Yatala Pie Shop

Happy Australia Day everybody - for those of you not eating lamb, I hope you manage to get yourselves a pie - or even better, a lamb pie!

This week, I've tackled the big Kahuna of Queensland pies - the Yatala Pie Shop. Yatala has been around since Moses was a lad, and is one of those places like the Brekkie Creek - for every person who loves the steaks, there's another 2 people telling you about their last poor experience, and how they're nothing like they were in the good old days, as per the ‘Gurge song: 'I like your old stuff better than your new stuff'.

Often though, our recollection of the good old days is tinted by rose coloured glasses. Wagon Wheels weren't the size of an actual wagon wheel; Sunny Boys weren't as big as your head, Paddle Pops weren't choloclate-ier, Brekkie Creek steaks weren't larger and more tender, and guess what? Neither were Yatala pies.

I must admit that I love the Creek, but when it comes to Yatala I hadn't been impressed with my last couple of visits. I'm particularly uncomfortable with a couple of things in particular. The pies can have a tendency to be big and pale and anaemic looking, like Gwenneth Paltrow; but infinitely more serious is their encouragement of the use of little plastic UTENSILS to eat their pies. Warning: rant ahead.

This, in my humble but usually well-informed opinion, is sending the wrong message to a whole new generation of pie-eaters. Being based on the major arterial highway, Yatala also attracts interstate visitors from up and down the eastern seaboard. This reflects poorly on Queensland in general...that we should let this sort of shenanigans go unchecked is a tacit endorsement of what we - that's you and I, dear readers - have conclusively shown to be un-Australian behavior. It's simply not on.

And if you think I'm joking, take a look at the following photo, which I am calling 'Australia's Shame'. This rooster is a young tradie (note the King Gee longs and steel caps) eating a pie with a plastic fork, whilst on the phone to his girlfriend with a bottle of water (not a chocky milk) in front of him. This bloke is surely the Michael Clarke of tradies. And I'm not talking about the 300-plus run-scoring machine of late; I'm talking about the bloke who doesn't want to sing Under the Southern Cross I Stand because his girlfriend is waiting outside the dressing room with a bottle of Cristal and a pocketful of pingers. Bruce Ruxton would roll over in his grave if he could see this. Sam Kekovich would have another heart attack. It's disgraceful. This kid needs some serious time in the room of mirrors. No wonder he’s eating alone.

Use Your Hands, Son!

 I recently spoke to young Gareth, who literally grew up around the corner from Yatala Pies, and had a school holiday job with them off and on for years. I mentioned that the pies could do with an egg wash to make them look a bit less like an English tourist on Bondi beach. He said that the pies are prepared en masse, sprayed with an egg wash-like solution, baked,  then put into cold storage until they are required; whereupon they are reheated in the original ovens that date back to the big bang. The key words above are 'sprayed' (not brushed), and 'egg wash-like' (not egg washed).

I acknowledge that individually brushing egg wash on is labour intensive, but it's the little things that separate the men from the boys. When George Bradman handed his son Don a stump and a golf ball and suggested that he go and practice against the water tank, did The Don say, 'bugger that, I can't be arsed, Dad’? Of course he bloody didn't. He just got in there and did it, and the rest is history. Yatala has more staff than the Red Army and an inexhaustible supply of customers - if cost is the issue, bang another 10 cents on every pie and do the hard yards.

Lamb Coconut Curry Pie

So enough ranting and on to the lamb coconut curry pie, which I egg washed before baking at 180 for 40 minutes from frozen. As you can see, the results were pretty spectacular. This is an oversize pie with a lot of tasty filling. The curry isn't a type 1, but I can't say for sure whether it was a specific type of curry. The closest approximation I could give you is a Massaman (aka Massive-Man). Like a true Massaman, there wasn't really any heat to speak of; just a lovely creamy coconutty sauce supporting some seriously large tender chunks of lamb that went all the way through the pie. The lamb wasn't dry at all and the viscosity was bang-on. 

The top pastry was buttery and flaky and the base held together perfectly right to the end. An easy pass on the driving test, and no excuses for cutlery. Having sampled half a dozen different pies from Yatala, this is the pie I will choose from now on. For mine, it's a stand out winner and I can highly recommend it. Score is 9/10.

Yatala Curry Steak

With opinions divided and the store being a marquee in its field, I decided that it deserved a return visit (I’m nothing if not thorough). So Crispy and I headed down there with empty stomachs and high expectations. It was a hot day, and the car park was as full as a fat lady's sock. We decided that we could comfortably fit in a pie and a half each, so I went for the curry steak (surprise surprise), Crispy opted for a steak bacon and cheese, and we agreed that the 'share pie' should be something non-standard. The minted lamb and pea therefore chose itself.

Pricing was about $5.60 - $5.80 which is fine as these are quite large pies from Yatala's Gourmet selection. 'Standard' pies weigh in at only $4.80, which these days, and at this (over)size is a bargain. They also come with the option of mushy peas, making them into a fairly substantial meal. You're going to struggle wedging a second pie in if you add peas...but be my guest if you think you're man enough. Just make sure you let me know. They also offer free sauce, which I like (in principle; I don’t agree with actually using it). There is also a huge range of sweet treats if you can’t face a second pie.

