Deep in farmland northeast of Pittsburg, Kansas, on a country lane formally named 600th Avenue but known to adventurous foodies as Chicken Dinner Road, two big restaurants just a few hundred yards apart serve big, nearly identical dinners. The nexus of good eats began during the Depression, when Ann Pichler’s husband, Charley, got hurt and could no longer work in the local coal mine. Starting in 1934, Ann made ends meet by serving meals out of her home, which soon became known as Chicken Annie’s. About ten years later, when Mary Zerngast’s husband, Joe, developed a heart condition that precluded his going down into the mines, Mary—seeing Annie’s success—opened her own chicken dinner restaurant. She was from then on known as Chicken Mary. Although goofball television has tried to position the two restaurants’ proximity as a food war, they have thrived for over half a century with little evidence of feuding.
The draw at both is deep-fried chicken that arrives at the table glistening with grease and girdled with chewy, fat-rich skin of unspeakable opulence. You can have whatever parts of the bird you like in whatever quantity: dark meat, white meat, wings, and backs, even an appetizer of livers, gizzards, and hearts. Customary side dishes are German potato salad and German coleslaw.
Similar large-scale chicken dinners are served nearby at Gebhardt’s Chicken and Dinners in Mulberry (opened in 1946) and Barto’s Idle Hour in Frontenac (opened in the early 1950s).