Monday 26 February 2018

British Pie Week - Birmingham Pie Night Announced!

The countdown to British Pie Week continues with our most exciting announcement yet! Pierate are going to rummage and pillage the pies at Pieminister Birmingham as we host a Pierateer Takeover in British Pie Week 2018!


Pierateer Rob visiting Pieminister Birmingham
Pierateer Rob visiting Pieminister Birmingham
Being held from 5:30-7:30pm on Tuesday 6th March, the night will be a chance for pie fans across the Midlands and friends of the Pierateers to catch up on what's been going down on the Pierate Ship, and most importantly to eat and rate some delicious pies! It's going to be a great way to kick off British Pie Week 2018 and comes just a day before we go to the 10th annual British Pie Awards to provide our live feed of all the pie action!

Pieminister Birmingham at 16 Waterloo Street
For those who don't know, Bristol pie giant Pieminister opened up a shop in Birmingham city centre in mid-2017 and we've frequented it a number of times already. However we certainly hadn't waited until they opened a shop in Birmingham before rating one of their pies, for we have rated 19 Pieminister pies in total and one of our very first reviews over 8 years ago was from Pieminister!

Since then we've tried some of their "Pie Election" winners (when pie fans got to choose which old favourites to bring back to the menu for British Pie Week 2015) and we were even crazy enough to try their Cricket pie last year! Yes, that's right - it had actual whole insects in it!!

So here's the details of the pie night and how you can get involved:

Kick off 5:30pm
Delicious pies on offer at Pieminister - we've rated 19!
We'll be arriving at the Pieminister Birmingham store at about 5:30pm, where we'll have some dedicated Pierateer Takeover tables set aside for us! (We advise you book up to avoid disappointment!)

Pick your pie!
While there are a whole host of pies to choose from on their menu, as it will be British Pie Week the shop has a special veggie pie-motion on the Tuesday - whereby meat free pies are only £2 when you buy a side. This includes their new vegan pie, called "Kevin!"

Who rate all the Pies?!
During the two hours Pierateer Rob will be around to chat pies, give you a bit of info about how to rate a pie on the 7 Cs of pie rating, as well as a brief update on what we've been up to recently! And if he can, he'll try to answer your pie-related questions (like when is a pie not a pie?!) Just look out for him in his black Pierate t-shirt and don't be afraid to come up and say hi!

And while we'd be delighted to see a few of you there on the Tuesday, if that date or time doesn't suit you then don't forget that British Pie Week lasts all week and the Pieminister restaurants up and down the country have the following fab pie-motions on, a different one each day. See the graphic below (click on it to make it bigger!) and there's more info at www.pieminister.co.uk/pieweek/



This pie night is open to friends plus readers of our pie blog and entry is free - you just pay the pie shop for your food and drinks as normal - but to attend we advise you ring and book into the Pieminister Birmingham Store on 0121 285 3743 (as places in the restaurant are limited).

We hope to see some of you there!



In the meantime, you can find out more about The Pierateers or about what we've been up to in previous British Pie Weeks on the world's leading pie review blog! Plus we'll soon be posting our British Pie Week #PiePledge article - with our full plans for British Pie Week - but for now why not watch our short video clip to find out how you can get involved in British Pie Week too?




Pierate is a pie review website charting a course to find the ultimate pie. For all the pies we have reviewed have a look at our Pie Rankings or find pies of a particular flavour under Pies: Categorised.

Make sure you
and let us know your thoughts!
continue reading "British Pie Week - Birmingham Pie Night Announced!"

Friday 16 February 2018

British Pie Week 2018 - Everything you need to know!

With British Pie Week just around the corner and Pierate - Pie Reviews becoming the leading promoter of the pie this British Pie Week, we thought you might want to find out everything you should know about the greatest week in pie!


British Pie Week 2018When is British Pie Week?

British Pie Week is held the first full week of March, which this year is 5th-11th March 2018.

What is British Pie Week?

Originally set up by a pastry maker as a way to sell more of their pastry, it is now Britain’s main celebration of pie! Pubs, restaurants, pie shops and more have used British Pie Week to run com-pie-titions, pie specials and the like (so why not ask what your local pie-selling pub is doing to celebrate pie week?), while supermarkets sometimes use the week to discount their pie ranges. The British Pie Awards have even moved their awards to this week, to coincide with British Pie Week, and this year celebrate their 10th year!

However it’s also an excuse for pie lovers like the Pierateers to do various pie stunts and for the average pie fan to excuse their pie eating for a week! (“Well it’s Pie Week, so I have to have a pie!!!”)

British Pie Week Pierate
British Pie Week 2018 is from 5th to 11th March!
How can I get involved?

