No way! I would never ruin a good steak with ketchup!
My personal favourite is cooking it in lashings of garlic butter with a tiny bit of pepper.
I don’t batter either. I bread my CFS and my chicken is only dredged in seasoned flour. I know a lot of people do use batters, but not everyone.
Lest ye remain unaware of God’s Own True Food:
Take a thin cut of cheap steak. Pound the crap out of it to tenderize. Dredge in flour that has been seasoned with salt and pepper. Pan-fry in lard. Serve smothered in cream gravy. Hit it with a ton of pepper and some pepper sauce. Eat. Enjoy the glory that comes from eating True Food.
eta: People who batter their chicken-fried steak have something to hide.
Sorry, Queen Bruin. I should have phrased that more carefully. Personally, I consider putting flour on it to be pretty much the equivalent of battering it, especially if you put some egg on the steak before dragging it through the flour.
Obviously, I don’t cook chicken fried steak 
I just enjoy it when others cook it. Mostly for breakfast.
Who’s pretentious? When I eat steak I want it to taste of steak - it’s not like I eat it every day or even every week. Burgers or sausages, sure - steak I mainly eat as it comes, and don’t often bother even with a chef’s sauce. I tried a so-called “New York” steak the other week and the next time I try it I’ll go to New York for it - tepid BBQ sauce and unmelted grated cheese ain’t my idea of what goes on steak.
South Louisiana. I usually don’t use anything on the steak. As others have posted, if it’s a good steak, it shouldn’t need any further seasoning or condiments. If it isn’t that good, I’ll use worcestershire sauce. A-1 and Heintz 57 are in the same league as ketchup (catsup?) to me.
Where does the chicken come in?? and how do you make gravy from it??
“Chicken-fried” in this case means “prepared like you would fried chicken.”
Cream gravy doesn’t need much drippings from the meat, maybe 2 teaspoons or so. After frying up the steak, pour off almost all the lard and drippings. Add 2 tbl. butter and 4 tbl. flour. Stir to brown, scraping up BCBs from the pan in the process. Add cream or milk until the right proportion is reached (this varies by cook). Stir until thickened, hit with salt and pepper, pour over steak.
No worries, sorry for my culinary pedantry. 
I use eggs in my recipe but it is lightyears away from drenching it in goo.
Man now I want CFS for dinner. With redneck greenbeans, potatoes and country gravy that you can use to set fencepoles in the ground if you have extra (I never have any extra, but if I did I’d use it to fill potholes).
Somebody needs to invent a plate that keeps your cream gravy liquid without burning a hole in the tabletop. All it takes is one person asking you a question for the gravy to go from “delicious liquid” to “library paste” to “spackle.” A good waitress won’t ask if you want more coffee while you are eating your CFS, she’ll just pour and not disturb you.
Whoo-Hoo! 16,000 and I did it talking about cream gravy! In your face anybody who never thought I’d amount to much! 
No, ketchup is for hamburgers, and I wouldn’t eat a steak that was indistinguishable from a hamburger. (I’m from Virginia, for what it’s worth.)
It is physically impossible to put ketchup on steak. No matter what it was before, if you put ketchup on it, it ceases to be steak.
I’m not one of those ultra-purists who says you can’t put anything on a steak. Salt, pepper, some other spices, olive oil, garlic, onions, mushrooms: All are allowable. Even some sauces are OK, in some circumstances. But not ketchup.
Raised in Ohio, currently in Montana, and have spent significant time in Philadelphia.
Cream gravy. Lemme see if I’ve got this right: you start with steak drippings and lard. Add butter and the brownie bits. And then to finish off, you add some cream.
My arteries are clogging just from the thought of it. No offence meant.
Must be a southern thing.
Ketchup goes on fries. I don’t even put it on burgers, and it’s a mortal sin in my eyes to put it on hot dogs. A good steak gets salt and pepper, crummier steaks may get some A-1.
The better half, however, puts ketchup on everything he eats, even the pricey, delicious steaks I cook for him. He’d probably put it on a $150 piece of Kobe beef. Oddly, this is not a practice shared by anyone else in his family.
We’re both from Oklahoma.
Absolutely no ketchup on steak. Absolutely no nothing on steak, in fact, unless it’s steak au poivre.
I really do eat ketchup on a lot of things, but it never occurred to me to put it on steak.
I’m from Indiana.
Of course, a properly done CFS plate will also come with home fried potatoes, which are also covered in cream gravy. I’d say that each plate ought to reduce your lifespan by about a month and a half. But then, I’d have been slated for the lifespan of Methuselah, the amount I’ve eaten over the years.
The other prevalent use of cream gravy is as a topping to fresh biscuits. In that case you fry up some bulk sausage first and use it for the drippings, adding the sausage back into the gravy before pouring over the biscuits. Stick to your ribs food.
NEVER. Only salt and pepper, regarless of meat quality. Of course, this only applies to grilled or broiled steaks. It is permissible to put EVOO on prior to cooking, but never after. Other spices allowed prior to cooking only if the chef is eccentric (or foriegn).
ETA: I am in Tennessee, but from Texas.
Thanks for all the responses so far. I started this thread because I’m one of those “pretentious” snobs who would never dream of eating ketchup with steak. It honestly never would have even occurred to me, it just seems so wrong. A friend mentioned yesterday, however, that “EVERYONE puts ketchup on their steak.” Thanks to all of your responses, I think I can safely say I have put his statement to death.
Oh, and I asked about geographical location because we were wondering if this was a purely Kiwi/Aussie thing. 100% of the people in this category who responded (that’s one person) did say they do eat steak with ketchup while most people who replied from elsewhere said they did not, so this theory does hold up. Sort of.
Sure that shouldn’t be “Stick to your [del]ribs[/del] heart food”?
My steak goes naked!
ETA: live in Florida, born in Massachusetts