Is Dino's still serving up great pies?

The Pierateers are back in town, so it's time to assess whether Dino's of Southend-on-Sea is still serving up the same fine pies in 2010 as it was in 2008.

I'll be the first to admit that this homemade steak pie isn't the cheapest on the market, but when you've made it all the way along the seafront down to Dino's you'll be willing to pay almost anything just to avoid having to walk all the way back to the car with fulminent APD (absent pie disappointment). So at the end of the day, £8.50 is relatively bargainous (plus it's homemade, large, and comes with 3 different types of vegetable). Joking aside, stop being such a skinflint - you're on holiday!

Now, let us all take a moment to admire the colour of this pie:









Look at it there, that beautiful matted Tuscany peach pastry sleeping dormant beneath a glistening volcanic torrent of gravylicious lava. One feels afraid to disturb this sleeping beast with a fork, as if cautious of alerting catastrophic seismic ramifications. But to get to the gold beneath the dragon, one must be courageous - and the Pirateers were exactly thus.

After disturbing the excellent condition in which the pie arrived, one is met by a pie that has merits on both content and character. This pie excels itself in term of capacity, packing in a whopping 17 megaMules per standard unit (mM/U), certainly giving the consumer something to write home about. The chewiness factor was let down purely on the basis of the pastry being too much musty and not enough crusty. The meat itself was actually melt-in-the-mouth perfect. One could even remark that the gravy lent the pie an unusual yet pleasurable consistency.









The vegetable (see above) were an unnecessary but welcome addition to this dish. However, these were of course responsible for increasing the price of the pie. Perhaps in future, Dino's could offer a solo-pie version, where the vegetables are usurped by a lower price? We shall wait and see.

Overall, an excellent pie experience!

Scores

1. Colour - 5.9
2. Consistency - 4.8
3. Capacity - 6
4. Chewiness - 4.5
5. Cheapness - 3.1
6. Content - 5.5
7. Condition - 5.3

• Total: 35.1
• Average (mean): 5.0

Posted by The Pierateers at 20:18

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Labels: steak