Rating the steak football pie at Doncaster Rovers by Pukka Pies

Pukka Pie at the Keepmoat Stadium, Doncaster

Situated on the edge of town, the Keepmoat Stadium is your standard, new out-of-town football stadium that certainly impresses on the eye. But in these new, slightly monotonous out-of-town stadiums it therefore makes the little things, like the warm welcome given by the match day stewards and the posters they put up to welcome the away fans, that bit more personalised. Seeing a photo of Wycombe's new joint-top league goalscorer "The Beast" Akinfenwa on the wall as I walked into the away end of the Keepmoat Stadium was therefore a welcome addition, and it was good to see a decent selection of pies on offer too. The other familiar sign on the wall was for Pukka Pies, reassuring me that the pies should be of a decent quality.

After a reasonably long journey up to Doncaster I wasn't going to hang about, so after grabbing a steak Pukka Pie from the kiosk and taking a quick photo in my seat, I set about tucking into the crisp, golden flaky pastry. As is often the case with a hand-eaten Pukka, the meat and gravy has slightly tipped to the bottom of the pie, meaning the first bite or two were rather filling-lite. But it didn't take too long to get into the meaty steak chunks and the pie was well filled, not too soggy on the base and crisp on the lid. The capacity was decent, though not filled to the brim, so some points had to be deducted there. But overall, as with many a football Pukka Pie, it filled the hole well and didn't disappoint.

Cut through of the Steak Pukka Pie

The price of the pie was £3.30, which is on the more expensive end of the football pie price range (especially as it was a Pukka) but I would have happily had another. Certainly not the Don of all football pies, as can be seen in it's placement in the PIEremiership Table, but a decent effort none-the-less!

Pukka Pies Steak Pie
Score: 4.36/7
[Colour 4, Capacity 4.5, Consistency 4, Condition 5, Chewiness 5, Cheapness 3, Content 5]

We've rated over 600 pies, including a number of football pies

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More about us and our football pie pedigree:

Sam and Rob being interviewed by BBC Sport's Azi Farni Watch the video on the BBC Sport website

Regulars to our pie blog will know we're the world's leading pie review blog - featuring over 600 pie reviews with multiple football pie media appearances! In 2014 we joined BBC Sport's Azi Farni at Morecambe FC, who make some of the best pies rated on Pierate (let alone football grounds) to discuss what makes the perfect football pie! Watch us featuring in the BBC Price of Football video here.

Check out our PIEremiership article and you'll find that Morecambe FC's Globe Arena is certainly the place to be for top football pies! Top of our football pie league and winners of the British Pie Awards twice, Morecambe FC make their pies in the kitchen on site by hand, rather than just buying them in! Back of the net!!

RAS

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Plymouth Football Club - Ginsters Peppered Steak Pie

On the Pierate Ship we can be a bit cautious about the South West. It is the pasty heartlands and whilst there are many decent pasty products, we maintain that a pasty is not a pie. But of course, everyone agrees with us on this point, it is not like a pasty would ever win the British Pie Awards.....

Often, because of the dominance of pasties, our beloved pie can be squeezed out. Hence I had a bit of trepidation about heading South to Plymouth Argyle for the match against Wycombe Wanderers. Would they even sell any pies to add to the Pierate Football Pie League?

Entering the ground I started to worry, there were a lot of Ginster's adverts (they are even Argyle's main shirt sponsor). We have reviewed some Ginster's pies but they tend to be rare, with their fame mostly associated with the Cornish pasty. I needn't have worried, as well as a range of pasties they also had Ginster's Peppered Steak and Chicken Balti pies; a very wide range of pastry products. I opted for the Peppered Steak for £3.50, slightly more pricey than average for the size of pie (which was a bit smaller than a Pukka). It was presented well in an eco-friendly paper bag. This not only prevents adding to the mountain of plastic in our environment but also seemed to have allowed the pie to breath whereas football pies in plastic/polystyrene can often be soggy. It had been sat on a warm counter which had kept it hot. The good Condition that this pie was served in was the biggest success for the Plymouth pie. It seems like they have a well organised catering team, making sure the food is cooked at just the right time rather than sitting around for ages and becoming dried out which is often the case for other football pies. Taking the pie out of the bag it looked pretty good, although it had sagged in the middle. It also looked a bit 'top heavy' with the pastry lid extending wider than the rest of the pie to make it look bigger than it actually was. It looked quite different to the supermarket Ginster's steak pie that TJP previously reviewed and I was certainly hoping for a better score than the dismal 2.32 out of 7 which that version picked up!

