Mom Sure Can Cook

All the traipsing around North Texas on Saturday sure made The Boy and I hungry. Thankfully Mom was there to save us.

Seriously.

In the middle of the smallest historic downtown strip I've ever seen (note to my relatives: the downtown was smaller than Howard...or Elk Falls. Really.), was Mom's on Main. It was ranked one of the Best 40 Small Town Cafes by Texas Monthly magazine.

That just goes to show you that you never know where you'll find a treasure.

The menu is handwritten on a series of chalkboards. You don't want for selection, that's for sure.

Can I tell you that we were more than a little excited by the sign next to the register that told us that all first-time visitors get a free dessert? That's what I call Southern hos-pi-ta-li-ty.

We sat in a booth made of converted church pews, under a hodge-podge of stained glass chandeliers and waited for our food to arrived.

The Boy did some exploring around the room and found an old soda machine:

And an equally-old-but-still-operational candy vending machine:

But enough of the exploring. We came to eat. And for us, it's pretty much a law (self-imposed, for sure) that we order chicken-fried steak when we're in a Texas small town cafe.

Gravy, perfect. Steak, perfect. Roll, buttery and homemade. Fried okra, unbelievably good.

I do think I could have just eaten okra for lunch. But since it was fried, it was probably best that I didn't.

And there was still the matter of that free dessert. We could see the refrigerated pie chest from our seats. Pie? Yes, please.

The Boy ordered chocolate pie. Delicious, but not as good as mine (no meringue!):

I ordered coconut cream pie. Very very good. Would have been even better with meringue instead of whipped cream:

I'm not sure when we'll next be in Aubrey, but when we are we're definitely heading to Mom's. The cashier/waitress/hostess/general nicest person on earth told us that her favorite dessert - of all time - is the chocolate cake.

If that's not a reason to come back, I don't know what is.