Greg Bruce goes in search of Auckland's best pies

A pie. Photo / Janna Dixon

Greg Bruce goes in search of Auckland's best pie.

When I was a child there were two types of pie: mince and steak. They were the same but mince was wetter. Are things any better now?

Richoux Patisserie
119 Main Highway, Ellerslie
Steak, cheese and jalapeno, $6
This is a well-curated pie for an East Auckland demographic that is fundamentally conservative but believes itself otherwise. The jalapenos were big and juicy, thick discs offering not just a surprising amount of heat but also flavour. The construction and interiority was solid and dependable. The jalapenos were big and juicy. I didn't hate it but when you think critically about this pie, you realise it would have been way better as a taco.

Daily Bread
16 Williamson Ave, Grey Lynn
Mint and mutton, $7.50
There's a boldness about an upmarket establishment's use of mutton that I appreciate. Yes, the establishment is saying, "We know this word is an emotive callback to the hellish midweek stews of your suburban childhood but we are better at cooking than your mum." Pairing it with mint, an ingredient more traditionally paired with lamb, is a way of doubling down, of saying: "We'll decide what mint is and isn't traditionally paired with." That is an extremely cocky thing to say but cockiness is at least an antidote to blandness. All this is irrelevant because the mutton was ferociously dry. It was like eating a pieful of sand, dried by both wind and sun, placed for hours next to a high-powered dehumidifier, then left overnight in a hot oven in the Kalahari.

One of the pies at Daily Bread. Photo / Getty Images

Oliver's Bakehouse
299 Kepa Rd, Mission Bay
Mince, $4.20
The annual pie awards have a category called "Mince and gravy". Imagine being appointed a judge for the pie awards, calling your parents to tell them the news and then having to say you're overseeing the mince and gravy, at which point they feel obliged to say, "Oh, that's great honey," then there's a long silence until they mercifully change the subject. Presumably all mince pies have gravy in them although certainly none advertise it and nor should they.

This pie was an enormous weight and was heaving with meat. Two or three bites into its dark interior, I was desperate for respite, for some air, lightness, a sense of hope. There was none. After less than two minutes in that pie, I became overwhelmed, sank to the bottom of its mass of meaty liquid, drowned and was never seen again.

Mustard Kitchen
5 Morningside Drive, Sandringham
Steak, ale and cheese, $7.50
You order a pie with "ale" in it because of the way it sounds, not because of the way it tastes, which is moribund. The name conjures rainy nights in Dublin pubs with a knife and fork and a conspicuously distressed paperback copy of the James Joyce Reader. I ate mine in Morningside, in my car, which smelled of the festering milk I had spilled on the carpet a week earlier. While eating, I read the hate-filled bile of Twitter. The pastry was fair enough; the meat was okay and not unflavourful. It wasn't overflowing with gravy. It was hard to say what was wrong with it. Maybe my wife said it best: "I don't like hunks of meat. It feels to me like dog food."

Blue Rose
414 Sandringham Rd, Sandringham
Hangi pie, $6.50
Given our national obsession with pies, the lack of adventure in the New Zealand pie world is staggering. Mince and steak still ooze over everything and most flavour variations seem based on gastronomic eccentricity rather than careful design. So when I ordered the hangi pie at Blue Rose, the words felt so natural in my mouth, I wondered why I had spent 43 years never saying them. The first bite confirmed to me the rightness of it. It was like coming home. The big, soft vegetables, the densely braided pastry crust, the giant squares of pork and the earthiness all spoke to me of an essential connection. Three-quarters of the way through the pie, I had to pull out a dry hard hunk of pork and eat it in small bites. I assume this wasn't intended.

Muzza's Pies
55 Richardson Rd, Mt Albert
Steak plum and blue cheese, $6.50
Muzza's pies are legend, as evidenced by the fact that when I showed up at 1pm on a weekday, their enormous and variegated pie warmer was almost completely empty. Fortunately, one of the remaining three pies was the steak, plum and blue cheese, which in its opposition to Kiwi pie conservatism sounded perfect - which it wasn't. It was cracked across the bottom and structurally incontinent. It approached my mouth with what appeared to be physical repulsion, which I also felt. The plum looked like jam but both it and the blue cheese were scant and bland. By halfway through, the pie achieved full pastry failure. I needed cutlery to eat the rest. The meat was tender, I guess. Rather than finish it, I took it to the sink and squeezed the remaining portion between my hands, watching it deform and degrade as it oozed into the sink. It was the happiest that pie had made me.

The Baker's Cottage
2 New Bond St, Kingsland
Butter chicken, $6.50
This place was heaving with people and operating three payment windows - a good sign, I thought wrongly. The pastry was thick and light, the butter chicken sauce a bright, gummy, infantilising orange, concealing the occasional surprise bit of meat. There was no subtlety or charm about this pie but at least it wasn't mince.

A very attractive pie.

Wild Bean, Lunn Ave
110 Lunn Ave, Mt Wellington
Steak and cheese, $4.10
As I arrived at the filling, I felt sad. Here I thought: "Here I am, eating another pie." It was so uninspiring and unimaginative, so saucy and weak-cheesed. What about some spices or anything else of gastronomic interest? What about freshness, lightness, or some attitude? Halfway through, repulsed not so much by this specific pie but by the collective failure of this city's pie-ness so far, I took it to the sink and squeezed out the gooey meat and filmy paste, leaving just the succulent pastry, which I tried to eat but couldn't. That night, I had my first pie dream. I bought one from a supermarket. I didn't want to eat it; I dreaded eating it; I ate it regardless. I wondered what was wrong with me. I didn't tell anyone.

Cazador
854 Dominion Rd, Mount Eden
Pork shoulder and leek, $9.50
I first went to Cazador on a weekday at 1.30pm. They had sold out of pies. I went the next day at 12.20pm. Again, they had sold out. A few days later I went at 11.30am.
"Do you have any pies?" I asked.
"Yes," they said.
"Great," I said, "I'll have the wagyu beef, please."
"Sorry," they said, "It's sold out."
No bother - the pork shoulder sounded as good and would, at least, be something different. As I entered through the pastry, I arrived at an airy interior half-full of slow-cooked, tender meat, moist and tasty. I felt my mood lift. The pork was so earthy, rich and luscious I felt like it should have been eaten alone, with the door locked, after my wife had gone out, with my phone on private mode. I wanted to stop eating and save some for later but I couldn't. The crunchy golden pastry retained its structural integrity throughout, the meat retained its uniform excellence, the flavours gambolled in my mouth like the happy animals they no doubt once were. As I ate, I realised this pie had been made by someone who cares and it struck me how seldom this week that had appeared to be the case. This tasted like art and art had never tasted so good.

Scratch
1/5 Graham St, Auckland
Beef cheek and blue cheese, $10
Beef cheek, like mutton, is a confident ingredient. No right-thinking person has ever felt excited at the thought of cow mouth. There was, however, an ease and softness to the flavour and texture of the meat that allowed one to forget its provenance. The blue cheese was strong and the blue cheese was good. The moisture content of the meat precluded the need for an ocean of nutritionally questionable gravy. Close examination revealed micro-grated carrot integrated into the meat in such small quantities as to be not just nearly invisible but also untasteable - its role as quiet counterweight to the fatty excesses of the meat and cheese. Everything about the pie suggested Scratch think of their pies as objects of love, rather than high-margin delivery devices for low-cost fats. The base was soggy, though, suggesting they don't always think like that.