Delving into the pie it was immediately obvious to me that it was better than TJP's version. The pastry was perfectly cooked, quite rare for a football pie and quite difficult when you are cooking hundreds at once. Hats off to the Plymouth catering team for that. The lid had a nice crunch to it with a slight biscuit taste. The sides were softer, but not too soft, having also been properly cooked. There were identifiable pieces of steak, although they were perhaps a bit small compared to other 'steak' pies. There were also unexpected pieces of potato, which were fine and added some variety although I did initially think they were massive pieces of fat. There was a nice thick sauce, enough to keep it moist but not an excessive amount like you get in a Pukka pie. This was good because it meant the pie could be eaten by hand without making a mess, ideal for a football pie. The pastry also held together well. However, there was a lack of filling given the small capacity and the fact that the lid had sagged.

My main note of caution was that when they say 'peppered steak' they mean PEPPERED Steak. There really was a big hit of pepper. I love pepper but I think it might be a bit much for some people. You could actually see the big pieces of pepper within the pie. The peppery taste in combination with the potato reminded me of that classic Cornish pasty taste! Perhaps no surprise when it is Ginster's making the pie. It was a really nice change and I did enjoy this pie, but it is not something I would be looking to eat regularly outside of the football. Given how well it was cooked, this pie claims a reasonable mid-table position in the Pierate Football Pie League.


Plymouth/Ginsters (Peppered Steak)
4.45/7
SJL

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Luton Town/Pukka Pies - Cheese & Onion Disaster Review

Sometimes it can take a while to be able to talk about a traumatic experience and the delay in providing this review is one of those occasions. In a bid to boost the number of clubs in our football pie league (the Pieremiership) I made the trek from my home in Gloucester over to Luton for the top of the table clash with Wycombe on a Tuesday night in February. Despite arriving in Luton quite early I delayed going into the stadium which is an absolute school boy error when it comes to pie reviewing. Getting in early you should get the best choice of pies and they are less likely to have dehydrated in the hot locker. The reason for my delay is that I am a minor public transport geek these days. Luton has a bus on rails (busway) which I wanted to see. (Yes, such a thing does exist!) I enjoyed my trip on the busway and I can't really explain why. I know that I am so far from cool that I am probably contributing to melting of the polar ice caps, but I don't care!

In this case my trip on the busway wasn't worth it. Although I was still about 15 minutes before kick-off the away end was packed. All the Wycombe tickets had sold out because this was a tasty top of the table clash. But the food wasn't tasty. In fact it didn't really taste of anything, the food kiosk having completely sold out of hot food. This was very worrying, especially as I had arrived hungry! They pointed me in the direction of the bar which might have more food. I desperately hoped they would have something, having come all this way, to go home pie-less would have been heartbreaking. My spirits lifted when I eventually got into the crowded bar and saw what looked like a pie in the hot locker. They told me it was cheese and onion, really not my favourite but I wasn't going to be fussy as it was apparently the last pie available in the whole ground and they weren't going to get any more (or any other hot food), even at half-time! This seemed like a bizarre situation to be missing out on much needed revenue. I wondered whether there was perhaps some food in the home end and away fans were being treated worse (again).





Anyway, back to the pie. To be fair they did warn me it wasn't in a great condition (which is why it was left til last). But what they hadn't warned me about was that it wasn't actually a pie! Absolute disaster! It took the form of something I would describe as a 'slice' as sold en masse by companies such as Ginsters. Unfortunately this was not the first time that I have ended up with a slice instead of a pie and I have developed a bit of a reputation on the Pierate Ship! In my defence this has mainly been down to lack of clear advertising, although I don't think this excuse will wash with the rest of the crew. If you are familiar with Pierate you will know that this doesn't meet our definition of a pie because it doesn't have a lid. Therefore we are unable to give it a score, which is perhaps a let off for Luton because this was one of the worst products I have had the misfortune to come across whilst sailing the 7 Cs.

