Silver Skillet

The charm of the Silver Skillet is less about the food and more about the town of Cooper itself . It is a true Texas small town built around a square with a great courthouse and raised sidewalks. Many of the shops are empty,  lending a ghostly quality to the place. Old signs for Pepsin gum and telephone service make Cooper feel almost like a museum.

The Silver Skillet, which boasts that it is home of Southern Comfort Food, is a meeting place for locals, especially at breakfast. When I stopped in, about eight men were sitting together, chatting and chewing and solving problems large and small.  They looked like they took the same table, same coffee and same meal every day.

Like so many town cafes in Texas and beyond, the Silver Skillet opens early and closes after lunch. The two best things on its menu are good for both meals: chicken fried steak and chicken fried chicken.  The chicken fried steak is a tidy crisp package of beef under a fragile fried crust, sided with hash browns and a large cup of  stand-a-spoon-in-it country gravy.