GOOD PIE NEWS

[NobRat]

Theres been a fair few Rants about the arena food and

Well according to this bloke whose been to all 92 ground we are in the top 5 best.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_a ... 802250.ece


Tom Dickinson

It was a dismal rainy afternoon at the Reebok Stadium. Unfolding in front of my eyes was a meaningless end-of-season encounter between Hull City and my beloved Bolton Wanderers. The action on the pitch was dire. But this didn’t concern me. I brought the pie up to my mouth and paused in silent contemplation for a minute. A pie crafted with love and precision at Greenhalgh’s bakery and reheated with zero love or precision in the Reebok Stadium microwaves.

This was the 92nd pie that I had consumed in the past nine months. I had just spent the 2008/09 season watching football and writing a book, 92 Pies, about my adventures along the way. I travelled across ghost-town England, spending a very large amount of money and driving vast distances in my ropey old Peugeot 206. I watched clubs play 92 matches in 92 different stadiums, from the Premier League down to League Two. And I ate a pie at every single one.

Food at the football, as any supporter will tell you, has a bit of a tricky reputation:the image of the grim grey slab of burger, or the barely edible phallic hotdog, the £2 Wembley Kit Kat or the cup of tea resembling dishwater.

But there is the holy grail of footy food, the culinary treat that could make even the most hardened Millwall fan go weak at the knees with stomach-grumbling desire: the pie, in all its majestic simplicity. The pie and football go together like strawberries and cream at Wimbledon, like popcorn at the cinema or like ten lagers and a kebab on a Friday night. It is a match made in heaven. The pie may as well have been hand-crafted by God for the sole purpose of cheering up 5,000 miserable Scunthorpe fans at a freezing-cold goalless evening match against Huddersfield. I had therefore made a vow to eat a pie at each of the 92 grounds; pies of all shapes and sizes, the good (see below) the bad (Walsall) and the ugly (Chester City).

The pies are the meaty glue that holds our football together. More than flags, replica shirts and ticket touts, they are the one specific thing linking all 92 clubs. I tried to vary my pie choice as often as possible. Steak pies are usually a safe bet, but the choice of champions is undoubtedly the chicken balti pie. It’s a British institution nowadays, but many dark moons ago the creation of such a curious spicy delight mystified the Midlands.

The best pie, the overwhelming victor, the Tiger Woods of football pastries, was whisked up at Morecambe FC by the small local bakery Potts’ Pies. Morecambe are a tiny club with rickety old terraces at their Christie Park home, but their food is second to none. The huge meaty pies (baked from pure lard, I have since been informed) came on a full plate with thick gravy and mushy peas. The plate, rather than the traditional pie box, was worth the relatively cheap £3 price alone. It was splendid. If this wasn’t enough, they also, quite spectacularly, served hefty portions of Lancashire hotpot. If you’re going to eat food at a football club, make it Morecambe.

There were some worthy runners-up. The best that the Premier League had to offer was at Wigan Athletic. People tend to associate Wigan with pies and pier; while the pier is nothing more than a dank slab of graffiti-covered wood (Orwell would have worded it more delicately, I suspect), the pies did not disappoint. I remember taking a bite of the hefty, sauce-filled pie and a thick splodge of brown gloop and indistinguishable meat fell on to my new white shoes. But I didn’t care about the birthmark stain slowly forming on my spanking-clean footwear, such was its quality.

Exeter City, as well as being one of the most charming clubs of the 92, is well known for its food. There was a wispy white-haired old man selling home-made carrot cake outside the ground. Get that at Old Trafford? I thought not. Inside the ground there was a Domino’s Pizza stall, possibly the only case of a fast-food chain in a football ground.

Darlington may be one of the Football League’s most troubled clubs, but they showed title-winning form with their pies. They set them out as at a bakery: freshly cooked and displayed at the front of the food counter. At £1.30, the meat and potato pie represented probably the best value for money anywhere I’ve been.

The pies at Delia Smith’s Norwich stuck in my mind. Along with the traditional pies that you would expect, there was the “pie of the week”, a regular special that’s a favourite of the Norwich elite. I wondered if Delia hand-crafted them herself before the match. The “pie of the week” for my trip was cauliflower cheese. Cauliflower cheese! That was ... unique. The week before, it had been beef in red wine gravy. Why couldn’t I have gone to Carrow Road that week?

One of the best things that happened to me on my nine-month tour was when I visited Yeovil Town. Queueing up to get my pie, I witnessed a majestic sign handwritten in Biro, Blu-Tacked to the wall next to the menu of the typical pies, burgers, drinks, etc. The sign boldly stated: “Soup — past sell-by date — clearance, 50p.” This was simply magnificent. Out-of-date soup for sale. Openly. Where else in the Football League could this happen?

Sometimes I just did not want to eat. A very hungover trip to Leyton Orient on my birthday presented an undesired and undercooked pie that didn’t say happy birthday quite as effectively as a cake with candles. But I always forced myself to get a pie no matter how ill I felt, and over the course of nine months I got lost in a football food-fuelled adventure, culminating in a tour of a pie factory before my last match at Bolton.

It was surreal watching the pies being made — the way in which the pastry and the filling are magically combined to make a perfect package of hunger-destroying goodness. It was all a bit like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, if Roald Dahl’s imagination had been more grimly realistic and Lancastrian. And with fewer Oompa-Loompas.

