Chicken Run

Every once in a while, the word about our fried chicken slips out, as when Calvin Trillin wrote about chicken wars between two legendary cooks in Crawford County, Kan. Or the authors of “Roadfood” proclaimed Stroud’s in Kansas City, Mo., to have the best fried chicken in America. Or last year, when American Airlines’ magazine singled out Stroud’s and the Chicken House in Olpe, Kan., as two of the country’s top six chicken restaurants.

Thanks to Kansans’ generally humble nature, this talent has remained mostly secret, covered up as neatly as the basket Dorothy carried to Oz and back. Many Americans credit the South for fried chicken, although it dates to ancient times. The phrase “Southern fried” didn’t appear in print until 1925, according to “The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink”--more than half a century after Hays House and the Brookville Hotel, both in Kansas, started frying chickens for travelers on the Santa Fe and Chisholm trails.

The fried chicken dinner is so ingrained in Kansas culture that debating the virtues of various eateries is popular sport. Discussions start with frying methods (purists insist on cast-iron skillets), but the debate inevitably moves to side dishes. My family has celebrated birthdays and anniversaries with fried chicken at the Brookville Hotel since I was 9. I have a slight preference for Brookville chicken, but I’ll concede that the mashed potatoes at Stroud’s are superior. On the other hand, Brookville’s coleslaw is delectable. It depends on my mood whether I prefer the cinnamon rolls at Stroud’s or Brookville’s biscuits.

As for decor, if you want waitresses in white aprons, food on Blue Willow china and genteel dining rooms, choose Brookville. If you’re in a roadhouse mood, opt for Stroud’s, where the staff’s T-shirts proclaim: “We Choke Our Own Chickens.”

Though I come from a long line of farm women, I did not inherit their cooking talent, so I seek my guilty pleasure in public places. This summer I crisscrossed the state in search of the ultimate chicken dinner. Although I’ve lived in Kansas for four decades, I hadn’t explored many of its back roads and historical sites.

The Napa Valley has wine tours. Kentucky has a bourbon route. I was on the Kansas chicken trail.

I began with pilgrimages from my home in Wichita, in south-central Kansas, to the sources of the Stroud’s versus Brookville debate. Though I’d eaten often at the Stroud’s in my hometown since it opened a decade ago, I headed 180 miles northeast and sneaked over the Kansas border to where Helen Stroud first started feeding guests in Kansas City, Mo., in 1933. Accolades heaped on her little roadhouse include the prestigious James Beard Foundation Award for regional cuisine.

The lines form early at Stroud’s, so I arrived at 4:30 p.m. By the time I finished my Boulevard Pale Ale from a local brewery, the place was nearly full.

To my mind, mashed potatoes are the proper accompaniment to fried chicken, but the platters of cottage fries caught my eye. All dinners come with salad or homemade chicken noodle soup; I chose the salad only because it was a sweltering July day. The chicken was pan-fried to perfection.

I spent the night at the White Haven Motor Lodge in Overland Park, a suburb on the Kansas side. It’s a 1950s family-run motel, the kind with a pool in front and a “No Vacancy” sign that lights up at night. It was immaculate and the price was from bygone days: $47 for a single, and breakfast doughnuts cost a nickel.

The next day I headed 150 miles west on Interstate 70, the highway I hold responsible for much of the ridicule suffered by Kansas because it slices through the flattest, most boring part of the state. My destination was the Brookville Hotel, which stands just off the highway in Abilene, not the town of Brookville (population 226), 40 miles to the west. The fourth-generation owners faithfully re-created the hotel after it became apparent that Brookville’s infrastructure could no longer support the hordes of diners flocking there. The menu has remained virtually the same since 1915, when Helen Martin added family-style fried chicken dinners: coleslaw, cottage cheese, bread-and-butter pickles, fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, creamed corn, biscuits and vanilla ice cream (to which I always add a dollop of strawberry preserves).