But you might be wondering why this was so bad. Not only was this not a pie, it was also the most disgusting pastry product I have had the misfortune to eat at a football ground. Even worse than the ASDA smart price pie I was sold at Cheltenham. I like the occasional bit of puff pastry but this was so dry and flakey it disintegrated to nothing. Then there was the burnt bottom which was practically inedible. But this wasn't the worst bit about this pie. The filling was absolutely vile. I have to admit, I don't often go for a Cheese & Onion pie, but I have had some that I liked as long as the right cheese is used. But this one was just full of liquid cheese the type of which you might find in a burger. I tend to refer to this as 'plastic cheese' and I am not convinced it is actually made of cheese at all. That said, I am quite happy to eat a little bit on a burger, BUT NOT THE WHOLE CONTENT OF A PIE! Who ever thought this congealed mess of cheesiness was a good idea?  The soft onion provided some respite but was also a bit overpowering. There was nothing to get your teeth into at all with this pie. It felt like eating a soggy bag of cheese & onion crisps.

Overall, you might gather than I wasn't impressed. But rather than not enter Luton into our the Pierate Football Pie League (The Pieremiership) I have decided to enter them on zero points, given that they failed completely with their pie delivery. Not entering them feels like letting them off the hook. Hopefully this will act as a warning to others who might think about going to a match at Luton!

This slice was advertised as a Pukka. I didn't want to believe it but having reviewed photos it looks identical to what they have called a Cheese & Onion 'pasty'. Clearly it is not a pasty either, I really think Pukka need to work on their understanding of different pastry products, a shame when they are one of the biggest pie producers in the country!

SJL

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Pie at the football!

Regulars to our pie blog know that the world's leading pie review blog - featuring over 600 pie reviews with multiple football pie media appearances - are fans of a pie at the football! We've talked about football pies in many articles, including giving a number of o-pie-nions on the results of the annual BBC Price of Football Survey that looks at the price of pies, had the chance to share our ex-pie-tise on BBC Radio, BBC TV (through our appearance on "Rip Off Britain") and even been in a pie-related video on the BBC Sport website!

But probably the best pie related video we've seen in a while - and the best save of the season thus far - happened recently, as captured on TV and posted on the BBC Sport website! A Scottish league footballer's wayward shot over the bar narrowly avoided taking out a fan carrying his pie and drink back to his seat due to the quick reactions of a fellow fan! In the video on the BBC Sport website you can see a leg pop out at the last minute to re-direct the ball and save him from a calamitous situation! The pie was saved and all remained well in the world due to the quick thinking of his fellow supporter. I'd like to think the guy walking down the stairs bought his life-saving friend a half-time pie as a way of saying thanks, but I guess we will never know!! Thanks to friend of the Pierateers Steve for sharing the video with us!

We've rated over 600 pies, including a number of football pies

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More about us and our football pie pedigree:

Sam and Rob being interviewed by BBC Sport's Azi Farni Watch the video on the BBC Sport website

Just over two years ago we joined BBC Sport's Azi Farni at Morecambe FC, who make some of the best pies rated on Pierate (let alone football grounds) to discuss what makes the perfect football pie! Watch us featuring in the BBC Price of Football video here.

Top of our pie league, Morecambe FC's Globe Arena is certainly the place to be for top football pies! They are also winners of the British Pie Awards twice, and while Head chef Graham Aimson has sadly moved on, the pies at Morecambe are still made in the kitchen on site by hand, rather than just buying them in! Great work!

RAS

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Rating the beef and onion football pie at Stevenage FC by Pukka Pies

Beef and Onion Pukka Pie Review at Stevenage FC

Following a trip to London for Christmas drinks recently, it seemed an obvious op-pie-tunity to tick off another football ground in the area in the search for football’s best pies. This time we visited the Lamex Stadium, home to League Two side Stevenage FC.

Heading through the turnstiles, I immediately walked past the food shack for the away end, which was already tens of people long. However I wasn’t going to risk missing out on pie by waiting til half time, going for some chips and one of the many pies on offer. You’ll see from the photo I was purchasing from the imaginatively named “Tea Bar 4” from a heavily taped up menu board (one wonders what was previously offered under the red tape?!) but the pies had remained at £2.50, which is very reasonable for a football pie these days.

The food menu at "Tea Bar 4" at Stevenage Football Club

The pie itself was a standard Pukka Pies Beef and Onion pie, but presented well in a white plastic tray with plastic fork. While I have to admit it was additional to my needs, as a pick-up-your-pie-in-your-hands-and-eat-it kinda guy, I did appreciate that the option was there for the, perhaps slightly more civilised among us, to eat from a tray using a fork! (Still, nothing will compete with Kate, the #AwayDayPieGirl, and her personalised metal football pie fork!)

