“Fried chicken just tend to make you feel better about life.”
~Minny Jackson (The Help)
One of the most heart-warming scenes in the 2011 period drama The Help involved the character Minny Jackson (brilliantly portrayed by Octavia Spencer) teaching her employer, a lonely housewife named Celia Foote (played by Jessica Chastain), the art of Southern cooking through what has probably become the famous fried chicken lesson ever depicted on cinema. Minny begins the lesson by delivering a sermon on Crisco, the “most important invention since they put mayonnaise in a jar.” The naive and privileged Celia, who likely wouldn’t know how to boil water, likens the Crisco to frosting, but Minny clarifies “it’s best for frying chicken.” She then delivers the immortal line “fried chicken just tends to make you feel better about life.”
This powerful scene exemplifies the concept “story beneath a story,” two powerful narrative concepts in movie-making: subtext (the unstated emotional layer driving a scene) and an embedded narrative (a literal story nestled inside a larger plot). Beyond the obvious–one woman teaching another how to fry chicken–the scene depicted a building friendship fashioned by their contrasting backgrounds as they fry chicken in a cast-iron skillet. It’s a scene illustrating an exchange of dignity and tenderness that extends far beyond the fried chicken recipe.
Our visit to the Juniper Valley Ranch some twenty miles or so from downtown Colorado Springs was an exemplar of Minny Jackson’s “fried chicken just tend to make you feel better about life” axiom. We’ve probably had better fried chicken, but rarely have we had a better fried chicken experience. For me, the experiential aspects of a meal often outweigh the actual meal itself. Such was our visit. Juniper Valley Ranch just has the effect of making you feel you’re a guest coming over for a Sunday dinner of fried chicken and all the fixings. It kindles fond memories of family.
One of the reasons Juniper Valley Ranch conjures such feelings is that it has none of the pretense and artifice of modern restaurants. You’re dining in a converted home, the first structure of which was made of adobe. From the expansive dirt and gravel parking lot, it’s a short stroll to a small stone patio where cholla and cactus buttress against the adobe wall. Step inside the low-slung building and you’re surrounded by period pieces playing tribute to both ranching and the Southwest. Antiques, including several old farm tools, festoon the walls. Curtains are tied back with red bandanas. Meals are served on calico tablecloths. Lamp shades are old colanders. When Colorado’s cold, crisp air begins to bite, the fireplace crackles with the incomparable aroma of piñon gathered from the ranch.
As with other homes that have been converted into restaurants, the Juniper Valley Ranch got its start as a working ranch with a family working and riding on the range. In 1947, Evelyn Ellis and her husband, Walt, opened what was to be the precursor to Juniper Valley Ranch. They named their eatery El Sombrero and treated travelers along the newfangled dirt road connecting Colorado Springs and Cañon City (later to be paved and known as Highway 115) sandwiches, homemade ice cream, and other goodies. They also filled the café with the paintings, poems, and other works of art which were the lifelong passions of Guy and Evelyn.
In 1951, Evelyn and her friend Ethel Shirola served a family style dinner of fried chicken and baked ham- with all of the homemade fixings, of course- to about 30 of their invited friends and guests as a trial run for Juniper Valley Ranch. Since then, untold thousands of visitors and locals alike have enjoyed the very same meal in the little mud house located about 15 miles south of Colorado Springs on Highway 115. The Juniper Valley Ranch is widely reputed to serve the very best fried chicken in Colorado. That, of course, is a matter of opinion. The homespun charm and genuine friendliness of the staff is indisputable.
Rarely have we been treated as well as the beautiful Izzy treated us. Welcome dignitaries would be an appropriate term. Izzie even escorted us to the kitchen where several cooks were frying chicken on cast iron skillets and original utensils from the working ranch days. I practically had to drag my Kim away. She loves old-fashioned kitchens. To accommodate all the guests, that kitchen stays very busy. Meals are served family-style in a cozy, home-like environment rather than a large banquet hall. There are several dining rooms on the premises, all about the size of the kitchen. Many things have changed since 1951. But at Juniper Valley, the menu, the atmosphere, and the attitude that “you’re always company at our house,” have not.
Juniper Valley Ranch includes an appetizer, a choice of main entrée, a generous spread of homestyle sharing sides, and a seasonal dessert, priced at $29.50 per adult (as of 2 October 2026). Each diner has a choice between skillet fried chicken or baked ham. The Friday night special is chicken fried steak while Nashville hot chicken is served on Sunday night. Appetizer choices, both dating from 1951, are spiced cherry cider or curried consommé. My Kim likened the cherry cider to cherry kool aid. Her preference is for beverages to be sugary sweet (half a box of Splenda or so). I thought it was pretty good, but not nearly as good as Carrizozo Cider (now gone for good) used to be. The curried consommé, essentially chicken broth seasoned with curry and topped with cream, was fine.
