When Jamie Scott got bit by the travel bug, he never imagined he’d find a reason to stay away from his home in New Zealand. Then he came to Canada in 2006 and fell in love, but there was one problem — he couldn’t find authentic New Zealand meat pies anywhere.
“The first week I was here I was looking for them and couldn’t find anything, and eventually bought crappy ones from the grocery store and didn’t like them, couldn’t eat them,” says Scott. “So I phoned my mom and my nana, got a couple of recipes and blended it together and made a pie from there.”
Scott started South Island Pie Co. in 2013 and sells over 10 different flavours of meat pies. In case you were wondering, a standard authentic New Zealand meat pie is a hand-sized pie filled with diced or minced meat and gravy, and sometimes with onion, mushrooms or cheese. Scott describes it as being like “like a really tasty stew and a flaky puff pastry.”
The menu consists of traditional, speciality, herbivore and vegan meat pies, as well as sausage rolls. The traditional flavours remind Scott of his roots and are popular flavours in New Zealand like steak and cheese (The Wilkie) and minced meat (The Plain Old Faithful). South Island Pie Co. also sells monthly limited-edition flavours like the Butter Chicken Pie and Wild Boar Sausage Roll. Scott says the specialty flavours always sell well, however, his go-to is steak and cheese.
Scott shares a kitchen and staff with Honest Dumplings, and they make the pies weekly. He hopes one day to have his own bakery to sell the pies.
Shop South Island Pie Co. at local stores like Uproot Food Collective, The Italian Centre, Sobeys and Safeway or online at southislandpie.ca
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