As you can see from this photo, the top of my curry steak is nice and crunchy and not at all Paltrow-like, despite the spray of egg wash-like solution. I was pleasantly surprised. Crispys pie had a nice scattering of bacon across the top. I would like to have seen more cheese beneath the lid of his (there wasn't any), but he was happy with it overall and said the temperature was spot on - as was mine. 

Curry Beef Innards

My Type 1 curry beef was pretty good, although I guess to a certain extent they feel the need to make the pie commercially popular to the masses due to the nature of their business, so the result is a pie that isn't particularly challenging curry-wise, but nice nonetheless.  There was no problem with the engineering, and driving wouldn't be an issue. The filling was moist enough without wanting to divest itself of its pastry home and consisted of chunks of minced beef and plenty of it. My score was 7.5/10

Because the lamb and pea pie was cut in half, my first bite wasn't a mouthful of pastry as it would normally be; but a mouthful of lambyness. The mint was instantly apparent, and there were a plethora of plump tender peas. The casing and top were identical to my curry pie, which I like because it demonstrates consistency (as there is a good chance that they were made on different days, and Yatala claims that every pie is hand made). The lamb was delicious, well seasoned, and like the curry pie there was plenty of filling. My only regret was sharing it. Score is 8/10.

The bottom line here is that I guess my faith in Yatala has been restored - although I went through the drive-thru a week later and picked up what I thought was another couple of Lamb Coconut Curry pies for the freezer. When I got home, I discovered that they had given me more Lamb / Mint / Pea pies by mistake....which really was my mistake, because in the words of Leo Getz (aka Joe Pesci) you know what they do at the drive-thru:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRP8Tl4BsUQ

Until next week - cheers!

Shit Faced at Pie Face

Q: What's better than 10 schooners of Carlton Draught and an Arctic Monkeys concert?
A: 10 schooners of Draught, an Arctic Monkeys concert, and a pie shop that's open for business beyond midnight; that's what.

Well that was the theory, anyway. Then along came Pie Face and the plan slowly but surely started to fall apart...much like the pies did after the first bite.

I had first sampled a Pie Face pie in Melbourne, pre-blog. I remember it clearly. It was grand final day, and as per usual, I was dustier than an Afghans undies from the previous evening's activities. A curry pie for breakfast would be just the ticket. Fortunately I was with the Mayor of Melbourne (OK, not the actual Mayor, but a bloke who has more connections than a Lego factory) and he told me about the new franchise on everyone's lips: Pie Face. We diverted our walk to 'The G' to head for the closest outlet.

Initially, I was disappointed that the closest thing on the menu to a curry beef pie was a Thai chicken curry pie, but I thought why the hell not? The pie looked pretty good and the shop smelled great, so I had high hopes. That was, until I started eating. 

The casing on this pie is diabolical. What looks like a slightly smallish, Standard size pie with a good shape almost fell inside out on itself once the first bite came out of it. Not only did this thing fail the driving test, it failed the walking test. I had to ask the Mayor to woo up completely so I could eat it without it running down my arm. Not only was the pastry soggy, but the filling was watery and apparently devoid of important ingredients...like chicken. It was an epic fail; a 4/10.

But everything deserves a second chance, right? The lovely Sanna from faraway Swabia assured me that the beef mince pie was pretty good, and we all know that a turd sandwich tastes superb after 10 schooners, so we found ourselves outside the Albert St store at midnight one Saturday after an Arctic Monkeys concert at the Riverstage fanging for some hot meaty goodness.

The window full of pies looked very appetizing, and the store smelled as good as I remembered. The pies all had cute little smiley faces on their lids, and looked to be egg washed too. Kudos. Have a look at this thing - it looks really really good. No WAY this is going to fall apart, right?

First surprise: these undersized Standard pies are $5.75. Gourmet territory.  Hmmmmmm. Franchise fees must be huge. Oh well, I guess Bentleys don’t grow on trees.

Second surprise: the 'plain mince' pie isn't plain at all, but is actually like a bolognese. Some might deem this to be a bonus. I call it false advertising.

No surprise: one bite, and the bastard disintegrated on me. Again. Dollops of magma-hot bolognese filling scalded my hand, and I had to hold the paper bag under it to stop it from dripping on the Hush Puppies. This is the Andrej Pejic of pies (Google him). Looks fantastic, but open it up and it's a whole other thing....

Admittedly, once I got over the betrayal of the plain/bolognese thing, the filling was pretty tasty, but the consistency was too sloppy and there wasn't enough of it. A pie from Beefys is twice the size for the same money, and a plain (oversize) Yatala pie is actually a whole dollar cheaper (and plain, as advertised).

