Babe's Chicken Dinner House

The small menu here reflects the predominantly fried All-Stars of Texan and Southern cuisine. There's fried chicken and chicken-fried steak, natch. There's fried catfish and pot roast. There's fried chicken tenders and smoked chicken. That's the entire selection of main dishes at Babe's Chicken Dinner House. No joke. And that's a relief to see in a market chock-full of Southern/soul food shops slinging what seems like infinite permutations on the fried. The selection of side dishes (gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet corn, green beans, green salad and biscuits) and desserts (pineapple upside-down cake, chocolate meringue pie, coconut meringue pie, lemon meringue pie and banana pudding) is similarly tiny. But what's not tiny? The portions. They're served in true down-home style, with helpings as large as the elastic-waistband pants needed to eat at Paul Vinyard's 11,000 square-foot homage to poultry.