Choux Choux Patisserie - Steak & Mushroom Pie

Choux Choux Patisserie | 12 Byron Street, Bangalow NSW

Touting traditional French training and employing these techniques, owners of Choux Choux Patisserie have helmed this 50+ year old bakery for the past 5 years. In an area where felafel and lentil burgers seem more likely than the iconic pie, this place gets a lot of airplay.

The shop is a mixture of 1950’s diner with a slick, modern display counter with a mix of French pastries, aussie cake shop treats, and of course, the pies.

The mince pie is bypassed in favour of a steak and mushroom pie. On opening the white paper bag something is awry. The base pastry is raw white, yet the cap, also a short crust pastry, is nicely browned. In the words of Julius Sumner Miller, why is it so?

Chomping into the pie, my co-taster notes with disappointment that this is not a steak and mushroom pie, rather a mince pie with mushroom, and the reason for selection had been based on not wanting a mince pie…

On closer reflection this is a mince pie with a few slices of mushroom on placed on top of the mixture before “capping” (you can see where the pastry has adhered to the mushroom in cooking). The mince mixture holds no trace of mushroom and in itself has little flavour. Clearly the traditional French techniques (or any technique for that matter) are dropped when it comes to filling these pies, and I’m left thinking of Gordon Ramsay rebuking a French chef in Chelmsford!

This is a lazy, lacklustre pie – it causes little offence, but does nothing to please either.

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The Bush Bakery Steak, pea & mushroom pie

Bush Bakery- 682 Leslie Vale Rd. Leslie Vale 7054 TAS tel: 03 6239 6196

My love affair with pies began when as a kid living in New Zealand for a couple of years I experienced a pie epiphany. It was during a rowing regatta at Lake Karapiro, home of the 1980 World Rowing Championships. After a particularly vigorous morning, famished I was dispatched to get edible fuel for my teammates & I returned triumphant, with some pretty deceptively ordinary looking General Foods meat pies. To this day I can still taste the meat, the pastry, the peas & the potatoes that made this pie stand out, highlighted in my hands by a column of golden light emanating from the heavens & with the chorus of angels announcing its excellence. The standard had well & truly been set.

Fast forward to me to today, living in southern Tasmania.

Picture a bucolic paddock, bordered by scraggy gums, a mob of sheep grazing contentedly at its edge whilst some riders on horseback trot past on a perfect Saturday morning ride. Out here in Leslie Vale, you might as well be a zillion miles from Hobart, which is just ½ hour away, but the pace is so much slower, moving to the rhythms of the country. Its here in this bucolic valley that the Bush Bakery can be found, a tin shed next to a house in a paddock.
I had heard many good things about this bakery from my neighbors but to my shame I had dismissed these endorsements as merely proud local chest-thumping. The pastie I had from this bakery was one of the best I have ever eaten so they had my attention.
As I mentioned, the bakery is a fairly modest tin shed erected next to family home. Several Mini Minors in the adjoining carport, in various condition indicate, to me at least, a passion of sorts, a good sign. Inside, the bakery is workmanlike, a packed pie oven conveys about 10 different varieties whilst the pastry counter displays many typically represented offerings that you would find at a traditional country bakery, the custard slice, the apple slice & the fruit tart etc.
Again I was to be surprised, the vanilla slice was the best I can ever remember having!
Perhaps Sticky et all better hightail it over here!
They provide hot or frozen pies only. My eyes were finally open to this place & I decided to stock up as I realized this was one out of the box.
We took a few pasties, sausage rolls & some pies.
Finally the pie in question was the bush bakery Steak, pea & mushroom pie $3.50.
Its pastry was as fine as the pastie which I had hoovered earlier. Buttery without being overwhelming & smelling as many do, rancid. The filling was good without being as inspiring as the pastry & presentation of the pie. It was light brown in colour, verging on the insipid however the great flavour made up for this. The meat was plentiful & very tender & it didn’t taste like a bunch of commercial pie seasonings were evident even though I did spy some beef booster in the ingredients panel of the same frozen pies.
All in all, the best Tasmanian pie I have reviewed.

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Chunky Beef and Mushroom Pie

Douglas Hot Bread & Cakes

43 Douglas St Noble Park VIC 3174 - map
ph: (03) 9547 7751

Look guys, it's not hard. It's one, maybe two types of pastry, with some meat and some gravy, maybe some vegies. It's not rocket science. So my question is this: WHY DO SO MANY OF YOU GET IT WRONG???

At first glance, this pie looked promising. A nice deep-dish pie, with a cute peaked cap. Unfortunately, like several men I dated in my 20's.. it didn't survive past the first winsome glance. On cutting it open, the cute, jaunty cap crumbled under the pressure. Second thing I noticed was that pie-aficionados nightmare... the filling stayed put. A clear sign of an over-abundance of gelatin or cornstarch. And it was barely luke warm

I suspect that a container of Home Brand "mushrooms in butter sauce" was used in the filling.

Look, I've blogged about these boring, tasteless piles of pap before, so I won't bore you with the blow-by-blow details. Suffice it to say that I cannot conceive a cooking technique that combines beef, mushrooms, pastry and a WHOLE lot of poppyseeds, and still manages to have no discernible flavour. None. Not a jot. Nothing buy a greasy mouth feel.

No stars.

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