Well, the pies the limit! Of course the more traditional ways include eating a pie from a pie shop or pub, or making your own pie at home. The more adventurous might host friends for a “pie night” – much like we are doing with our Pierate Birmingham Pie Night – or do some crazy pie stunt like only eating pies for a day (which we’ve done numerous times) or create an unusual filling for a pie – like we did with our Pie-thon (python meat pie).

Python pie
The infamous Python meat pie!

PIE-LIGHTS OF PAST BRITISH PIE WEEKS

During British Pie Week 2014 we Pierateers consumed a quite incredible 55 pies and you can see the breakdown right here! There were so many highlights that we had to do a whole day-by-day account of it, including a Python pie, a day of just eating apple pie and Pierateer SJL eating 21 pies - one for every meal of British Pie Week.

In fact, Pierateer SJL didn't just eat a pie for every meal but he proved that you can eat pie and lose weight!!! Yes, we can hardly believe it either!

In 2015 we raised the bar even higher by consuming a whopping 71 pies between 2 Pierateers! This included a Pieathon (seeing how long we could just eat pies for) and Rob eating pie for 67% of his diet that week!


When did it all start?

British Pie Week was created by a pastry company in 2007 to sell more pastry, but it seems that company have now ditched the idea, with the lucrative www.britishpieweek.co.uk webpage now just re-directing to their main pastry website and their @BritPieWeek twitter account not having been updated since March 2016!

This means the new home of British Pie Week is really www.pierate.co.uk, who don’t care about making money or selling more pastry, but want to celebrate the pie – with well over 600 pies already rated and numerous pie-related stunts highlighting their love of pie! For more information on what Pierate have got up to over the years since first celebrating British Pie Week in 2011, check out our dedicated British Pie Week page!

British Pie Week Pierate Pie
The Pierate Logo Pie made for us in British Pie Week 2014!
Find out more about this Nice Pie here.
How can Pierate help me this British Pie Week?

Well, if you haven’t already, we’d suggest you take a look at our Countdown to British Pie Week article! There you can find a countdown timer to tell you to the second exactly how long you have left to wait until British Pie Week 2018, alongside other useful Pie Week info!

In addition, you can browse our Pie Rankings of over 600 pies rated and ranked so that you can avoid the bad ones and grab the best ones, plus we have a pie pun dictionary (so you can pun-ctuate your conversation in pie week) and more pie trivia than you can shake a stick at! We truly are the home of the pie review at www.pierate.co.uk and you can find out more about the piefessionals (pie experts) in our About Us section!

Finally, if you’re a pie maker or pie seller and have any special promotions for British Pie Week, get in touch with us and we can celebrate your British Pie Week offers right here! Either send us an email to pierateship@yahoo.co.uk or tweet us @pierateers to let us promote your pie week plans!


So whatever you’re up to this British Pie Week, we hope you have pie and enjoy it! For more ideas, why not check out our #PiePledge video below? We'll be posting our Pierate #PiePledge article soon!



RAS

Pierate is a pie review website charting a course to find the ultimate pie. For all the pies we have reviewed have a look at our Pie Rankings or find pies of a particular flavour under Pies: Categorised.

Make sure you 
and let us know your thoughts!
continue reading "British Pie Week 2018 - Everything you need to know!"

Monday 12 February 2018

British Pie Week 2018 Countdown

The countdown to British Pie Week has begun!


British Pie Week 2018 - which runs from Monday 5th March to Sunday 11th March - is now less than 3 weeks away and we're busy at Pierate HQ making our final pre-pie-rations for the big event! We're planning another Birmingham Pie Night (like the Pie Night we had in 2017) and once again we'll be attending the British Pie Awards, which will be happening in British Pie Week too!

British Pie Week Pierate
British Pie Week 2018 is from 5th to 11th March!
Some of you may have spotted our article recently on 23rd January for America's National Pie Day - where Americans spend a whole day celebrating the pastry beauties.

But in Britain this is simply not enough! We can't compress all our pie-excitement into one day! Oh no! We need a whole week to celebrate and enjoy the wonder of pie, which is why we are proud backers and - some would argue - the strongest advocates of British Pie Week! Yes, it's a week dedicated to pie!




It's official! The British Pie Week 2018 Logo has been launched - and almost 1,000 of you have already viewed our article about it! Check it out in our "British Pie Week 2018 Logo Launch" article!


Some of you may well have come across British Pie Week before, which has in fact been around since 2007 as the ingenious marketing spin off of pastry company "Jus-Rol" - and they managed to bag the lucrative web domain www.britishpieweek.co.uk to encourage pie makers up and down the land to get involved. However in an obscure turn of events, it appears they have ditched this lucrative web domain again this year to re-direct straight to the generic Jus-Rol website and no real mention of pies or pie week! With the @BritPieWeek twitter account having not tweeted since March 2016 it appears Jus-Rol may have had their pie and eaten it, meaning we may be defaulted to be the premier resource for pie advice this British Pie Week!!!