Beef and Onion Pukka Pie Review at Stevenage FC

I said it before but I’ll say it again - pie, tray and fork for just £2.50 puts a lot of clubs to shame (many Premier League clubs charge well over £3 for just a pie of the same brand!) But the big question was how the pie rated!

The lid was golden and flaky, as I’d expect from a well-cooked Pukka Pie, though Sam and I have certainly been to enough football games to know all is not always well when it comes to just a golden topped pie lid! Digging into the content, the beef and onion flavour was nice – not too liquid a gravy and a nice meaty mince flavour, however the capacity of the filling wasn’t great and to my disappointment I did notice what I had feared…

Crisp base of the Beef and Onion Pukka Pie at Stevenage FC

Mince had started to solidify on the bottom crust of the pie, much like the meat encrusting on your saucepan base if you forget to keep stirring your bolognaise properly! A classic sign of over-bake on the base of a pie, which was confirmed when I turned the base over and saw the over baked base. No soggy bottom in sight here but the other end of the pie base spectrum with an overly crisp base that was rather too solid to easily bite through. It had formed an almost biscuity layer, much like the Pukka rated at Wycombe’s ground recently.

While I enjoyed the rest of the pie, that base was severely over baked and screamed of sitting in a hot locker for too long. Alas this is a regular criticism of football pies, sometimes exasperated in smaller grounds where there is only one main kitchen pumping out pies for the whole ground. Not the worst pie I’ve had at a football ground, but that still doesn’t help it get a great position in the PIEremiership table – our football pie league.

Pukka Pies Beef and Onion Pie
Score: 3.68/7
[Colour 5, Capacity 4, Consistency 3.5, Condition 2.5, Chewiness 3, Cheapness 4.5, Content 3.25]

We've rated over 600 pies, including a number of football pies

In the match itself, an end-to-end battle led to an entertaining but goal shy 0-0 draw between Stevenage and Wycombe Wanderers. The two best chances went Wycombe’s way, with a near comical goal from the Wycombe keeper Scott Brown who took a free kick from the half way line that looped over the keeper, hit the underside of the crossbar and almost went in bar a goal-line clearance, and an Akinfenwa header which hit the post and went wide. (Note: The BBC article incorrectly assigns the comical free kick to our defender, but being at the game I can confirm it was our keeper who took the free kick – you can’t miss his kaleidoscope kit, believe me!!)

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More about us and our football pie pedigree:

Sam and Rob being interviewed by BBC Sport's Azi Farni Watch the video on the BBC Sport website

Regulars to our pie blog will know we're the world's leading pie review blog - featuring over 600 pie reviews with multiple football pie media appearances! Two years ago we joined BBC Sport's Azi Farni at Morecambe FC, who make some of the best pies rated on Pierate (let alone football grounds) to discuss what makes the perfect football pie! Watch us featuring in the BBC Price of Football video here.

Check out our PIEremiership article and you'll find that Morecambe FC's Globe Arena is certainly the place to be for top football pies! Top of our football pie league and winners of the British Pie Awards twice, they make the pies in the kitchen on site by hand, rather than just buying them in! We recently interviewed previous Head Chef Graham Aimson on his new adventure, but hope the pies at Morecambe stay top of the league in his absence!

RAS

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It's not even the January football window yet and already we've had potentially the biggest shock transfer of the season. But no, it's not a multi-million pound star striker moving teams, or even a rising starlet making a big money move. In fact, it's football's loss because the biggest name in football pies has just made a shock transfer to 'try' his hand at rugby catering, as Mr Graham Aimson has moved from our number 1 football pie maker Morecambe FC!

Sam and Rob being interviewed by BBC Sport's Azi Farni Watch the video on the BBC Sport website

For those of you who aren't aware, two years ago we joined BBC Sport's Azi Farni at Morecambe FC, who make some of the best pies rated on Pierate (let alone football grounds) to discuss what makes the perfect football pie! Watch us featuring in the BBC Price of Football video here.

This had followed a previous visit to Morecambe to try out the pies at the League Two club, where we got our hands on the 'Steak & Ale', 'Chicken, Ham & Leak', 'Lamb & Mint' and 'Meat & Potato' pies, as well as the British Pie Awards winning Apple pie for dessert!

In fact the Steak and Ale pie wasn't just our favourite pie at Morecambe FC but it tops our Pieremiership Table, which ranks football’s best half time pies.