There is no printed menu here, and soon after you’re seated, a waitress appears, bearing a tray of salads and relishes. Then come the platters of chicken and bowls of corn and mashed potatoes, which she’ll gladly refill. As always, it was delicious and comforting, to the stomach as well as the soul.

The next weekend, I left Wichita for Council Grove and Hays House, the oldest continuously operating restaurant west of the Mississippi. I traveled 90 miles, taking Kansas Highway 177 north through the Flint Hills. The two-lane highway wound gently over the undulating countryside, a gray ribbon laced through the prairie. I passed into Chase County, the point at which the West officially begins, according to author William Least Heat-Moon. He followed up the wildly popular “Blue Highways” with “PrairyErth,” a 600-plus-page epic about the Flint Hills, America’s last unbroken tract of tallgrass prairie. The people here required years of persuasion to agree to set aside 11,000 acres of their land for the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, which opened in 1996.

Lacking trees, settlers used limestone for building, and their handiwork is still evident in fences, houses, barns and the Chase County courthouse. I stopped all too briefly, promising myself to come back soon and tour the prairie and the century-old limestone buildings--because I was on a mission to Beat the Church Crowd, a game Kansans play when eating out at noon on Sundays.

Seth Hays, great-grandson of Daniel Boone and cousin of Kit Carson, built Hays House in 1857, right on the Santa Fe Trail, which had opened as a trade route to Mexico in 1821. I chose the buffet instead of ordering from the menu and began with several of the eight salads. My favorite was a creamy mixture of cucumbers, corn and red peppers. I went back for seconds on the skillet-fried chicken, which had a crunchier coating than other places, and homemade rolls.

In the name of research, I ordered strawberry pie for dessert. It was delicious, the sweet berries spilling over the flaky crust.

Fortified, I headed 45 miles northwest to revisit Abilene, where the Great Plains Theater Festival was staging “Picnic,” Kansan William Inge’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, later made in 1955 into a movie. I’d never seen “Picnic” onstage, nor had I been to the Abilene theater, which was started in a renovated church several years ago by a couple of transplanted New Yorkers. The theater reminded me of an intimate off-Broadway venue, but with more comfortable seats and a clearer view of the stage. It was a surprisingly professional production, with all of Inge’s dark undercurrents intact.

I went cold turkey for a week, then planned my longest chicken run: a 231-mile drive roughly following the Santa Fe Trail to Ulysses, near the southwest corner of the state. Word had wafted back to Wichita about the frying skills of Iris Boehs, a Mennonite woman who got her start baking pies for sidewalk sales. When I pulled into Iris’ Country Kitchen, a restaurant she opened on Highway 160 two years ago, the parking lot was packed.

A Mennonite waitress, her white hair pinned neatly under a black head covering, led me to a table. Fried chicken is on the menu only twice a week, so I had called ahead to confirm. Iris herself answered, and when I asked whether she used cast-iron skillets, she somewhat apologetically explained that another kind of skillet was used because “cast-iron is so heavy and the fried-chicken girl is so small.”

Whatever they used, it was the best gravy I’d ever had in a restaurant, and the warm roll nearly melted in my mouth. The chicken was lightly breaded, my favorite kind. By the time I was ready to order pie ($1.90 for a generous slice), only 13 kinds remained. I chose the double-crusted cherry, and it was as good as my grandma used to make.

Next stop was the nearby Historic Adobe Museum, which features a re-creation of a nomadic Indian campsite as well as Santa Fe Trail artifacts and tools dating back 12,000 years. The museum is much larger than it looks from the highway--and free. Adjacent are a one-room school and the 1887 Edwards Hotel, which is authentically furnished and open for browsing.

From there I headed nearly 200 miles north and east, ending up in Wilson to stay at the Midland, the hotel where “Paper Moon” was filmed 30 years ago. The hotel, closed since 1988, had reopened recently. The restoration was intended to return the 1899 limestone structure to the distinction it once enjoyed as the finest hotel between Kansas City and Denver. I couldn’t think of another small hotel, complete with a dining room and room service, that was as nice, all for a tidy $59 a night.

