Lost Tables: Golden Fried Chicken Loaf

Golden Fried Chicken Loaf

Mina Frieda Wolf was born in Baden, Germany in 1902, the daughter of Theodore and Mina Katharina Wolf. She immigrated to the United States in 1903, and by 1910 was living with her parents in St. Louis. At the age of 19, she married Virgil Bratton, who was working as a tailor.

Mina Bratton was the subject of a feature article in the Sunday, April 12, 1936 St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

Any ambitious boy can find shelf after shelf of well-thumbed books on how to climb from office boy to head of the firm, or from poverty to riches, but literature is woefully lacking in such advice to their sisters. Little girls who want to make good in big business have to formulate their own rules and Miss Bratton has been no exception. Without precedents to follow, she struck out for herself and blazed her trail as she went along. And she has been almost as surprised as anyone else as to where it has led her.

While the 1936 article refers to its protagonist as "Miss Bratton" throughout, Virgil Bratton was still her husband in April of 1942, the two living together at 5942 Enright. Virgil Bratton would die of pneumonia in September of 1943.

World War II Draft Registration, April 25, 1942

The Globe-Democrat article describes Bratton's transformation from stenographer to restaurateur.

Miss Bratton was a stenographer and worried about prolonged seasonal variations. Although she was only in her late 20s, she had been speculating for some time about making an occupational change, as stenography did not seem to offer much for the future either in security or financial return.
A friend returning from Chicago told with such enthusiasm of a fried chicken loaf he had eaten there that she became interested. The tales of the savory fried chicken loaf intrigued her fancy enough to induce her to make a special trip to Chicago to see and taste for herself. And that was the end for her of stenography, with its dull pothooks and typing. She had found a new career.

The article goes on to recount the opening of Bratton's initial fried chicken restaurant.

With $800 and nothing else but a lot of enthusiasm and energy, she opened her first fried chicken loaf establishment on DeBaliviere avenue in June, 1933. It was a true shoestring venture, only the shoestring was a frying pan.
"I put all of my $800 directly into advertising, transferred my telephone to my new address and without spending another cent, except $25 for some additional pots and pans to add to my kitchen equipment, I opened for business," she relates. "It was a one-woman enterprise, as I started out doing all the work of killing, dressing and frying the chickens with only the help of a boy who delivered the orders."

Bratton's "fried chicken loaf establishment" – Golden Fried Chicken Loaf – opened at 748 Hamilton Avenue (not DeBaliviere) in June of 1933. But it wasn't a "one-woman enterprise."

Golden Fried Chicken Loaf quickly outgrew its Hamilton location. On August 25, 1933, the St. Louis Star and Times reported a storeroom at 5631 Delmar had been leased "to the Golden Fried Chicken Loaf Co. of which E. R. Pratte is principle."

Golden Fried Chicken Loaf, 5631 Delmar

Elmer R. "Al" Pratte was indeed Bratton's partner in the nascent fried chicken business, and on January 25, 1934, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Bratton had sued him for greater management participation.

Mrs. Bratton alleges she entered the partnership last June, contributing $800 to the capital, and that Pratte put no money into the business. She states that while the business has been profitable, Pratte had made no recent accounting of receipts, denies her interest and forcibly expelled her from the restaurant on Jan. 10. She asks for an accounting and an order to require Pratte to permit her participation in the management.

Pratte was a sportsman and would become a nationally-known trapshooter. While Bratton claimed she had heard about the fried chicken loaf from a "friend returning from Chicago," it's possible Pratte brought the idea to St. Louis from Tampa.

In 1932, Tampa's Red Mill restaurant advertised a "large disjointed chicken, dipped into a creamy batter and fried to a delicious brown, then inserted into a toasted loaf," calling it a "Fried Chicken Loaf." The restaurant featured home delivery, as did Bratton's.


