My love affair with meat pies began in late 2001. I has just moved to South Australia on a research fellowship, and a friendly Aussie had offered to take me on a hiking trip to the beautiful Deep Creek conservation park. On the way we stopped at a country bakery - there is one in every town in Oz -which was well known for its savory pies. I was still a vegetarian at the time, and embarrassed myself by ordering a 'veg paystie.' All of the Aussies laughed at my faux paus, and I was schooled as to the difference between a 'pah-stie' and a 'paystie.'
Syntax aside, the pastie was a revelation. Warm, crisp pastry wrapped around tender veggies with oozing cheese. What could be better? I was hooked, and for the rest of my seven years Down Under I ate pies, pasties, and sausage rolls from coast to coast. I remember an amazingly good little sausage roll in Hobart, Tasmania, lots of great spinach pasties from Bec's Bakery in Adelaide, and then there were the BEST PIES EVER from Stone Hut Bakery.
Stone Hut is a little Outback town in the lower Flinders Ranges, about three hours north of Adelaide. A few times a year we'd head up there with a crew of friends for a weekend of mountain biking. A highlight was always a visit to the Stone Hut Bakery, where we'd gorge ourselves on hot meat pies, sausage rolls, and choc caramel slice, and then buy as many cold pies as would fit into our cooler to sustain us back in Adelaide until our next trip. We always joked that time stood still in this bakery, as all of the ladies working there moved v e r y slowly, so you really had to practice patience. But after a weekend of biking, all we wanted to do was stuff our faces with pies!
When Chris and I had this crazy idea to start a meat pie business in Portland, I thought - I wonder if the folks at Stone Hut Bakery would let me come work there to learn all about the pie makin' biz? Chris thought that I was a little off my rocker, but sure enough the kind owners invited me to come work at their bakery. It was the perfect excuse for a trip back to Australia, so in August 2008 we flew to Adelaide and then headed north to the Flinders Ranges. We took our mate Jason along, and he and Chris spent their days mountain biking while I learned about pies from the bakery's fabulous pie master, Dawn. Over the course of three days we busted out hundreds and hundreds of meat pies and pasties. We even cooked up a batch of the Kangaroo pie filling (the secret to balancing the meat's gaminess is the red wine, says Dawn).
We returned to the States all charged up about pies - so yummy! so convenient! And yet it was near impossible to find a proper pie in the land of pizza and burritos. We packed all of our belongings into our little car and drove from Philly to Portland, on a mission to bring some pastry wrapped goodness to this food lover's town.
And the rest is pie history. It's been almost a year since we first rolled in to PDX, and we had a fabulous summer at the Farmer's Markets. The expats found us right away - sometimes it was like a mini-UN at our booth, with folks from Oz, New Zealand, South Africa, Scotland, and England lining up for their weekly meat pie fix. And while it took a little while for some of our American customers to muster up the nerve to try a *gulp* meat pie, once they tasted that savory filling and flaky pastry they too became pie devotees.
We are hard at work getting our retail space ready, so very soon Portland will have its very own savory pie shop. Yesterday we trolled the Rebuilding Center and the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store and loaded up on light fixtures, old cabinets, reclaimed doors, and recycled shutters. Just wait til you see what we do with it all!