We've rated over 600 pies, including a number of football pies

So it is with some sadness that we heard this week that Graham Aimson, the man behind the pies as head chef at Morecambe Football Club, has moved down the road to cater at a local Rugby Club. We therefore caught up with him to find out more about his big transfer:

Graham Aimson with a tray of his football pies

1) We hear you've just moved role! What's the new job?

Head chef of Kendal rugby union club.

2) What are you most looking forward to there?

The challenge of building a reputation for another new stadium and hopefully exceeding what I achieved at Morecambe FC, the bonus that we have a restaurant and servers to operate as well as a banqueting suite, all bringing new and exciting challenges.

3) Will you be doing the same pies there or going to 'try' something new? (We can do rugby puns too!!)

Yes, we will be doing pies here but all pies will be developed for Kendal Rugby Club. I am trying to improve on my previous recipes to give Kendal RC there very own pies. I've been playing with pastry recipes and filling recipes. Although nothing out of the ordinary, what we are doing in the kitchen should hopefully be better than before!

4) Football and pies are well associated. Are you aware of many pies in rugby?

At this moment I've not heard of any special pies in rugby as yet, however, I'm hopeful that soon once words gets around, there will be some good competition just like in football!

5) What will you miss most about working at Morecambe? (Other than us Pierateers visiting for Morecambe v Wycombe games!!)

Obviously the Pierateers visiting is one of the highlights of the year that I will now miss. I will miss working with the great people I met working there, including a couple of footballers. The pie successes there were down to the whole kitchen team, and sadly at this moment we are not together. I deeply miss the brigade more than anything but hope we will be all together in the future once again as an award winning team! It is the team that made the pies what they were!




We certainly echo that it is a real team effort to make so many great pies for every Morecambe game and therefore wish Graham well in his new venture, while his old colleagues at Morecambe FC hold the fort. We're intrigued to know what the future will be for Morecambe FC's pies, as the only major English club we're aware of that make their own pies on the premises. We'll have to try and get along again soon to check the pies are still up to the same high standard!

What's also intriguing is that the British Pie Awards category for football pies is actually a "sports pie" category, so being a Rugby head chef now we could well see Graham try and win the award for two different pies in two different sports!

For now though, we'll leave you with a brief little video filmed on the day BBC Sport visited Graham and the team to find out more about his football pies, including their rather quirky new flavour at the time:



RAS

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Mansfield Town All Steak Pukka Pie Review

A rainy and windy Tuesday night in Mansfield is what being a football supporter is all about. Under those conditions anything can happen which adds to the excitement. While anything can happen, actually nothing extraordinary did occur when we visited for the 0-0 draw with Wycombe Wanderers, although the match was fairly entertaining. When the weather is terrible it makes the match day pie even more obligatory. Rob and I both opted for the classic Pukka All Steak pie option for £3, a pie we have reviewed many times before for our football pie league.

The All Steak Pukka Pie at the One Call Stadium

However, as is often the case at the football the quality was variable. It really was a game of two halves. My pre-match pie was extremely dry which provided a contrast to the extremely wet weather. Rob's was cooked fairly well, although also dry on the bottom. I found mine was so dry the pastry had actually gone quite chewy and was difficult to eat by hand. This was very different to other football pies I have had recently which had soggy and crumbly pastry due to microwave cooking. It seemed that my Pukka had been sat above a heater element in the hot locker which had caused the bottom to burn.



Given that I got my pie before the match it was impressive that they had managed to dry it out so badly. I wondered quite how long it had been sat around for. Mansfield claim to have the oldest football league ground, dating back to 1861. Perhaps this pie had been sat in the locker since 1919 when Mansfield first started playing there? I also wondered how likely food poisoning might be after Mansfield were previously bottom of the football league in terms of their food hygiene rating.


This at least did mean that my pie had been kept warm. The molten gravy proved frustrating as it slowed me down in my pie consumption. I find my desire to devour pies often causes me to bypass my common sense. I keep taking bites somehow expecting the pie to have cooled to a reasonable temperature in the seconds that have elapsed since my previous bite. Whilst the pastry was pretty terrible the filling was just as I have come to expect from Pukka. Ample amount of thick, beefy gravy made the pastry a little more palatable but as usual it was not ideal to eat by hand because the gravy oozed out. The steak pieces weren't huge or overly abundant but none were chewy. Rob however found the opposite with a few gristly pieces.

Overall, sadly the pies weren't leaving us rushing back for more. Despite my claim that I was going to get a second pie at half time, I waited until after the match to get another Pukka pie from Kev's Fish Bar whilst we sheltered from the rain. It was both cheaper and cooked much better!

