Pie Face
Guest written by Jacqui
Pie Face is the New York outpost of an Australian bakery café chain. The NYC store occupies a tiny corner space just outside the Ed Sullivan Theater, home to the Late Show with David Letterman. While the place offers the usual variety of soups, sandwiches, pastries, and coffee, its real specialty is the Aussie meat pie. In fact, the first thing you notice when you walk up to the counter is the rows of pies smiling at you.
I ordered four pies (chunky steak, mince beef & tomato, chicken & mushroom, and Thai chicken curry) and two sausage rolls (beef & pork, veggie). My friend, A, who I had enlisted to help me taste test, was waiting for me back at home. This is what we ate:
Our favorite pie was the chunky steak. The rich and beefy filling went perfectly with the buttery pie crust. (Side note: For an extra $2, Pie Face will “upgrade” your pie with a dollop of mash potatoes, gravy, and mushy peas. This would be the perfect pie to upgrade. )
Our next favorite was the chicken & mushroom pie, which was also buttery, rich and creamy.
The mince beef (translation: ground beef) & tomato pie was a bit of an oddity: my friend A thought it tasted like spaghetti sauce encased in a pie; I thought it tasted like spaghetti sauce laced with something else (maybe curry powder?) encased in a pie. Needless to say, it was not our favorite and we were disappointed to find out that we had been given two of these and were missing the Thai chicken curry pie we had ordered.
It’s hard to describe to the uninitiated what a sausage roll is. It’s not a pig in a blanket. It’s better. The relationship between sausage and pastry is more complex and the taste is much more rewarding. Unfortunately, I am not a fan of the Pie Face beef & pork sausage roll. The combination of beef and pork strikes me as a bit unnatural (why not just stick with the traditional pork sausage?). It was also a little dry. The veggie roll proved to be a good alternative and I think I’ll stick to that one next time.
All up, this little place is a great addition to the midtown West neighborhood – especially for those meat pie-loving folks who want their fix without having to trek to the Australian and British food shops downtown. Welcome to NYC, Pie Face!
