The Pie Cart

Pies at the Café de Wheels

It was my first visit to the LG Arena at Birmingham, and I was surprised at the variety of food on offer. There was a separate queue for fish and chips, hot dogs, hamburgers or whatever you wanted. I joined the queue for Pie and Mash, and was delighted to learn that the pies were ‘baked to an Australian recipe, with British ingredients’.

Oh, my word!

A crunchy crust, filled with meaty, spicy goodness. And, served with a scoop of mashed potatoes, mushy peas and onion gravy. Exactly the same as you can get in Sydney, at Harry’s Café de Wheels, near the Naval base at Wooloomooloo … there, such a dish is called a ‘Tiger’, after the original owner of the iconic pie cart, Harry ‘Tiger’ Edwards.

For me, those pie carts sum up all that’s democratic and egalitarian about Australia. They became a meeting place where cabbies, policemen and other workers rubbed shoulders with theatre patrons in formal evening wear, musicians, politicians and businessmen.

One ex-sailor recalled once seeing a Captain in full dress uniform sitting on a nearby wall eating his pie, for Navy personnel were Harry’s best customers. They liked it so much that, in 1978 they decided to mark the 40^th Anniversary of the opening of the Café de Wheels in a rather unusual way.

It was officially commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy as one of its ‘unsinkable’ ships, HMAS Harry’s !!

Café de Wheels is probably the best-known pie stall … Colonel Harlan Sanders, of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame ate three ‘Tigers’ there, and declared Harry’s pies were the best he’d ever tasted . But, pie carts actually started in Adelaide.

An English ex-sailor called Gibbs opened his pie stall on the corner of King William Street and Rundle Street in 1864, looking to cater for workers in search of a wholesome, but inexpensive meal. Nowadays, that site is probably the most trafficked street corner in Adelaide, and the last place you want to stand around eating a pie.

But, only a short step away, Balfour’s Pie Cart still trades on most nights. It’s still a cart, too; Harry’s is now a static stall … the original cart is in Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum. Balfour’s speciality is the ‘pie floater’, peculiar to South Australia, and consists of a pie in a bowl of pea soup. And, it’s claimed the pie floater is the cheapest meal to be had in Adelaide … which is probably why the pie cart’s pitch is just outside the Casino.

It’s not just a pie, it’s a memory, too. There’s another place in England sells the Aussie pie; Jumbuck’s, on Bournemouth pier. Just one bite, and I was instantly transported to the banks of the Murray River, waiting for the Murray Princess … and trying not to share our pies with an over-importunate pelican.

The pie research isn’t over yet. In July, we’re visiting Queensland, and one of the first things I’ll do there is check out the pies.

 

This post has been entered into the Grantourismo and HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition

 

http://grantourismotravels.com/2010/05/05/grantourismo-travel-blogging-competition-may

www.homeaway.co.uk.