This review really highlight that whilst a lot of grounds serve similar pies, the choice of how the pies are stored, cooked and kept warm makes a massive difference!

All Steak (Mansfield Town/Pukka)
3.75/7

SJL and RAS

We've rated over 600 pies, including a number of football pies

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More about us and our football pie pedigree:

Sam and Rob being interviewed by BBC Sport's Azi Farni Watch the video on the BBC Sport website

Regulars to our pie blog will know we're the world's leading pie review blog - featuring over 600 pie reviews with multiple football pie media appearances! Two years ago we joined BBC Sport's Azi Farni at Morecambe FC, who make some of the best pies rated on Pierate (let alone football grounds) to discuss what makes the perfect football pie! Watch us featuring in the BBC Price of Football video here.

Check out our PIEremiership article and you'll find that Morecambe FC's Globe Arena is certainly the place to be for top football pies! Top of our football pie league and winners of the British Pie Awards twice, Head chef Graham Aimson at Morecambe FC makes his pies in the kitchen on site by hand, rather than just buying them in! Top work Graham and the team!

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Rating the steak football pie at Port Vale FC by Wrights

Cross section of my Wrights Steak Pie

After a slightly fraught end to my journey to Stoke I finally paid for my ticket by card and got through the turnstiles, having realised I only had enough cash to either buy my ticket OR buy a pie – but not both! Schoolboy error!

In any case, the match at Vale Park – which was on a surprisingly sunny Saturday afternoon, unlike your typical “cold, wet Tuesday night in Stoke” that has become a bit of a cliché – was about to kick off when I arrived, hence there being absolutely no-one in the queue in front of me and free access to the food bar! After a slightly awkward conversation with a steward about why I was taking a photo of the food menu – “Are you lost?” “No… just taking a photo for a food blog I write…” – I ordered my Wrights Steak Pie and made my way to my seat behind the goal.

Matchday is Pie Day! Agreed!

Simply served in a silver foil tray, I could immediately tell why the lady at the bar gave me a few napkins to hold the pie in, as it was steaming hot! Clearly the hot locker had been doing its job, which gave me a few extra minutes to sit down, take a few photos and cheer the lads out before the whistle blew and I was ready to take my first bite!

The pie was pretty golden in colour and while not looking particularly large it was just £2.50, one of the cheaper football pies I’ve bought. I soon found out why…


Taking the pie out of the foil to take my first bite, the large overhang of lid pastry was immediately apparent. I took a first bite and all I got was quite dry, biscuity pastry. My second was hardly any better, and in fact it wasn’t until about bite four that I got anything resembling a meaty chunk and some proper gravy. The pastry overhang, in comparison to what was quite a small pie, was in my eyes far too large (if indeed needed at all), so I had to keep biting through in order to get to the meaty chunks in the middle!

Finally some flavour! In fairness, the meat and gravy was actually quite nice for a “just steak” pie. I turned the pie upside down and could see how small the base of the pie was in comparison to the lid. The base was significantly smaller and explained the experience of dry overhang pastry I’d suffered from in the first few bites. The base pastry was significantly softer and actually quite pleasant, so I focused on eating that with the meat and gravy. However that wouldn’t cut the mustard when it came to rating the pie, and one of the chunks of meat was also particularly chewy, which didn’t help either (though overall the meat and gravy was the redeeming feature!)

Soooo much pastry overhang on the two sides!!

In the end I struggled to finish the pie due to the excessive dry pastry edge and felt short changed at even £2.50 for a football pie. While the pie didn’t collapse in the way that my Wrights pie at Wolverhampton Wanderers had (reviewed in the article I wrote for Buzzfeed), it seemed to have gone the other way and been overly solid, especially the lid. Hopefully Wrights can find a happy medium next time!

Wrights Steak Pie
Score: 3.32/7
[Colour 4, Capacity 3, Consistency 2, Condition 3, Chewiness 3.25, Cheapness 3.5, Content 4.5]

We've rated over 600 pies, including a number of football pies

As for the match itself, Wycombe Wanderers dominated the vast majority of the match, cruising to a 3-0 lead within the first half hour. At that point I was seriously thinking I’d see Wycombe score more goals than this pie would score on the 7 Cs! But with just 5 minutes to go and the points seemingly in the bag, Wycombe coughed up two quite simple goals and had to hang on for a 3-2 win in the end!