The hotel’s interior includes the original banister, millwork, stained glass and chandelier, and Mission-style furniture specially designed for the lobby, dining room and 28 rooms. In the basement is the Drummers Tavern, a nod to the traveling salesmen who once alighted from nearby trains to show their wares. My room was on the second floor, where most of the movie scenes were filmed. I was pleased to find such a great getaway only about 100 miles from home.

At breakfast the next morning, I checked out the dinner menu and wine list: Entrees such as salmon with pineapple-mandarin orange chutney and a wine list with 49 choices seemed astounding in a town of about 800. Executive chef John Eichelberger said that he had found a seafood supplier in Boston to send fresh fish twice a week. I asked the young chef whether there had been any surprises in the two weeks the restaurant had been open.

“We’ve served more mashed potatoes than I thought possible,” he said.

Would he make any changes to the menu?

“We’ll be adding fried chicken,” he said with resignation.

I headed around the corner to Sincerely Yours, a gift shop with a sign that read: “Your Flower and Kolache Center.” I’d been there before to score homemade kolaches, a round, fruit-filled Czech pastry that my grandmother used to make. This time I met an 83-year-old woman who told me, unprompted, that she had been an extra in “Paper Moon.” “And I worked at the hotel for five bucks a week in the Dirty Thirties, when Bob Dole used to come in for coffee,” she added.

I made my purchase and crossed the street to Ollie’s Treasures antique mall, which also sells ice cream, kolaches and items from Kansas Originals Market, a shop on I-70 with wares by 450 artists and crafters. I waited until I was on the road again to sample a cherry kolache, then an apricot one. They were heavenly.

I headed southeast, back toward Wichita, and as I approached Yoder I saw a yellow caution sign with a horse and buggy, still a fairly common mode of transportation in the small Amish community. The Carriage Crossing restaurant’s large parking lot on one side has a hitching post for the black buggies. If you think trucks are the sign of a good restaurant, try Amish buggies.

Carriage Crossing always has fried chicken on the menu, and every day about 40 kinds of pie are made from scratch. The combination of fried chicken followed by banana cream pie--my two favorites for my childhood father-daughter box suppers--made this meal a sentimental favorite.

After a week back at home, I drove 75 miles northeast to Olpe and its famed Chicken House. Leonard and Theresa Coble bought the diner in 1958 and over time enlarged it from 30 seats to 320 (the town has only about 500 residents), probably a good thing since USA Today named it one of the top 50 restaurants in the country in 2000.

My initial disappointment in a menu without mashed potatoes was mitigated by homemade French fries and hand-breaded onion rings. The chicken was hot and juicy, on par with Stroud’s. The homemade strawberry-rhubarb pie and appetizer totaled only as much as my one-way turnpike toll: $3.35.

I had planned to average one chicken dinner a week and complete my research by Labor Day, but I got behind schedule, so in late August I planned a weekend chicken marathon to southeast Kansas, the self-proclaimed Chicken Capital, where I would eat five dinners in 28 hours.

My first stop, at noon on Saturday, was a converted dairy barn near Walnut called Chicken-N-Pickin’. It features dinner and entertainment on Saturday evenings, but was offering a matinee to accommodate a visiting church group.

The place is a family affair. Owner Karen Duling had added a kitchen to the family barn. Her 72-year-old mother, Mary Ann Duling, hemmed the purple curtains for the stage, helps fry chicken--and plays the harmonica. Tables were lined up in front of the stage. I was seated next to Ray and Carol Wall, a Kearney, Neb., retired couple who were on their way to Branson, Mo., where they had seen 77 musical shows over the years.

Four Duling grandkids served each of the 50 guests two large pieces of juicy chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, applesauce, a biscuit and, for dessert, a root beer float. Some diners were given white meat, others dark, and all were encouraged to trade pieces if they liked.

