.  i haven't had two days off in a row in like, a month.  i gotta work friday and saturday (long shift on saturday) but then i get sunday and monday off, so that's gonna be rad.  i'm gonna go get a haircut today, which i have been contemplating for weeks.  see, i wear a hat most of the time (90% of the time it's my ol blue mets had turned backwards) and i love the way my hair is sticking out of the back and bottom of my hat.  i have a pretty sweet mullet going on right now, actually, and i've gotten quite attached to it.  the thing is, i'm pretty sparse on top so without my hat i just look like freakshow from harold and kumar.  in the rare event i don't have my hat on i look absolutely ridiculous.  if i had hair on top to fluff up or spike then i'd totally keep the mullet, but as it stands, my hair is long and thick on the sides and in back, and up top it's all wispy and thin.  i look like gene wilder on a bad hair day.  so i'm gonna go cut it.  i've been growing my hair for like, four or five months now and every time i go to get a haircut something happens to stop me or i get sick of waiting at the haircut place or my wife runs her hands through my hair and says she likes it.

anyway, bye bye mullet.  it was pretty sweet having you.  we haven't really hung out since sixth grade when i had sweet step sides and a pimp rat tail/mullet combo.  thou shalt be missed.

haha, i just about posted that without actually mentioning the chicken fried steak.  it was all mullet, and i got sidetracked.  so yeah, our chicken fried steak is actually a six ounce sirloin pounded out (so we don't have to kill it, you can actually get it mid rare cause it's sirloin), and we have a secret breading, and we serve it with fried hashbrowns (fryer fried...super crispy and awesome) tossed with paprika and our bomb sausage gravy which has a very nice underlying sweetness.  and you also get two eggs.  for ten bucks.  it's gonna take over this town.  this town loves it's chicken fried steaks.  once the word gets out we should be going through a hundred a week.  anyway, yeah.  it's awesome.  crispy on the outside, tender juicy and delicious on the inside, a little heat, a little sweet....big pile of crunchy hashbrowns, a couple of runny egg yolks....absolute heaven.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

ROCK the MULLET! Bring it back into style. I will buy and send you a "GIT ER DUN" shirt if you don't cut it.

I don't care if you quote the ingredients from a Sysco product. What was wrong with the soups texture? Did you strain it? If you use the bottoms of the asparagus the tend to be stringy. I am sure you get better quality produce then we get on the right coast.
I haven't had a chicken fried steak in years, because they always suck. They sound so good on the menu and then I get it and I can tell it was fried frozen then microwaved. I am normally hungover and still eat it because I just want to go back to bed. I think it is awesome you are making a dank one.
Having Sunday and Monday off is the greatest thing about working in a restaurant.

mikey said...

well, with the soup, i used the tips of the asparagus, and sauteed them with onion and garlic, and then took the rest of the stem (minus the bottom couple of inches...they're woody) and used the stems to make a base. i pureed them with cream and chicken base. i had to do it in batches cause there was so much. i guess i just didn't puree them enough cause it was just kind of chunky. still tasted good tho.

as a good ol montana boy i eat chicken fried steak all the time. and usually, it's just premade sysco ones, which i've gotten used to and aren't horrible, but ours is gonna be awesome.

and yeah...the mullet is gone. chopped that sucker this afternoon. i look sharp!