We had barely finished our appetizers before a phalanx of fixings descended on our table. It looked like The Waltons dinner table. Deciding what to attack first was a challenge; everything looked so good. I attacked the handmade, homestyle buttermilk biscuits served fresh and hot by the pan (the smallest biscuit pan either of us had ever seen). Smallish and golden-brown, they’re warm and comforting. Biscuits are served with several (not enough) pats of butter and with a housemade apple butter, a true highlight of our meal. The apple butter was easily among the best I’ve ever had, sweet and spiced with lots of cinnamon.
Positioned immediately beside the biscuits was an okra casserole, a signature, scratch-made side dish whose core ingredients are okra, tomatoes, celery, onion, and rice in perfect proportion. Perhaps best about this casserole is that it’s not slimy and sticky as okra tends to be. Instead it’s light, well-textured and serves as a well-balanced green dish to offset some of the heavier fried elements of the meal. We (mostly me) polished off the entire bowlful.
We also made quick work of the coleslaw, a finely chopped and distinctively sweet and tart cabbage slaw that serves as a nice counterbalance to the richness of the fried chicken. The coleslaw is not mushy as coleslaw at chain chicken joints tend to be. Still, it’s just coleslaw and no critic I know could possibly make it sound like anything but what it is–a simple accompaniment, a preliminary to the main event. That main event, of course, is the cast iron skillet fried chicken.
If you’re wondering whether cast iron skillet fried chicken makes any difference, better cooks than me will tell you that fried chicken is better when cooked in a cast iron skillet because the heavy metal retains and distributes heat exceptionally well. A Spicy Perspective explains: “When you add cold chicken to hot oil, the temperature of the oil usually drops. Cast iron holds its heat so strongly that the oil recovers its high temperature faster.” Because the oil stays hot, the breading sears quickly and absorbs less grease, resulting in a crispier, lighter crust instead of a soggy one.
The skillet fried chicken at Juniper Valley Ranch is legendary comfort food, widely recognized by such publications as Mashed and the Colorado Springs Gazette as the best fried chicken in Colorado. Michael Stern of Roadfood described the fried chicken as having “a thin, brittle crust and juicy meat, the fried chicken was clearly the best thing on the table.” At the risk of alienating other fans of the apple butter, we’ll have to agree. We found the fried chicken exceptionally crunchy and crispy on the outside, while remaining juicy, tender, and well-seasoned on the inside. My Kim discards the crust, but I enjoyed every morsel.
According to The Kitchn, “when it comes to fried chicken for dinner, the sides are just as important to the meal as the main dish (one cannot live on fried chicken alone!).” Among its recommended sides are classic mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes are a timeless staple highlighted by such culinary guides as The Kitchn and Food Network. There’s just something so special as the buttery luxuriousness of mashed potatoes and savory depth of gravy that brings out the best in fried chicken. Alas, the Juniper Valley Ranch doesn’t serve mashed potatoes. It serves riced potatoes, simply boiled and hand-pressed through a large ricer. Sure, the texture is fluffy and light, but I prefer the smooth, heavily whipped and buttery mashed potatoes I make at home.
No perhaps about it, my least favorite item on our table was the gravy, a a housemade, peppery country cream gravy served family-style in a large mug at the table. Because the riced potatoes are prepared so simply, guests typically ladle a generous amount of peppery country cream gravy over those potatoes. In my humble estimation, gravy should never be thicker than the potatoes. Still, this is a nit compared to how good everything else was.
At Juniper Valley Ranch, a complimentary dessert is included with every family-style dinner. The restaurant features a mix of simple ice cream classics (with such toppings as chocolate syrup, butterscotch and peppermint) and scratch-made comforts. A rotating homemade dessert of the day selection changes daily and features scratch-made baked goods. On any given day, popular rotating options may include such delicious treats as fruit cobblers (such as peach cobbler served with vanilla ice cream), cakes, and a cinnamon-flavored bread pudding. The bread pudding is superb, an exemplar of an anachronistic dessert I can never get enough of.
Although the Juniper Valley Ranch doesn’t bill itself as an all-you-can-eat restaurant, guests are explicitly invited to help themselves to as much food as they want during their seating. Seconds, thirds, fourths…go for it.
Juniper Valley Ranch
16350 Highway 115
Colorado Springs, Colorado
(719) 576-0741
Website | Facebook Page
LATEST VISIT: 2 October 2026
# OF VISITS: 1
RATING: N/R
COST: $$$$
BEST BET: Fried Chicken, Coleslaw, Gravy, Okra Casserole, Biscuits, Riced Potatoes, Bread Pudding, Apple Butter, Curry Consomme, Cherry Cider
REVIEW #1553