Then Karen, sans chef coat, walked to the front and slipped behind the curtain. I was slack-jawed (as they say in the Ozarks) at the music, especially Karen’s multilayered Patsy Cline voice. She was joined on guitar by her brother Dan Duling, a school principal, and on drums by brother Rick Duling, a computer tech. The bass player was from a neighboring county. Their talent was broad and versatile, ranging smoothly from “I Fall to Pieces” to “Jambalaya” to “Goin’ to Kansas City.”

I came for the chicken but stayed for the pickin’. Was it really that good? I looked at the veteran Branson show-goers for a sign. At intermission, Ray said matter-of-factly: “Better’n anything we’ve seen in Branson. May as well just turn around and go right back home.”

I went to find Mother Duling to ask how she had raised such talented children. The petite woman had changed into a turquoise vest for her appearance in the second set. She refused credit, saying only that her five kids had grown up performing together at church suppers and county fairs.

After intermission, Dan turned to the fiddle, and it soon became apparent that the grandkids could do more than serve diners. Rick’s 13-year-old son prompted a standing ovation during a trap-set solo. The show was almost over when I left--two hours later than I’d intended.

I had to make serious tracks to finish that day’s destinations: the place southwest of Independence that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about in “Little House on the Prairie,” followed by the town of Sedan and, finally, Pittsburg for dinners at dueling chicken places.

The replica of Wilder’s log cabin is in keeping with the book if not the TV show. This land was inherited in recent years by Kansas native Bill Kurtis, former anchor of “CBS Morning News” and now producer of “Investigative Reports” and other shows for the A&E; television network. He also bought 14 buildings in Sedan, population 1,300, along with a nearby 10,000-acre ranch. His projects there so far include opening his ranch for tours and creating the Art of the Prairie Gallery and the Red Buffalo, a gift shop that sells prairie products and Western-themed art.

Across the street is the Sugar Mining Co., a candy factory whose free samples of pecan praline popcorn and peanut brittle thwarted my goal of working up an appetite for dinner. Worse still, I bought fresh caramels and fudge ($3 for a small tub of the best chocolate/peanut butter fudge I’ve had). At the back of the shop, I followed a yellow brick road past animated Oz characters into a mine where Dr. Sweet and other moving creatures (sort of “It’s a Small World” without the singing) made candy and told stories.

Back on the road, I noticed that trees and hills multiplied the closer I got to Crawford County, which sits on the edge of the Ozark foothills. North of Pittsburg, the dueling restaurants, Chicken Annie’s Original and Chicken Mary’s, have signs directly opposite each other on the highway, and they point in the same direction.

Their stories and menus are similar: Annie Pichler started a small restaurant in 1934 after her husband became disabled in the area coal mines. Six years later, Mary Zerngast, whose husband also was a mine worker and in poor health, opened her own chicken restaurant. They’ve been fighting it out ever since.

My testing plan was to order takeout and sample them side by side. I stopped first at Chicken Annie’s. Three people had told me to try the German potato salad, and I added mashed potatoes for my second side choice. I scanned the menu while I waited for my carryout order and was surprised by a family-style option: half a chicken apiece, three sides and an onion ring appetizer for $6.

Back in the car, my side-by-side test plan failed. Blame it on the wonderful smell. Suddenly it felt unfair not to sample the mashed potatoes while they were hot. Ditto for the chicken. I ended up eating most of it before driving next door to Chicken Mary’s, where I decided to dine in.

Both places offered nearly a dozen choices of side orders (including spaghetti). They also both had wishbones on the menu--something most restaurants and stores don’t bother with because it’s easier to split the breast in two rather than carve out the most tender part around the wishbone.

Both Chicken Annie’s and Chicken Mary’s do deep frying to keep up with the demand, so the chicken was good but not exceptional. It turned out to be impossible to choose a winner because the meals, decor and prices were almost identical, a view apparently held by the locals, who abandon loyalties to line up wherever the wait is shorter.

