Pie in the Sky?

[Suzi Edwards]

Scott's query about pies has made me think. I love pies, but rarely have them in restaurants. In fact, the last good pie I had in a restaurant was when I was an undergraduate at Browns in Cambridge. I am slightly ashamed to admit this as I feel quite sure I went back the pie would probably not be that delicious.

So, where can you get a good pie in the UK? I'm most interested in fish or steak and kidney. Because I am a purist about these things.

[jackal10]

When were you here?

Browns! I can't stand the noise level there. Also the building used to be the VD clinic for the neighboring Addenbrokes hospital, now the Judge Institute of management. Loch Fyne is a better choice, and does fish pie..

The Free Press pub serves good pies. For fish pie a good fish restaurant: the Pinneys at Orford, for example.

The Ivy is reputed to serve good sheperds pie (Sheperds pie is lamb, cottage pie is beef. Sheppards pie has mashed potato forked like thatch, cottage has potato rounds like tiles).

Edited July 5, 2004 by jackal10 (log)

[Stigand]

I ordered a Brown's pie in their West End restaurant to satisfy nostalgia for undergraduate days - big mistake: it was fridge-temperature in the middle and not too inspiring even after it had been (re-) re-heated properly. This was over a year ago, though, and who knows, things may have improved there. I haven't been back.

I've had a couple of steak and kidney pies from the Square Pie Company. (they have a concession in Selfridge's Food Hall). They were pretty good - not huge, but just right for lunch. The pastry delivered the key combination of crispiness on top and savory stodge beneath, and the mashed potatoes with gravy were good too. They do fish pies too but I haven't tried them.

Cold pies: I like the cold pork pies at the stand on the way to the Green Market at Borough Market - the one in the little walkway opposite the Italian cheese/sausage stall. I don't like their pork & stilton pie though: although I normally love stilton, its slight bitterness seems to defeat the object of a salty/sweet, fatty pork pie. Has anyone tried the pies they sometimes have for sale at the Ginger Pig? I imagine they'd be good.

I know it's not a pie, but a year or so ago there were a lot of posts about the Mutton Pudding at Rhodes 24 - some people (was it circeplum or Jon Tseng?) rated it their dish of the year, I think. The Rhodes 24 website describes it as: "Steamed mutton and onion suet pudding with buttered carrots".

[Carlovski]

Too often you recieve that pie pretender - the stew in a dish with a puff pastry hat. The worst culprits being pub versions where the hat has been separately cooked. Grrr.

Surely the whole point of the pie is the alchemy that goes on at the filling/pastry boundary.

I personally have a soft spot for a good chicken pie too.

[Suzi Edwards]

When were you here?

Browns! I can't stand the noise level there. Also the building used to be the VD clinic for the neighboring Addenbrokes hospital, now the Judge Institute of management. Loch Fyne is a better choice, and does fish pie..

The Free Press pub serves good pies. For fish pie a good fish restaurant: the Pinneys at Orford, for example.

The Ivy is reputed to serve good sheperds pie (Sheperds pie is lamb, cottage pie is beef. Sheppards pie has mashed potato forked like thatch, cottage has potato rounds like tiles).

i graduated in '96. i have a softspot for browns. being a good working class coventry girl i'd never been to a restaurant until i got to cambridge (i know. insane) this was my first taste. oh the waitresses with their long aprons and black ties. oh the specials on the blackboard. i really did think it was the most glamourous place i had ever been. to be honest, it was the most glamourous place i had ever been.

i thought that browns was the height of chic. see, out of acorns and all that...

[Suzi Edwards]

i think we should have a pie manifesto. this will evolve, but number one has to be...

1. no pie pretenders

btw, i am very annoyed with you stigand. i am sitting in heathrow airport about to go back to chicago for nigh on four weeks and you have just mentioned pork pies. i'm currently experiencing pie envy.

[Carlovski]

Can we ever expect a great pie in a restaurant?

Pies aren't really restaurant food are they?

Cooking to order would take too long (For some pies anyway), so you are left with reheating.

Maybe puddings (The savoury kind) are the way forward - I imagine they are slightly more forgiving, although to be honest, I do prefer a bit of crunch.

[BertieWooster]

My first 'foodie' meal was a Vegetarian Pithivier (sp?) at Quag's back in the early 90s, and gorgeous it was too, though that's more a pastie than a pie.

Tubby Wadlow's in Ilkley used to do Monfish Wellington that was very pie-ish.

I have a real problem with the deconstruction thing when it comes to pies and their near neighbours crumbles. I don't want a rhubarb crumble where the crumble is sprinkled on the plate either side of the rhubarab. The hard bit, as in pies is cooking the thing together and getting it not too stodgy, not too crispy. Taking the ingredients apart and cooking them that way is easy. Well, easier...

(edited cos I can't spell fish)

Edited July 5, 2004 by BertieWooster (log)

[John Whiting]

Maybe puddings (The savoury kind) are the way forward . . .

The venison and kidney pudding for two at St John B&W was supurb. My wife, who grew up in north Lincs and cooks a mean pud herself, pronounced it by far the best she'd ever tasted.

[PS]

I and some similarly drunken friends founded the Edinburgh University Pie Society back in 1995 (I think), but being students we didn't have the will-power to see through our vision and it died through lack of application.

Pies are great, but as has been mentioned above, not really restaurant food. More home cooking, shop prepared (Crombies' ready steak pies in Edinburgh are marvellous) or pub food (like most pub food, rarely any good - although I'll post a disclaimer here to say I refer to re-heat merchants, rather than the far too few honest food preparing landlords).

J Sheekey in St Martin's Court in London does a fish pie, but I've never had it on the occasions I've eaten there as, perhaps foolishly, its cheapness makes me think something more expensive will be better or something else on the menu catches my attention.

[clb]

J Sheekey in St Martin's Court in London does a fish pie, but I've never had it on the occasions I've eaten there as, perhaps foolishly, its cheapness makes me think something more expensive will be better or something else on the menu catches my attention.

Tried it a couple of weeks ago.

There is such a thing as too much butter in a fish pie.

clb

[curlywurlyfi]

may I commend to the group Lidgate's pies? (Lidgate being the butcher on Holland Park.) You can buy them in ever-increasing sizes starting from for two (ie one, if you're me), and they come in proper china pie dishes or I expect they would let you bring your own dish if you want to pretend. The chicken leek + bacon was wonderful, steak was also good, both jlike your mum would make - nothing fancy shmancy, just honest stoo + good rough puff pastry with lots of the whole soft white underbelly thing going on.