LAMESA, Texas — Rolling through highways of West Texas surrounded by cotton fields and cattle ranches, you’ll come upon a town that celebrates a food dish so popular across the state that it’s been estimated that 800,000 of them are served in Texas every day.

That food is chicken fried steak, and the town is Lamesa, which hosts the annual chicken fried steak festival. That’s because some of the townsfolk believe the chicken friend steak was invented there.

But it’s not true.

The myth that the popular meat cutlet battered with flour and dipped in a deep fryer was invented by a confused cook at a place called Ethel’s Home Cooking in Lamesa 1911 is just that: a myth.

The tall tale was concocted by an Austin American-Statesman newspaper reporter, Larry BeSaw, in 1976, who said that one da

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