The Red Mill, Tampa Tampa Tribune, Feb 6, 1932	Elmer R. Pratte, Jungle Gun Club Tampa Bay Times, Apr 7, 1941

Whether it was Bratton or Pratte who brought the fried chicken loaf to St. Louis, the concept was a success. After moving to 5631 Delmar on September 2, 1933, Bratton moved her restaurant to a still larger space at 5867 Delmar in early 1935.

Meanwhile, Pratte relocated to Florida and registered "Golden Fried Chicken, Inc." in June of 1934. His Miami restaurant successfully served "fried chicken between a whole loaf of toasted bread" until he died in 1953.


Miami News, Oct 27, 1935	St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dec 15, 1935

By 1936, Bratton's fried chicken business was running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and employed an average of 13 people and seven delivery boys. But Bratton learned that frying and selling chickens was only one phase of her business.

Getting the right size and kind of chickens was more of a problem than getting rid of them. My advertising brought me customers, but I had to get out and hustle to find the chickens I wanted. They had to be young and tender and weigh a full two pounds, and not over two and a quarter pounds, and they had to be bought at a price that would allow me to resell them for a dollar.
And chickens just don’t grow like that the year round, I discovered. Part of the year I could not get them the right size, and part of the time not at the right prices to retail them at the flat price I had to sell them for. I made up my mind that although I knew no more about raising chickens than I did canary birds, I’d have to learn to raise my own poultry so I could schedule its production to suit my particular purpose.

Bratton opened her own chicken raising facility at 3512 Brown Road in St. Louis County. It was a long, two story barn-like structure erected in the rear of her home. It had a capacity of 15,000 chickens and it was kept running night and day to keep her frying pans full at the Delmar address.

Golden Fried Chicken Farm, 1936

Bratton's "fried chicken loaf" was a chicken weighing exactly two pounds, cut in exactly 14 pieces, fried exactly seven minutes in deep vegetable oil at exactly 375 degrees and then packed between the halves of a special French loaf of bread, toasted exactly so many minutes. Wrapped and boxed, it was rushed to the customer piping hot.

In the beginning, Bratton offered only delivery service. In 10 minutes flat, after an order was received by phone, freshly fried chicken was on its way to the customer. From one to half a dozen chickens made up the usual order, although once Bratton fried 2000 chickens for a school picnic. Eventually, Golden Fried Chicken Loaf added sit-down restaurant and carry-out service – and did away with deliveries.

After her first husband died, Mina Bratton married Omar Gerald Evans. The couple had two children, Omar Gerald Jr. and Mina Annabelle, who worked at the restaurant on weekends when they were older and in the summer when they were home from college.

Mina Evans and Omar Gerald Evans Jr., circa 1943

In 1947, Mina Evans remodeled her restaurant, expanding into the adjacent property at 5865 Delmar. Seating capacity increased to 165 diners, with a large private dining room for meetings and parties.

The fried chicken served at Golden Fried Chicken Loaf was something special. Charles Dohogne worked there in the early 1950s, while in high school.

The chickens were big and plump and flavorful. The restaurant grew and dressed all their own chickens; they even owned a feed store to make sure of the best grain feed. These were no relations of the scrawny little game hens KFC sells now, always killed one day, served the next, and properly bled out so you never got that bite of red when you bit into one.
They were delivered cut up, six chickens to a deep pan, about all you wanted to lift at one time. Every piece was hand dipped in dry crunchies with all the spices and herbs, dipped in liquid batter, then into another pan of crunchies. They were placed at once into the deep-fat fryer, using peanut oil. No one was allergic to peanuts then, it seems.

Golden Fried Chicken Loaf Kitchen, 5867 Delmar

Golden Fried Chicken Loaf was also famous for its chicken dumpling soup. German-style spaetzle noodles were pressed through a colander into a hot chicken broth. Pieces of the free-form dumplings would flake off, thickening the deep-yellow broth. The spicy soup, which often traveled home in one-gallon glass jars, was addicting.

Chicken Dumpling Soup

Charles Dohogne worked 12 hour days on weekends and long nights after school. He was the dish washer/potato peeler/slaw maker.

