Dining Out is Fun
Texas cafes have what it takes to get you through the day—mashed potatoes and chicken-fried steak. The rest is gravy.
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In the Coon Creek area between Athens and Palestine, 78-year-old May Martin has been serving some of the best food around for 53 years. Her customers are construction workers, farmers, fishermen, and even celebrities such as Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Hank Williams, Jr. Like many cafes in deep East Texas, May’s is a little rough-and-tumble, not the place to bring your stuffy Aunt Flossie. Even so, it has a certain charm: each table (and there are only seven) has a centerpiece of fresh onions and green jalapeno and serrano peppers. Cows graze in a pasture nearby, and from the window you can watch wild birds chowing down on the cafe’s day-old hushpuppies.
For human customers, there’s roast beef, chicken-fried steak, and barbecued ham (all the barbecuing is done on an old A&M barbecue pit in the smokehouse, and about fifty pounds of meat are cooked there every other day). On Thursday May buys fresh vegetables from Dallas. For dessert you can choose from several kinds of homemade cobbler—apple, peach, and berry, to mention three. An entire meal, including cobbler, is $4.
BRADY
CLUB CAFE
306 Commerce (U.S. 87 North),
about 110 miles northwest of Austin.
Seven days a week 5:30 a.m.-10 p.m.
The art deco–inspired building that houses the twenty-year-old Club Cafe cuts a sharp contrast to the pickup trucks in the parking lot. On the inside, the entire cafe is carpeted with sculpted wall-to-wall pile in a trendy khaki color. The booths have been separated with posts, like horse stalls, and on the walls are framed photographs from Brady’s local paper—a girl’s tap dance recital, some Shetland ponies, a man who has caught a three-foot catfish.
Travelers, ranchers, businessmen, and preachers stop by for the Texas-size cinnamon rolls and glazed doughnuts made fresh each morning. Every table has five or six empty coffee mugs at the ready, to be instantly filled as the waitresses work the floor. With breakfast everyone gets homemade biscuits and a bowl of smooth cream gravy. Initially doubtful, we found ourselves eating “gravy bisquits” with wild abandon after one taste. An order consisting of one egg over easy, hashbrowns (regrettably the frozen variety), instant hot chocolate, and those terrific biscuits and gravy costs about $2.50.
The cafe is definitely worth a Friday night dinner as well, when you can get fried catfish, home-sliced French fries or baked potato, homemade hushpuppies, and a trip to the salad bar for just $4.25. We heard that the cafe fries more than two hundred pounds of catfish every week. Fayrene Parks is the incumbent owner—“Nineteen months now,” she reports. So far, so good.
BRENHAM
DAVID’S CORNER CAFE
109 Commerce, about 65 miles west of Houston.
Monday through Saturday 7 a.m.-7 p.m.,
Sunday noon-11 p.m. or midnight (kitchen closes at 2 p.m.)
This cafe was named after owner Mary Belle Nowicki’s son, who works in the family’s meat market next door. Needless to say, the market supplies the staples for the daily menu of hot roast beef and chicken-fried steak and for the rotating specials of ham, barbecued sausage, pork, chicken, and meat loaf. When possible, Mrs. Nowicki buys her vegetables—including black-eyed peas, cabbage, and lima beans—from local sources. The sauerkraut, corn, and green peas are canned and the mashed potatoes instant, but they taste just fine, which goes to show that a little seasoning and tender loving care make a big difference. For lunch you can choose one meat, three vegetables, a dessert, and a drink for just $3. The highlight of David’s Corner, though, is the dominoes game. Players drift in every day after two (that’s the only time Mrs. Nowicki will allow them to play) for another round in the game that has been going on for the last thirty years.
BURNET
BLUE BONNET CAFE
Texas Highway 29 at Buchanan Dam (eight miles west of town),
about 45 miles northwest of Austin.
Wednesday through Sunday 10 a.m.-9 p.m.
Closed Monday and Tuesday and three weeks at Christmas.
The white stucco thirties-style building is quiet most of the year, but during the summer sessions at nearby Camp Longhorn, says co-owner Bonnie Marx, the walls echo with the noise of the camp counselors’ shenanigans. We got the idea, though, that Bonnie is happy to be overrun year after year by the campers and others who come to eat some of the freshest and best fried catfish in the state.
This flaky fish, dipped in cornmeal and served with real French fries, hushpuppies, and an unremarkable salad, comes in small and large portions for $5 and $6.25. The day we ate there it was close to perfection; our only lament was that plastic packets of ReaLemon had taken the place of lemon slices. We know the prefab stuff is cheaper, and that’s important to cafe owners, but in this case it really doesn’t taste as good as the real thing. The recipe for the hushpuppies was passed down by the original owner of the Blue Bonnet, Peanut Davis.
In the dessert category, the cafe’s meringue pies have become a legend in their own time; once Bonnie had to make 29 in two days. But we found the 22-minute cake, a rich chocolate cake covered with a chocolate glaze and topped with pecans, even better. Bonnie makes it when she feels like it, so you just have to hope she feels like it the day you visit. Celebrity advisory: Charley Pride and Faron Young have dropped in on occasion.
BURTON
BURTON CAFE
Spur 125 (behind the old post office),
about eighty miles west of Houston.
Monday through Saturday 7 a.m.-10 p.m.
Closed Sunday.
There are two reasons to visit the Burton Cafe, maybe three. The first is to try the cafe-made pie for only 70 cents a slice (chocolate, coconut cream, buttermilk, apple and peach, among others). The second reason is to listen to the chatter on the cafe’s blaring police and fire radio receiver. The third is to see the chair that actor Larry Hagman autographed while in the neighborhood to check on his oil investments. He arrived in a helicopter and gave owner Rosalie Powell his souvenir $100 bill. (It says, “This note isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.”) The bill is now—of course—proudly displayed in the cafe.
COLUMBUS
CITY CAFE
500 block of Walnut,
about 65 miles west of Houston.
Monday through Saturday 6 a.m.-5 p.m.
Sunday 6 a.m.-1 p.m. (no Sunday dinner,
but you won’t have room for it anyway).
For the last 28 years Grandma Hertha David (pronounced Dah-vid) has fired up the ovens at the City Cafe at about six every morning. When we arrived at ten we were almost bowled over by several people apparently on their way to a mid-morning feast at a local business, staggering under boxes of fresh kolaches. Besides these jam- or fruit-filled Czech pastries, Grandma Hertha makes bread, cinnamon buns, dinner rolls, and pies. She bakes only once a day, so when something runs out, that’s it.
But the City Cafe isn’t just a bakery. It’s a family-tree cafe operation as well. Aunt Nancy and Aunt Margie grow fresh vegetables in the summer, while a daughter and son-in-law provide all the cafe’s meats. Granddaughter Jo Ann waits on your table with baby Zachary perched on her hip. Son Billy, a passionate fisherman, has two largemouth bass hung judiciously on the wall, as if there will be more to come.
The chicken-fried steaks we had for lunch were so huge they hung over the plates. The gravy was slightly lumpy, but the meat had been hand-breaded, always a good sign. The City Cafe once tried to switch to frozen French fries, but the regulars complained so much that the Davids reconsidered. Our meal, one meat and a choice of three vegetables, was less than $3. Every Wednesday the lunch special is Mexican food, all homemade.
CORSICANA
ROY’S CAFE
306 N. Belton,
about 45 miles south of Dallas.
Monday through Saturday 5 a.m.-3 p.m.
Closed Sunday.
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