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More about us and our football pie pedigree:

Sam and Rob being interviewed by BBC Sport's Azi Farni Watch the video on the BBC Sport website

Regulars to our pie blog will know we're the world's leading pie review blog - featuring over 600 pie reviews with multiple football pie media appearances! Two years ago we joined BBC Sport's Azi Farni at Morecambe FC, who make some of the best pies rated on Pierate (let alone football grounds) to discuss what makes the perfect football pie! Watch us featuring in the BBC Price of Football video here.

Check out our PIEremiership article and you'll find that Morecambe FC's Globe Arena is certainly the place to be for top football pies! Top of our football pie league and winners of the British Pie Awards twice, Head chef Graham Aimson at Morecambe FC makes his pies in the kitchen on site by hand, rather than just buying them in! Top work Graham and the team!

RAS

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Take the nation's favourite pastry product. (That's a pie - obvs.) Add the world's most played and watched sport. And sprinkle in some hungry spectators demanding half-time grub! Of course I'm talking about half time pies at the football! But not all match day pastry hits the back of the net. Some are Championship winning material, where as others are destined for relegation as soon as you bite into them. That's why bookmakers Coral have been investigating what you - the football pie eating public - have to say on the topic!

Pie at the football!

Having analysed the data from their Pie Survey launched a few months back - which we blogged on in our article "We bet you'll want to feedback on football pies!" - the results are out and we've got the pies and lows to discuss! So, where do football fans think they can find piefection when it comes to their golden pastry snack?! Find out below!

Regulars to our pie blog won't be surprised to hear Coral teamed up with the world's leading pie review blog - featuring over 600 pie reviews with multiple football pie media appearances! A few months ago we were asked to give our opinion on the state of Premier League pies at present, as while the annual BBC Price of Football Survey indicates the price of pies, that really is only part of the story when it comes to pie rating.

We of course contributed our opinion to the survey results they collated regarding the Premier League's top pies and you won't be surprised to hear we have a few opinions on the results too! So once you've read the Coral results article, take a look at our view on the results below!

We've rated over 600 pies, including a number of football pies

So, firstly the winner of the Coral football fan's survey was... West Brom! Now, with a piefect score of 5/5 we do question the result of this really, as in searching for pies up and down the country we've never quite found pie-fection, especially not in a football ground! Typical football pies are a bit overpriced and often rather mass-produced efforts, sitting in hot lockers for far too long! However we are pleased that this is seemingly starting to change with producers like Piglets Pantry (catering for Brighton and Tottenham, amongst others) and Man City's Football Fan Fayre raising the standards significantly.

What I do wonder is whether the football fans rating West Brom as 5/5 were eating the same Pukka Pies as I did when I went to the ground about a year and a half ago? Because while it was a decent Pukka Pie, it certainly wasn't anything to write home about and not worth a full 5/5! One wonders if the people who gave such a high score were actually people in the West Brom hospitality boxes, as what our pie sources tell us is that there they actually serve award winning Piglets Pantry pies, unlike on the main concourse, which certainly would be more worthy of a 5/5 score! Alas we will sadly never know, but that could explain things.

Man City's Chicken Pie with FA Cup Trophy!

Sadly we've not yet rated the pies at Watford, Stoke and Burnley - this can be our "goal" for the season! - but we can certainly highly recommend Man City pies! In fact our top Premier League pie - and number two pie in our Football Pie League - is from Man City and was a fabulous combo of Beef Bourguignon and Chicken and Ham pies at the Etihad Stadium. They highlight that it is often better to pay a bit extra for a top quality pie, rather than less for a very mediocre product.

Sadly it didn't surprise me that the capital's supporters tend to favour a beef burger over a half time pie, however I was pleased to see the Northerners sticking up for their local pastry treat! Certainly the backing for a Steak and Ale pie came as no surprise to us either, with our number one football pie of that flavour. However what was surprising was a lack of mention of the Chicken Balti, which has become quite a fan favourite at many football grounds we've been to!

And to wrap it all off, we're pleased that football fans are by and large a wise crowd when it comes to knowing a pasty is NOT a pie! I'm sure many of you have heard us ramble on about the topic enough - though for anyone wanting an education you can check out our analysis of the shock pasty win in the 2016 British Pie Awards here.

So all in all, I think this survey highlights there are still some top football pies out their for us to sink our teeth into! Sadly not all pies rate as highly as West Brom, but there's only one way for us to really know! We'll be tucking into more football pies up and down the land this coming season! Game on!!!