The next day, for Sunday lunch, I headed four miles north to Gebhardt’s Chicken Dinners. I ordered a wishbone dinner with hand-cut fries and coleslaw for $4.50. I added a small order of onion rings as an appetizer for $2.25. The mound of lightly breaded and expertly fried rings was enough to serve three or four people--and addictive.

The menu says the restaurant was founded by Maycle and Ted Gebhardt, who purchased a nightclub in 1946 and began serving fried chicken dinners on Saturday nights by request. Their daughter, Meg Gebhardt, offered a livelier account. “When they started having children they made it respectable,” she said. “They didn’t want to raise their children in a honky-tonk.”

To burn time before my fifth chicken stop in Bronson, I looked around in Fort Scott, hometown of Life photographer, writer and composer Gordon Parks. His photos hang in the tourist information center next to the fort, which operated from 1842 to 1853. I paid $5 for a narrated trolley tour. We drove past several lovely restored Victorian homes dating from the 1880s before heading to Fort Scott National Cemetery, where the tour guide pointed out Civil War graves and explained that fighting had broken out seven years before the war between Kansas residents, who wanted their territory to become a free state, and citizens of Missouri, a slave state, just four miles away.

At Bronson, a sign on the highway pointed to the Chicken Shack, a blue house surrounded by cars. I tried the fried corn on the cob (yep, battered and deep fried) as a side order. The entire meal was very good, especially the biscuit with honey, but this was my fifth dinner in just over 24 hours, and I was getting a little tired of chicken.

I had thought my research was complete, but nagging doubts prompted me to add two brief visits in late August: to the progeny of the legendary Lena’s near Abilene, and to the Beaumont Hotel. Both places were being reincarnated.

Lena Benson had started frying chicken in a farmhouse on a hill on Highway 40 in 1939. She earned a reputation not only for her chicken but for paddling former president Dwight D. Eisenhower on his 75th birthday--a long-honored birthday tradition for customers that continues to this day. She retired and closed her restaurant in 1974, and it remained closed for two decades until being purchased and reopened as Mr. K’s Farmhouse.

So I made another trek to Abilene, this time visiting the Eisenhower Center, where I hadn’t been since childhood. Now I was mature enough to appreciate the boyhood home of the 34th president as well as the museum, which traces his career as a five-star general and two-term president.

The countryside views from Lena’s house and the homemade vegetable beef soup were good omens, but the chicken was a little dry from being fried too long, a hazard of skillet frying.

The next Sunday I drove 45 miles east of Wichita to Beaumont, whose wooden water tower and isolated hotel are reminiscent of the old TV show “Petticoat Junction.” The tiny town has its own airstrip, where pilots land their private planes and taxi right up to the Beaumont Hotel. Opened in 1879 as a stagecoach and railroad stop, the hotel recently reopened with rooms to rent, a cafe with counter stools, and a dining room.

Visitors for the family-style dinners (fried chicken and/or roast beef) on Sunday easily outnumber the population. The chicken was hot and juicy, both brown and white gravy were served, and the hand-cut carrots were lightly glazed. A perfect piece of devil’s food cake concluded my research.

Back home, I surveyed my work:

Chicken dinners consumed: 13.

Average cost: $7.37.

Three nights lodging: $160.

Pounds gained: two. (Credit the low number to yoga and a bit of restraint.)

Traffic hassles: zero.

Friendly and efficient waitresses: all

To evaluate the food quality, I created an elaborate grid and assigned scores for each item, with extra-credit stars for homemade pie. When that failed, I tried to create the perfect fantasy chicken dinner, choosing the best dish from various restaurants. But I was stumped on the pies. Should they come from Iris’, Carriage Crossing or Hays House?

So I wadded up my chart. Then it dawned on me: What if there were no winners? Was that so bad? They say life is about the journey and not the destination. And this had been one heckuva journey.

