On Friday night Dougie was up from Hamilton and I put on my best wingman outfit for a night on the tiles. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I was unable to find Dougie a suitable woman, and most of the ones I did introduce him to failed to be seduced by his charms – these charms mostly consisting of clasping the young woman around her waist and squeezing at her rib cage like an angry crab.
The night ended predictably with a 2am pie at Jervois Road BP, which I would review for you if I could remember how it tasted. I do remember telling the attendant that I wouldn't mind a vegetarian pie if he had one, to wit Dougie looked at me as though I had just asked the guy for a slow dance and some light mouth kissing.
I'm suspicious of mystery pie meat, and even when disorientated by the fog of alcohol this suspicion remains. As documented elsewhere, I spent almost 20 years as a vegetarian, and when I took meat back up last year I certainly didn't do it in order to have access to the broom-swept offal casings picked off the floor at the Huttons Factory.
Today I discovered a very good pie containing very good meat, and again it was in West Lynn. My friend Kareen, who is currently keeping up her energy as a new mum by devouring her own weight in baked goods each day, put me onto Mamata Bakehouse, next to Harvest. Not only do they bake their own pies, but they use organic meat from the legendarily excellent West Lynn Butcher.
I bought a kilo of blade steak from that butcher for $16 on Monday so god knows how Mamata is managing to turn out pies containing same for $4.20 a pop. But they are, and the pies are delicious. They do all sorts of vegetarian/vegan things too I think, but I didn't really ask them about that seeing as how their initial curt responses to my questions about their pies didn't really encourage further conversation. Good on them though, if I was making pies that good I probably wouldn't want to share the secrets either.
So I've only eaten the Steak Pie, and now I want to go back and try the rest. I've got that feeling you get when you hear your first song by an artist and you really love it, and you're excited because now you've got the whole rest of the album to listen to. And then someone tells you that this artist has about ten records they made before this one and you realise that you've still got all of those ahead of you to discover too. Do people still call them records?
If only Mamata was open at 2am on Friday morning. But then they'd need a nightpay drawer and would have to start selling pornographic magazines and refilling LPG tanks just to make ends meet, and I think you'll agree that all of those changes would rather ruin the experience.
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