Trying their luck with new pie

At the Cafe 35 counter ready to serve their legendary pies are, from left, Jan Whaitiri, Muriwai Carlson and owner Peter Cunningham. Picture by Rebecca Grunwell

Tokomaru Bay cafe owner Peter Cunningham was busy sandbagging to keep floodwaters away from his business on Friday but not before entering the Bakels NZ Supreme Pie Awards.

At Café 35, Peter Cunningham has had the odds stacked against him and his partner Sue in recent months with cyclone damage to the region and persistent rain.

Last week they were closed for three out of five days, and in the two years they have owned the business, they have had to be closed for five months.

He knows though that when the sun comes out pie sales go up and are the biggest part of the business, especially in the summer holidays.

When they bought the business it came with three pie recipes including the legendary paua pie. Since then they’ve developed three new recipes to add to the menu.

“We take all our pies very seriously and the paua pie has had all the attention, so we thought it might be nice to shed some light on another pie for our first time entry because you can only enter one pie,” Peter said.

“We’ve just started up a new brunch time menu to add another string to our bow. Paua is our biggest selling pie and to that we’ve added a pulled pork belly pie; mince and cheese — but not your standard style,  we’ve tweaked it and added some secret ingredients; mushroom, blue cheese and spinach, our vegetarian option; smoked fish; and steak, stout and mushroom.”

The steak, stout and mushroom recipe is an old Irish recipe, again with a few tweaks.

“It’s a three-hour cook and we put a lot of care and love into all our pie recipes. The stout’s a tenderising agent as well as the flavour and then we add in a few little things which shall not be disclosed —it’s a rich, dark filling with more than one mushroom in it.”

This is the pie the cafe will send off for judging.

“We get people from Bluff to Kaitaia and visitors have sent some pies to San Francisco and lots of people take them to Australia. So it would be absolutely wonderful to do well in the Pie Awards and bring in more people.”

All entries are judged with an entry number and then after judging they are matched up with the entry details.