The coleslaw list started out with three hundred pounds of cabbage, shredded with onions and radishes. The dressing was wine vinegar with one hundred Saccharin tablets dissolved in it and mixed with virgin olive oil.
The potatoes were peeled, sliced and boiled so they were fully cooked in preparation for frying in the peanut oil. And they were FRIED! Every one had to be crisp, not half cooked as we see today. They were more like potato chips, no catchup needed to hide behind.
Everything was fresh, nothing was ever frozen, and most things were cooked and served at once. When you sat down, someone was there to take your order. Within five minutes at most, you had piping hot food. No heat lamps, it had just come out of the grease.


1940s Golden Fried Chicken Loaf Menu (click image to enlarge)

On Sundays, streams of customers would enter the restaurant through the back door and line up in a crowded hallway to pick up their carry-out orders. They'd inch up to a low counter, underneath which were shelves filled with Golden Fried Chicken Loaf's famous pies.

Charles Dohogne remembered the woman who made those pies – lattice topped apple, deep red cherry, hothouse rhubarb, coconut whipped cream, chocolate whipped cream, lemon meringue and more.

Those pies were works of art. A very nice middle aged, grandmotherly lady, about five feet, two inches and one hundred and seventy pounds, had her own separate kitchen with mixers, ovens and rolling tables. Everything from scratch, she was a whirlwind in there.
On a normal weekend day, she would make two hundred pies, mostly cherry, apple and my favorite, pecan. On a big holiday, she might make five hundred. They were served hot from the oven, usually with a huge scoop of French vanilla on top. Heaven should be so good!

Mina Evans' Golden Fried Chicken Loaf thrived throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Charles Dohogne had vivid memories of his boss.

The owner/boss/slave driver was a middle aged Jewish lady. I’m sure she had a conversational voice, but none of us ever heard it, more something between a scream and an imperative bellow. The kitchen was not kosher, but many of the rules were in place, mostly cleanliness. She would have made a health inspector take a shower before he could come into her kitchen.
She checked my dish washing machine at least ten times a day, and that rinse had better be set just at boiling. Or I caught hell. The least trace of lipstick on a cup was a capitol offense! Every piece of china had to be hand scraped, hard spray rinsed and put into the machine.
I have painted the boss as an ogre, and she was, but things got done HER way. I worked twelve hour shifts on the weekends. She was there when I started and there when I left, so she was as hard on herself as anyone else, and we did have a lot of very happy, repeat customers.

Mina Evans and her daughter, Mina Annabelle

In 1969, an investment group headed by Ben Fixman and Albert Goldstein formed Country Foods, Inc. and purchased Golden Fried Chicken Loaf from Mina Evans. The group planned to build a second restaurant in St. Louis County to serve as a pilot for a chain of franchised fried chicken restaurants. The franchise would include full-service restaurants and smaller fast-food carry-out units. Mina Evans had a five percent stake in the company.

By April of 1972, a second Golden Fried Chicken Loaf restaurant had opened at 12953 Olive, in the Olive Arcade Plaza at Fee Fee. Early in 1973, Mina Evans' longtime Delmar restaurant was shuttered and replaced with a second new location at 9773 Olive, at Warson. Three more restaurants were in the planning stage.


1972 Golden Fried Chicken Loaf Menu (click image to enlarge)

But the new endeavor was destined to fail. While the franchised restaurants sold Mina Evans' fried chicken and pies, she was no longer the driving force behind the business.

The Golden Fried Chicken Loaf at Olive and Warson closed in 1981. That same year, Omar G. Evans, Jr. tried unsuccessfully to resurrect the restaurant at Olive and Fee Fee. It closed by early 1985.

Mina Evans died in 1991.

Little girls who want to make good in big business have to formulate their own rules and Miss Bratton has been no exception. Without precedents to follow, she stuck out for herself and blazed her trail as she went along. And she has been almost as surprised as anyone else as to where it has led her.

You can hear more about Mina Evans and Golden Fried Chicken Loaf in the Lost Tables Podcast Series.