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GUIDEBOOK

The Chicken Diaries

Prices: Room rates are for a double for one night. Some restaurants offer dozens of combinations for chicken dinners, so the price is based on my meal.

Getting there: Nonstop flights from LAX to Kansas City, Mo., are available on Southwest Airlines. Connecting service (change of plane) is available on America West, Delta, American, United, Southwest, Northwest and Continental airlines. Connecting service to Wichita is available on American, United, Frontier, Continental and America West.

Where to stay: White Haven Motor Lodge, 8039 Metcalf Ave., Overland Park, Kan., 66204; (800) 752-2892, fax (913) 901-8199, is a popular lodging option for families and business travelers. It’s just minutes from the Country Club Plaza in Missouri. Rates: $54 to $60.

Cottage House, 25 N. Neosho, Council Grove, Kan., 66846; (800) 727-7903, fax (620) 767-6414, www.cottagehousehotel.com, is a historic inn within walking distance of Hays House in the Flint Hills. Rates: $68 to $155.

The 1874 Stonehouse, RR 1, Cottonwood Falls, Kan., 66845; (620) 273-8481, www.StonehouseBandB.com, is on 60 acres with hiking trails and a secluded pond. It offers three rooms and one suite with a fireplace. Rates: $95 to $150.

Midland Hotel, 414 26th Ave., Wilson, Kan., 67490; (785) 658-2284, www.midland-hotel.com, two miles south of I-70 in central Kansas. Rates: $59 to $79.

Where to eat: Beaumont Hotel, 11651 Southeast Main St., Beaumont; (620) 843-2422, www.hotelbeaumontks.com. All-you-can-eat chicken dinner (only on Sundays) with dessert, $11.95.

Brookville Hotel, 105 E. Lafayette, Abilene; (785) 263-2244, www.brookvillehotel.com. A set menu served family-style, $11.95. Reservations recommended. Closed Mondays.

Carriage Crossing, 10002 S. Yoder Road, Yoder; (620) 465-3612, www.yoderkansas.com. Three-piece lunch special, $5.65. Home-baked bread accompanies all meals. The gift shop sells quilts as well as homemade noodles, peppernuts and jams. Closed Sundays.

Chicken Annie’s Original, 1143 E. 600 Ave., Pittsburg; (620) 231-9460. Two pieces, two sides, $4.40. Closed Mondays.

Chicken House, 8 E. State Road 99, Olpe; (620) 475-3386. Half-chicken dinner, $7.50. Closed Sundays.

Chicken Mary’s, 1133 E. 600 Ave., Pittsburg; (620) 231-9510. One piece, three sides, $3.95. Closed Mondays.

Chicken-N-Pickin’, 16635 Victory Road, Walnut; (800) 754-8654. Dinner and show (on Saturday evenings and by appointment), $20.

Chicken Shack, 704 Clay St., Bronson; (620) 939-4845. Two-piece dinner, $4.99. Open Saturdays and Sundays.

Gebhardt’s Chicken Dinners, 124 N. 260th, Mulberry; (620) 764-3451. One wishbone, two sides, $4.50. Open Fridays through Mondays.

Hays House, 112 W. Main St., Council Grove; (620) 767-5911. Sunday buffet, $10.95.

Iris’ Country Kitchen, 1100 W. Oklahoma Ave., Ulysses; (620) 353-2020. Two-piece lunch, $5.95. Closed Wednesday evenings and Sundays.

Mr. K’s Farmhouse, 407 S. Van Buren, Abilene; (785) 263-7995. Half-chicken dinner, $8.49. Closed Mondays.

Stroud’s, 1015 E. 85th St., Kansas City, Mo.; (816) 333-2132; 5410 N.E. Oak Ridge Drive, Kansas City, Mo.; (816) 454-9600; 3661 N. Hillside, Wichita, Kan.; (316) 838-2454. Three-piece dinner, $10.95.

For more information: Kansas Department of Travel and Tourism, (800) 2KANSAS, www.travelks.com.