Gerbinos Bread & Butter Bakery, Ashgrove

I stumbled across this one when I was heading over to the Golden King Bakery at Ashgrove. The building looked pretty flash, so I made the decision to kill two birds with one stone and pick one up on the way back rather than have a second Golden King pie as planned. I’m always thinkin, me.

When the sign on the front says ‘atrisan breads’, you know you’re in for a gourm-ett pie. Oh well, I shouldn’t have any trouble wedging it in on top of the Golden King curry beef then I thought, as I bounded up the front steps.

The shop is large and airy and spacious, with an abundance of staff, most of whom were having a chat about something not service-related while one poor girl ran around after the customers. She shot me a helpless look like this happens all the time. Not a good start. Artisan and up yourself, I thought, clearing my throat loudly enough for the group to stop talking mid-sentence and look my way. I stared back, with my best ‘whenever you’re ready’ look…eyebrows disappearing into my hairline. Someone blinked. It wasn’t me. The weakest of the herd separated herself slowly from the comfort of her sisters and headed on over.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting’, she said.

‘No problem’, says I, and turned my attention to the extensive – gourmet – menu. ‘What’s good?’

‘They’re all good’ Translation: ‘I’ve only worked here a week and haven’t tried any’; OR ‘I’m a vegetarian and no way one of those filthy things is going to touch my lips’. Either way, she wasn’t going to help me.

So I chose the Chilli Beef (see below). Those black specks on the top are toasted dry chilli flakes. Rather than being gourmet-sized as expected, it was a large standard. The pie had a solid, well-cooked pastry casing that wasn’t particularly flaky, but it had the structural integrity of a housebrick. Driving test? You could eat this thing between two fingers...whilst riding a motorbike…over the Andes. Top marks.

 

I bit into this baby and found the most unusual filling. It was tasty and well seasoned, with medium sized chunks of beef, and it was blacker than Idi Amin’s armpit. I’ve torn it apart like a terrier so that you could get a better look at the inner workings:

The meat and gravy were slightly at the gelatinous end of the viscosity spectrum, but the pie wasn’t dry at all. It had a nice temperature and level of heat (chilli) and a real richness about it. If it had any failing, it was the crust – top and bottom. There was just a bit much of it, and it was a bit tough to eat towards the end. It was also a bit dry and crunchy. For that reason, it receives a 7/10. In my book, pastry can be worth over a point if you're considering the top and base as separate items. With better pastry all round, I could have happily awarded a solid 8 for this pie.

This is the kind of bakery I’d like to return to, just to explore some of the other menu options. Perhaps they don't move a great number of Chilli Beef pies and maybe this one had been in the warmer for a while and become a bit solid... If anyone would like to help me out, please post your comments and/or email me a report with photos and I’ll be happy to publish them.

Later this week, I'll be posting a review from one of my minions. He has recently reviewed a couple of pies from Stockmans Pies at Bulimba - it's a story no family can afford to miss.

Next week, I'll post my review of the Golden King Bakery at Ashgrove as mentioned above.

STOP PRESS: the mayor of Melbourne contacted me after I name checked him in the Pie Face review and told me that he recently had an Emu pie somewhere in Melbournistan. When I asked him to email me the photos, I received the all-too-familiar response that he hadn't taken any - sorry. In fairness to the mayor, he's about the 10th person to say this to me.

If you do happen to come across a particularly good, bad, or unusual pie, please whip out the phone and take a couple of snaps of it and I will be more than happy to post them on the blog. We are a community bound together by the love of pies, after all - and sharing is caring.

Until next time, take care. 

W.