Good Pies

32 Mountjoy Parade, Shop 2, Lorne, Victoria

Pointed the car down toward the Great Ocean Road on the weekend to spend my birthday doing absolutely nothing down on the coast. Of course the weather was almost entirely terrible, but we stayed at a nice little hotel and poked around a bit between Anglesea and Lorne. The good thing about bad weather is that you don’t need an excuse to do very little. Also it makes for pretty photographs if you do set foot outside just to prove you left home in the first place..

If you’re me you can also suction-cup a camera to the bonnet of your car for no particular reason then upload it to YouTube. So I did that and now you can pretend you’re strapped to the bonnet of a Saab like Tom Hardy in Fury Road — only genteel because winners obey speed limits.

Saturday morning was my birthday and pretty much as soon as I woke up I found myself in the driver’s seat heading westward toward Lorne. I actually think all the towns on the Great Ocean Road are best when the weather’s a bit bleak because everyone stays indoors, there’s not a lot of traffic, and you’re under no obligation to get into the waters of the Southern Ocean (which have a bracing tang to them even in the middle of Summer).

I was expecting a good pie when I got to Great Ocean Road Bakery. What I wasn’t expecting was a revelation. Friends, they sell a cheeseburger pie and it is like if Willy Wonka was real, a baker, and wasn’t brought into the world by someone was a huge fan of racist stereotypes. The cheeseburger pie looks like a pie, smells like a pie, and has the mouthfeel of a pie. But close your eyes and it’s deadset a cheeseburger. Don’t be alarmed. This is still a pie (but it is also a burger).

The zest of pickle was the first indication. I have been around the world a bit and I have never had a pie with small slices of pickle in there. But there it was, along with melted cheese, gravy and HOLY SHIT a tiny little burger patty in the middle!

At this part of the story it helps to know that I bought a whole bunch of stuff from the bakery (including two lemon tarts, some doughnuts, and a cupcake) and took them back to the hotel. Erin was still in bed when I chomped into the pie and started giving her a detailed play by play of the cheeseburger pie.

Groggily, she said that it sounded horrible.

It was not. It was a magic trick being performed in my mouth, and I still don’t know how they did it. Get yourself down to this bakery today (they only close on Christmas Day) and wrap your mandible around pure sorcery. 🥧