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More about us and our football pie pedigree:

Sam and Rob being interviewed by BBC Sport's Azi Farni Watch the video on the BBC Sport website

Two years ago we joined BBC Sport's Azi Farni at Morecambe FC, who make some of the best pies rated on Pierate (let alone football grounds) to discuss what makes the perfect football pie! Watch us featuring in the BBC Price of Football video here.

It was outside of the scope of the Coral survey, which focused on the Premier League, but Morecambe FC's Globe Arena is certainly the place to be for top football pies! Top of our football pie league and winners of the British Pie Awards twice, Head chef Graham Aimson at Morecambe FC makes his pies in the kitchen on site by hand, rather than just buying them in! Top work Graham and the team!

RAS

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Our trip to the Ricoh Arena for the Checkatrade Trophy semi final between Coventry City and Wycombe Wanderers was mired in controversy. Firstly, there was a news article saying that due to the ongoing disputes between Coventry City and the owners of the Ricoh Arena, some areas of the ground were not able to sell pies! The problems Coventry were having has seen the team have to get the lawn mowers out before matches because the grass had not been cut, so I was worried that there might be catering problems.... but just in case you were worried that this might be a burger review I will cut to the chase and say that there were lots of pies available in the away end of the ground! Phew!!!

Pierateer RAS ordering a pie from "Eat Street Pies"

Pie in a box - with trophy in the background!

Our thoughts next turned to finding out what kind of pies they had on offer. During the London 2012 Olympics Pierateer RAS reviewed a Peter’s Steak pie at the Ricoh, a common pie on offer at matches across the country. Given that it is now 2017, we thought there was a good chance the pies had changed and were eager to find out. Upon questioning, the catering staff said that the thought they made the pies on site, a claim we seriously doubted. Hardly any clubs make their own pies and we thought we would have heard about it if they did. However, the pies were nicely presented in cardboard boxes with labels denoting the flavour, it all looked quite promising. That was, until we opened the boxes.

My Chicken Balti certainly looked like a bog standard mass produced pie. The ‘Peter’s’ logo being embossed into the foil gave the game away, Peter’s were still the pie of choice at the Ricoh even if the staff have no idea! The Chicken Balti did actually look fairly appealing, with a golden colour and some nice flakey pastry on top. Pierateer RAS’s Steak pie did not look so good having arrived in terrible condition. The top layer of pastry had disintegrated more than the dreams of the average Coventry City supporter, leaving a hopeless mess (reminiscent of the current state of Coventry City Football Club). Being a Pie-fessional and very committed, Pierateer RAS manned up and tucked in anyway.

See our PIEremiership table for our football pie league!

Falling apart... not im-pie-ressed!

I was pleased that I was able to get a Chicken Balti pie because it was not a Peter’s flavour that I had tried before. However, as we said recently when we had Peter’s pies at Newport County, they just don’t seem to be as good as they used to be. The pastry in particular was terrible. It was so soft and soggy, my pie fell apart very badly. The very top layer of flaky pastry tasted nice but the rest was a bit like soggy bread. However, there was a silver lining in that I did really enjoy the filling. As we expect from Peter’s, the pie was quite tall which meant there was a good capacity. Sometimes this is mainly full of gravy but the Chicken Balti was well filled with meat. The flavour was good, with a bit of a spicy hit whereas the previous Peter’s curry pie I had tried, was a bit bland. Overall, the filling didn’t quite make up for how bad the pastry was but it meant a fairly respectable score.

Chicken Balti (Coventry City/Peter’s) 
3.95/7



So the pies weren’t great and we were also pretty gutted that Wycombe lost 2-1 so we didn’t have another Wembley pie to look forward to. The Checkatrade Trophy becomes worthwhile once you get to the final, but only to make it to the semi-final, it felt a bit pointless. But given how bad things have been at Coventry under SISU, I felt that the Coventry fans deserved something to cheer about. Their fans really did make some noise and 11,000 was a brilliant attendance for this competition. It only goes to show what a big club Coventry once were.

We are glad to review a pie for a football match at the Ricoh while we still could, due to legal battles over ownership of the ground it looks like Coventry will have to find somewhere else to play and question marks remain about whether they will continue to exist in the long term. For the fans it must be so frustrating not to have any control and for the owners not to listen to them, I really hope they can sort things out. It makes me so grateful that Wycombe came out the other side of their problems as a fan owned club! Whilst we may never make the big time we can look forward to many more seasons of pies as we follow the Chairboys around the country.

SJL

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