Where’s the best chicken-fried steak in central Fort Worth? The answer hasn’t changed

For 38 years now, we’ve consistently ranked the Star Cafe at or near the top for chicken-fried steak.

Nothing has changed but the price, and for the better.

At lunch on Tuesdays, $8.95 will buy a classic Star chicken-fried with housemade mashed potatoes, a vegetable and a biscuit that tastes just like those the Boles family has been making for half a century.

There are fancier chicken-fried steak cafes now, including Horseshoe Hill Cafe up Exchange Avenue. And there are some that are just as good, like Billy’s Oak Acres BBQ on Camp Bowie Boulevard West.

But if you miss old-time chicken-fried steaks with fresh biscuits and a smooth, peppery blanket of gravy, the way cowboys ate them when the Stockyards was still a working cattle auction, the Star lunch has them.

We’ve ranked the Star high before. The baseball-cut top sirloin ($19) was ranked the best “cheap steak” in town.

A chicken-fried chicken lunch is $8.95 Fridays. (Chicken-fried steak or chicken costs $14-$15 at dinner, including a salad.)

The Star Cafe has been around since the 1940s, and was remodeled during a brief 1970s interlude as a Black-eyed Pea. The house dressing is an olive vinaigrette similar to that at Hoffbrau Steaks, but the housemade ranch is a favorite.

A steak salad costs $12, and a grilled chicken salad costs $9 at weekday lunch, $12 at dinner.

The Star is open for lunch daily and for dinner nightly except Mondays; 111 W. Exchange Ave., 817-624-8701, facebook.com/starcafefortworthtx/.

This story was originally published September 18, 2018 at 9:16 PM.