Eat Pye : Hand Pies Come To The Bay Area
Bay Area Brothers Serve Up Fresh New Take on Old World Baked Hand Pies
To a Cornish tin miner in Victorian England, the hand pie was a convenience food. The miner would have regarded the ubiquitous, semicircular or circular Cornish pasty in the same way we might view a nutrition bar.
In the morning he would have readied himself for work, slipped a Cornish pasty into his pocket and gone about his morning’s hard work, secure in the knowledge that in a few hours he had a tasty lunch to nosh on while resting with his fellow miners deep inside the mine shaft.
They would have all taken out the same lunch—the Cornish pasty, or hand pie as some have come to call them. Self-enclosed, conveniently packaged and insulated thickly in pastry casing, it was packed with chipped beef, potatoes, rutabagas and onions.
In the mid-1800s, Cornish immigrants to the New World brought their pasties along with their mining skills to the copper and iron mines of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Among the wave of immigrants from Cornwall was Caleb and Cody MacCready’s great-great-grandfather, a baker by trade.
Fifteen years ago brothers Caleb and Cody took an old, beat-up van on vacation to the highlands of New Zealand. They spent their days fly fishing, surfing, backpacking and rekindling their childhood love of meat pies. It turned out that in New Zealand, also a prime emigration destination for Cornish miners a few generations back, Cornish-style meat pies are standard take-away fare.
On returning home to California, Caleb and Cody reminisced about the savory hand pies they had gorged themselves on, and lamented that they couldn’t find them anywhere in sunny California. A decade and a half later they decided if they couldn’t find meat pies anywhere, they would make them themselves. They began experimenting late at night in their own kitchens, iterating over and over until they felt ready to found their company: Pye.
Now they’re purveying their hand pies weekly at the Half Moon Bay Farmers’ Market and Bay Meadows Farmers’ Market.
As the company’s slogan “Eat Pye” encourages, customers can munch on three types of hand pies currently being featured: the child-friendly Mince and Cheese with slow-braised ground beef, pork and cheese; the masala chicken and tomato-ginger curried Butter Chicken; and the cheesy, potatoey, vegetarian-friendly Mushroom Leek.
Because Caleb and Cody both believe wholeheartedly in sustainability, they emphasize using good-for-you and good-for-the-planet ingredients. With roots in rural northern Michigan, this ethos has been a part of them for as long as they can remember. As Caleb puts it, “Our parents were hippies—35 years ago we ate fresh-ground peanut butter from the health food store instead of Jif, carob instead of chocolate.”
Their portable hand pies contain ingredients with integrity—Straus butter, organic flour from Central Milling, Mary’s chicken, and beef from local retired dairy cows. “We care about what we eat. We wouldn’t make something for someone else that we wouldn’t eat.” Cody gets excited thinking about the simple goodness of their hand pies. “It’s quite simple the way I look at a pie: It’s just a good, honest wholesome meal. You don’t need to dirty up a dish or throw away a plastic fork.”
Caleb and Cody enjoy feeding people “pye” just like their great-great-grandfather before them. As Caleb says, “I never considered being a baker until I was 40,” but the baking genes run deep. And how appropriate, to bring those Cornish hand pies back to life in a California kind of way—local food delights that are a little laid back, freshly made and totally delicious.
