It's hello pork pie for foodies

The pork pie, now graces the tables of the smartest metropolitan restaurants. Photo / Supplied

They were once a cheap snack shoved in farmhands' pockets to tide them through their long working days. But those times are long gone for the pork pie, which is enjoying a remarkable renaissance thanks to its reinvention as the ultimate in trendy snacks.

The pork pie, which had become a byword for heart disease, now graces the tables of the smartest metropolitan restaurants. Food experts credit its revived fortunes with a rejuvenated national appetite for local produce combined with a vast array of new takes on an old favourite from the country's burgeoning independent butchers sector.

Sales are climbing once again, based on measures of both value and volume. The pork pie market was worth £145 million ($298 million) in the year to end of November 2010, up 4 per cent by value according to the market analysts Kantar Worldpanel.

Chefs from Nigel Slater to Delia Smith have come up with new recipes for what Slater recently called "a thing of beauty". Restaurants including Butlers Wharf Chop House, in London, have recently added pork pies to their menus.

Although the snack suffered from years of bad press at the hands of the anti-obesity brigade, its reinvention as a gastronomic treat has improved its image.

Peter Charnley, secretary of the Pork Pie Appreciation Society, said: "It has perhaps less of a tag of being unhealthy and is instead something to savour and notice the difference between individual producers."

- INDEPENDENT