The entire trip had made me become slightly detached from reality. I would cancel evenings out with friends to stare at fixture lists, I would sleep nights in my car and obsess over the lower leagues that I had previously cared nothing about. I took my girlfriend a few times, but she hates pies and football in equal measure (what’s wrong with the girl?) so we had some problems, especially when I travelled to Swansea City by myself on Valentine’s Day.

Forgetting any odd obsession that I had developed with every last detail of the intricacies of pies, the football journey itself was full of highlights and lowlights: goals, tears, fights, good times, bad times and many, many laughs. More than anything else, I just fell deeply in love with the Football League. For every scabby, undesirable, bland monstrosity of a ground, there is a stadium such as Exeter’s St James’ Park or Brentford’s Griffin Park that will take your breath away with its individuality and charm. And some decent grub always helps matters hugely.

Football fans have short memories, and over the summer break the supporters of all 92 teams will have reconvened with wide-eyed optimism about all the great things that their club can achieve in the forthcoming months. They will by now have arrived at their clubs to purchase their first pie (or out-of-date soup) and prepare themselves for whatever the next nine months will bring.

In a league of their own: Tom’s top five food stadiums


Christie Park, Morecambe

The daddy of all pie-makers, Potts’ Pies, provide the perfect mix of piping-hot meaty goodness and crisp pastry.

St James’ Park, Exeter

Huge pizzas, carrot cake and the best hot chocolate in the Football League at a beautiful old crumbling stadium. Oh, and the pies aren’t bad, either.

The Northern Echo Darlington Arena

A bakery-style set-up that defies the club’s financial woes. And some of the cheapest food in the Football League.

Carrow Road, Norwich City

Delia Smith-inspired grub baked with love. Keep your eyes peeled for the legendary “pie of the week”.

DW Stadium, Wigan

Thick and generous Pooles pies, a true chunk of Wigan in pastry form.

[Darlo_Pete]

Its a pity that are pies have gone up so much in price, when the quality has remained the same. They're not worth it anymore & from the loads they have left after the last two home games, it would appear a lot of other people are thinking along the same lines.

[divas]

pete will you give it a fucking rest, its obvious from that article that our pies were among the cheapest in the league, a 30p price rise in hardly breaking the bank

what do you do when you go to the cinema? take your own packed lunch? actually, why am i even asking that question......you obviously take a slice of your frozen game pie left over from xmas.....

[Darlo_Pete]

The pie I get went up from £1-10 to £1-60 that's a bit above the current inflation rate of 1.8% and they're not worth it anymore. The article was written based on last years food and things have changed. Am I not allowed to give my opinion or are we only allowed to post postive replies?

[Hilly]

Pete, I really wish you'd stop ending your posts with "it would appear a lot of other people are thinking along the same lines..." or similar. It doesn't justify your case at all.

[darlotoon]

The pie I get went up from £1-10 to £1-60 that's a bit above the current inflation rate of 1.8% and they're not worth it anymore. The article was written based on last years food and things have changed. Am I not allowed to give my opinion or are we only allowed to post postive replies?

Maybe after recent events and local firms getting shafted , that is the best price the club can get them for allowing a profit margin.

[divas]

The pie I get went up from £1-10 to £1-60 that's a bit above the current inflation rate of 1.8% and they're not worth it anymore. The article was written based on last years food and things have changed. Am I not allowed to give my opinion or are we only allowed to post postive replies?

you are allowed an opinion, but it gets tiresome the 3rd or 4th time ive read it.

you were at the fans forum when the club stated that they actually LOST money on food and drink on the concourse at times last season, its another case of darlo fans getting it too good in the past, and now we're being brought into line, people dont like it.

as for pies being left - this happened on a fair few occasions last season at the old price.

[darlomilo]

£1.60 is still very cheap when Morecambe (top of the pie list) charge £3 and others are £2+. Yes they have gone up 50p but they are still cheap and recognised as a very good pie, what is there to moan about.

[Darlodave]

Cant beat a good pie.

[RH79]

they still seem good value to me. Much cheaper than most other grounds. Now if only they wqould do a Taylors porrk pie or a meat and potato pie mmmmmmmmmmmmm

[mikkyx]

they still seem good value to me. Much cheaper than most other grounds. Now if only they wqould do a Taylors porrk pie or a meat and potato pie mmmmmmmmmmmmm

Get that in the ideas thread! I'd pay serious money for a Taylors pork pie, they're exquisite

[wylam_rangers]

they still seem good value to me. Much cheaper than most other grounds. Now if only they wqould do a Taylors porrk pie or a meat and potato pie mmmmmmmmmmmmm

Get that in the ideas thread! I'd pay serious money for a Taylors pork pie, they're exquisite

Me too !

[aveda]

And me, esp with mushy peas

[cameron-darlo]

tbh thats bull s***, the pies at newcastle are alot nicer than darlos pies!

[RUMPLESTILTSKIN]

Cant beat a good pie.

But you can beat a good carpet and a good wife.

[Hawkeye]

The best pie I've had was a chicken balti pie at an away ground somewhere. It was a fairly new stadium - I remember the pie I had there but not the team whose stadium it was...

EDIT: I think it was Rushden & Piemonds

[divas]

The best pie I've had was a chicken balti pie at an away ground somewhere. It was a fairly new stadium - I remember the pie I had there but not the team whose stadium it was...

EDIT: I think it was Rushden & Piemonds

i had a lovely lasagne at kiddermincester, their catering was done by a local butcher.