Long ago, in 1911, between the arrival of the railroad and electricity out in the West Texas town of Lamesa (you can sing it to the Marty Robbins tune, but be sure to pronounce it luh-MEE-suh), short-order cook Jimmy Don Perkins served up the world’s first chicken fried steak. Make that chicken fried mis-steak, since, as the story goes, the dish came about by accident when ol’ Jimmy Don glommed together the waitress separate orders for chicken, (note the comma) and fried steak.
Except it didn’t exactly happen that way. To be pre-cise, it didn’t happen at all.
The legend of the Lamesa chicken fried steak was cooked up as humorous fiction in 1975 by then Austin American-Statesman writer Larry BeSaw and a few friends. Though none of the myth’s perpetrators ever expected the piece to have legs, the state’s media outlets swallowed the story whole and re-ran it as a feature. And the rest, as they say, is history. Make that, um, fable.
But today the invention celebrates a real tradition of its own, with an annual Chicken Fried Steak Festival held in Lamesa since 2011. That year the Texas legislature also appropriately declared the city “The Legendary Home of the Chicken Fried Steak.”
Left “MIS-STEAK”? The origin of the legendary dish may be in dispute, but the tradition is real. Just ask participants in the Chicken Fried Steak Cookoff. Right Kids and grownups alike enjoy Lamesa’s annual Chicken Fried Steak Festival.
The city’s Chicken Fried Steak Festival and Balloon Rally takes place this year April 28-30, with three full days of kids’ rides, horse-drawn car-riages, pony rides, classic car show, team-roping competition, music and dance, tood and beverage, wine tasting, hot-air ballooning and, of course, lots of chicken fried steak.
Friday evening features a handmade chicken-fried steak dinner at the Community Center in scenic Forrest Park, followed by band performances on the adjacent Plaza Stage from 9 p.m. until midnight.
Hot-air balloons take off at sunrise on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday night the balloons put on a dramatic Fire Fest for spectators, and a band performs afterward on the Plaza Stage.
But the festival’s pièce de resistance is the Chicken Fried Steak Cookoff. Contestants start cooking at 10 a.m. Saturday; winners are announced at the Community Center at 3 p.m. Mmm, mmm. Jimmy Don Perkins would be proud of ’em.