And while others may have used British Pie Week to just promote some pastry, as good as it is, we at Pierate are dedicated to promoting THE PIE!

That's why on Pierate you won't just find an encouragement for you to make a pie this British Pie Week - though we certainly do encourage you do! We don't just suggest a reci-pie or two - though we plan to do that as well! We don't even just encourage you to go out and eat a pie (or two) during British Pie Week. We go above and beyond!

British Pie Week Pierate Pie
The Pierate Logo Pie made for us in British Pie Week 2014!
Find out more about this Nice Pie here.
We aim to be the pie experts you turn to for all your pie rating and eating needs during British Pie Week and beyond! With over 600 pies rated and reviewed on our unique 7 Cs pie rating system, we commend pies to you, tell you which ones to avoid, and give you the low down on what we think makes the perfect pie!

PIE-LIGHTS OF PAST BRITISH PIE WEEKS

During British Pie Week 2014 we Pierateers consumed a quite incredible 55 pies and you can see the breakdown right here! There were so many highlights that we had to do a whole day-by-day account of it, including a Python pie, a day of just eating apple pie and Pierateer SJL eating 21 pies - one for every meal of British Pie Week.

In fact, Pierateer SJL didn't just eat a pie for every meal but he proved that you can eat pie and lose weight!!! Yes, we can hardly believe it either!

In 2015 we raised the bar even higher by consuming a whopping 71 pies between 2 Pierateers! This included a Pieathon (seeing how long we could just eat pies for) and Rob eating pie for 67% of his diet that week!


Also on 7th March we'll once again be involved in the British Pie Awards, where we have helped judge the pies for many years. Check out our Countdown to the 10th British Pie Awards article for more info! So whatever pie (or pies!) you enjoy in British Pie Week, we hope it's a good one that rates well on the 7 Cs of pie rating! If you need any ins-pie-ration, you can of course see the hundreds of pies we've rated on our pie blog via our Pie Rankings or our Pies Categorised!

Why not watch our short video clip to find out how you can get involved in British Pie Week too! For more ins-pie-ration see our #PiePledge article!






Pierate is a pie review website charting a course to find the ultimate pie. For all the pies we have reviewed have a look at our Pie Rankings or find pies of a particular flavour under Pies: Categorised.

Make sure you 
and let us know your thoughts!
continue reading "British Pie Week 2018 Countdown"

Wednesday 7 February 2018

Falling sales see Square Pie into administration

Falling trade and rising rents, food and staffing costs have sadly seen Pierate Recommended pie maker Square Pie go into administration, and with that the sad loss of 50 pie jobs in its five restaurants in London and Birmingham.


While it has to be admitted that the Birmingham store was never regularly frequented by Pierateer RAS, the loss of yet another pie shop in the city (following the closure of Urban Pie a few years ago) is hard to swallow. It has to be asked "What is happening to all our pie shops?", with these closures following on from a fall in the number of traditional London Pie and Mash shops over the last few years as highlighted by fellow pie fanatics and friends of the blog the Pie n Mash Club, who have documented all the closed pie and mash shops.

Square Pie Review
The last we'll see of the Square Pie box
It was only 18 months ago that the new Square Pie shop opened in Birmingham to great fanfare, with over 1,000 of you reading our live blogging of the opening in Grand Central. Based above the main New Street train station in the heart of Birmingham, it was great to have an established and Pierate Recommended pie brand such as Square Pie in the centre of the city. Now it appears all will be left is the wholesale business, which sells pies to a number of major supermarkets. You can read more about Square Pie going into administration on the Big Hospitality website.

However all we can really be glad of is that since Square Pie opened their last store, the pie scene has improved in Birmingham with a number of top pies available in local pubs and a new Pieminister store opening. And with 4 London stores closing, we hardly need to remind you that some of our top 10 pies in our 600+ pie rankings are available in London, with MyPie London and Piebury Corner accounting for half of our top 10! Here's hoping we don't hear of any more pie shop closures any time soon, especially with British Pie Week only a few short weeks away!

Grand Central Birmingham Pie Shop
Grand Central in Birmingham City Centre, which was home to Birmingham's Square Pie shop
For a trip down memory lane, you may want to read when we rated Square Pie as Pierate Recommended as we celebrated eating our 100th rated pie there down in London back in 2012, and in 2013 when we rated their Chicken, Leak and Wiltshire Ham pie at 5.58/7, which was another Pierate Recommended effort.

RAS

Pierate is a pie review website charting a course to find the ultimate pie. For all the pies we have reviewed have a look at our Pie Rankings or find pies of a particular flavour under Pies: Categorised.

Make sure you
and let us know your thoughts!
continue reading "Falling sales see Square Pie into administration"