Good Pies

317 Broadway, Wycheproof

Continuing on my regional Victoria kick, I decided to go up and have a look at the Silo Art Trail in the Mallee and maybe take a look around the salt lakes around Lake Tyrrell. Jumped in the car about 6 Saturday night, drove to Stawell, and then kept moving all through Sunday having a look around. It really is gorgeous up there at the moment — probably as green as I have even seen it.

I even made a video of the day because I am now a drone guy as well as a pie guy. You should have a look if you like flat land and grain silos with things painted on them.

I figured I would also be able to get a few pies in over the course of the 875km round trip, so it wasn’t as though murals on cylinders was my only motivator here. I’m not a lunatic. But by midday Sunday I hadn’t been able to find an open bakery in the minuscule towns that I drove through. I was starting to get pretty edgy.

Now, when I started this blog I made a decision to only review good pies. If a pie isn’t good enough to get on here, then I simply don’t write about it. I never want to build up a head of righteous steam about something as pure as a meat pie. What would be the point?

Now, when I started this blog I made a decision to only review good pies.

But gee, I got close on this trip. I stopped at a town that will remain nameless. It had a couple of cafes and a pub that wasn’t open for lunch yet. I peered in the window of one cafe and saw a pie warmer. You beauty — I’ll be able to get a pie.

Oh boy.

I asked the lovely woman behind the jump for a Beef and Guinness pie, pointing at it through the glass. She reached in with her bare band, grabbed the pie, offered me sauce, and put the pie into a paper bag. I wasn’t ecstatic about the bare hands part, but I really wanted a pie so I pretended it never happened. Yes, I want an Order of Australia Medal for this..

She called out to her companion out the back, “How much is the Guinness pie, love?”

“Beef and Guinness? We don’t have any of those. You told me they cost too much money,” he said to the person I now surmised was his spouse.

“What’s this then?”

“That,” he said, “will be Beef Curry.”

I’m an obliging bloke, so I said “No worries; guess it’s a curry beef pie for lunch.”

This was not a good pie at all. I will leave this story there as it does not improve.

——

On the way home, you drive through Wycheproof, which is “famous” for having the world’s smallest mountain. It also has an incredibly wide main drag — so wide in fact that the railway line runs right up the guts of the median strip and still leaves room for you to do a u-turn in a road train.

It also has the glorious Bakery on Broadway. Covered seating outside, a nice bit of a yard, and a great range of pies for the hungry traveller who may or may not have previously eaten one of the worst pies ever to be held in two people’s bare hands in one minute.

I had a “Traditional”, which is a bit of a spin on a Four’n’Twenty as far as filling goes — with a little vegetable in there just to keep the colon on the straight and narrow. It’s a tall pie, so you might need to distend your jaw to get it in your mouth, but I promise you it’s worth it. It had sesame seeds riding on of the flaking top, which threw me a little. I’m not sure whose tradition involves sesame seeds, but who am I to argue?

This pie reaffirmed my faith not just in pies, but in the state of Victoria. The “pie” earlier in the day had me questioning a lot of things, thinking about my choices. I had looked very closely at the tonsils of the abyss, and the abyss does not brush its teeth, I can tell you this much.

But this one pie from the town with the tiny mountain pulled me back together. That’s how good this pie was. 🥧