But I guess when the franchise is started by a former investment banker who says that the branding, marketing and customer experience is as important as the product itself, you can probably expect that. I’ve heard that they are the fastest growing franchise in Australia, and that the head banana (Wayne) plans to take the concept to the UK and US in the hope of turning it into a billion dollar enterprise. All the pies are made in Sydney and transported to interstate stores once per week…so you know they’re fresh as. Beauuut.

Pie Face also has something called ‘Pie Jam’, which supports 240 unsigned musicians / bands, which is great in principle. Call me old fashioned, but I'd like to see a little more product focus and a little less smoke and mirrors. It takes more than a sharp brand and a smiley face to make a good pie, and personally I’m not sure that there’s much more to Pie Face than that.

So just to be sure I wasn't jumping to conclusions, I ordered another one. This time a chunky steak. I'll let the picture speak for itself, but it was another epic fail. It fell apart to the point that I had no choice but to take the unprecedented step of binning the remainder. A sad day indeed.

I can safely say that my face is now done with Pie Face.

Score 3/10.

 

Stay tuned, as I'm planning a special Australia Day edition of The Pieologist, on the famous Yatala Pie Shop... that's right, possums - two posting in one week (how does he do it?).

Mum's Bakehouse, Gympie Rd, Kedron

It’s cricket season again, and when anyone thinks of cricket, they naturally think of beer and pies shortly after. These pies showed all the promise in the world – but much like Virender Sehwag, completely failed to deliver when the pressure was on.

It was a Tuesday lunchtime, and Rimmer made the trip to Mum’s Bakehouse, just past the roadworks on Gympie Road at Kedron. He declared that it was doing a roaring trade thanks to the hordes of hungry road workers that had descended upon it like an army of high-vis fire ants tearing the place apart. 

He also said that perhaps the shop should have been called Mama-san’s Bakehouse, which filled us both with anticipation. I must admit I’ve got a thing for Asian-owned bakeries; usually their curry pies are napalm-hot and their pastry is second to none. But there is an exception to every rule, except for the rule that states that there is an exception to every rule….and Mum’s is the exception to the Asian bakery rule.

I had the curry beef (a Keens type 1) and a Ned Kelly, after seeing how awesome Pedro the barrister’s Ned Kelly was at the Banana Cabana a few weeks earlier. The pies were about $4.20 each, which is pretty cheap.

Mum's Curry Beef

First, the curry beef. The colour of the lid was great – baked to perfection, with that slight elliptical shape that gives the pie a hand-made look of authenticity….but unfortunately everything after that was ordinary. Once out of the foil nest, it wobbled around like Tubby Taylor’s belly and had to be eaten at a great rate of knots before it collapsed – which was easy to do because the pie was lukewarm and fairly timid curry-wise. You’re not eating this one in the car. It was like Sehwag chopping a wide one on to the stumps in the third over of the day – simply poor technique, poorly executed. A sad day indeed for the Pieologist. Rimmer was similarly unimpressed. We discussed a score, and he talked me down from what would have been an over-generous 6 to a fair 5/10.

Mum's Ned Kelly

Still, the Ned Kelly looked good as you can see here from the picture, so I still had hope that we could salvage a decent innings from a poor start. It had a reasonable amount of cheese and bacon, the egg was a whole unscrambled egg that had been cracked raw straight onto the mince before baking (nice touch). 

Surprisingly, the pastry was great – managing to hold the lidless pie together with ease, making me wonder why the hell it hadn’t been deployed for the curry pie. Sidenote: it was actually a different shaped base in a different nest from the curry pie. The Neddie was shaped like a Four N Twenty with squareish side walls and corners; whereas the curry beef base was shaped like a flying saucer in a shallower foil base. The result was that Ned Kelly stayed together perfectly. Strange.

Anyway, (to continue the cricket analogy) much like Liz Hurley, good looks was where the Ned Kelly ended. The bacon was ordinary, the cheese not particularly sharp, and the mince was watery, lukewarm, and devoid of flavour including seasoning. I’m giving it a 5/10 for the base, whole egg, and looks alone. 

I understand that the store had been owned for years by an Italian family, and an Asian family bought it just before the roadworks began - trading under the same name after the sale. I never had the opportunity to try one of the original owners' pies, but have anecdotally heard good reports. I have also heard that the new owners are in dispute with the state government over business interruption due to the roadworks. Whether this is true or not I don't know; but you'd had to have been living under a rock not to know that a major upgrade was going to happen. But that's by the bye.

Unlike most of you, I've been hard at it over the holidays. Not working, obviously, but working for you, good readers. Scouring the country for the good, the bad and the ugly so that you may make informed pie choices no matter where you are. At this very moment I have one of my foreign correspondents overseas in Tasmania, hunting for the famed Tassie scallop pie. In fact, this morning he sent word of a Blue Eye Cod & Korma pie in Hobart. Sounds terriffic. More on that later. Suffice it to say that I have several reviews padded up and ready to take strike over the next month or so, so brace yourselves and start exercising...there are a few out there that you really need to try for yourselves.


Until then, take care.


The Pieologist.