Nice Pie (Melton Mowbray) Pie Reviews and new shop!

The incredible "Pierate Logo" pie made by Nice Pie!

Whether you want to take a walk on the wild side or stick to something more typical in your pie, it seems with Nice Pie you're in for a nice pie treat!

We've been delighted to sample and rate so many of their pies in the last few years - the reviews of which can all be seen here - that we thought they deserved a Nice Pie page on Pierate Pie Reviews! Amazingly nearly every pie is Pierate Recommended (rated above 5/7) with a growing number of Pierate Highly Recommended pies (rated above 6/7) - an amazing feat considering the weird and wonderful content of some of the pie fillings such as kangaroo, wild squirrel and crocodile (the latter being the highest rated pie from Nice Pie so far!)

Below is the Nice Pie top 5, but they sell so many great pies that the top 5 doesn't even include all the Pierate Highly Recommended pies they sell, let alone mention the Pierate Recommended ones!!!

Rank	Pie Producer	Pie Flavour	Score	By
1	Nice Pie	Crocodile, Leek and Potato (Pierate Highly Recommended)	6.39	SJL
2	Nice Pie	Ring of Fire [Spicy Beef] (Pierate Highly Recommended)	6.21	SJL
3	Nice Pie	Wild Boar Pork (Pierate Highly Recommended)	6.20	TJP
4	Nice Pie	Slow Cooked Lamb and Mint (Pierate Highly Recommended)	6.18	RAS
5	Nice Pie	Red Stag (Pierate Highly Recommended)	6.16	RAS

Nice Pie Shop in Melton Mowbray

We're also delighted to hear that the pies have been selling so well that they have just opened up a new shop in the centre of Melton Mowbray itself (in addition to their current shop, which is part of the farm outside Old Dalby, north of Melton Mowbray). It's found at 55 Kings Street, Melton Mowbray. We look forward to visiting it when we're next in town!

RAS

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Nice Pie Lamb, Beef and Chicken Pie Reviews

As we said last year when we last sampled some of the "Nice Pie" range, one of the challenges for a Pierateer in British Pie Week is how to fit in all the pies you want to eat and rate - and then having time to write up all the reviews after! That's my poor excuse for why it has taken a while to write up our reviews of the three brilliant Nice Pie flavours we enjoyed in Leeds on Day Six of British Pie Week 2017, but here they are!


Nice Pie Beef Pie

Long term fans of Pierate will know Nice Pie have produced countless Pierate Highly Recommended and Pierate Recommended pies - including, but not limited to, their kangaroo, zebra, wild squirrel and crocodile exotic pies - in fact, see the table of past Nice Pies here! The pies we had this time were some more from the traditional menu - the Slow Cooked Lamb and Mint pie, Chicken, Gammon and Mushroom pie and Beef in Red Wine and Roasted Marrow Bone pie.

All three were new to us, but had all had a strong showing at the recent British Pie Awards. The Beef in Red Wine and Roasted Marrow Bone pie won the "Beef and any flavour" Class and the Chicken, Gammon and Mushroom pie won the "Chicken and other meat" class, while the lamb pie had got a gold award (90%+). These are award winning pies!!!

As we've mentioned in a number of Nice Pie reviews before, it was the filling that really stood out in these pies, absolutely bursting with meaty chunks that were so tender and flavoursome. It really amazes me how they can pack so much meat into these pies, as the capacity is always so full to the brim! The only slight downside is that with so much meat in there it can mean the pastry struggles to hold all the filling in, especially if you try to eat it by hand as I did. This is however a very small criticism as the main thing is to have a packed, flavoursome pie filling and this pie certainly provides that, especially complimenting the crisp butter shortcrust pastry that Nice Pie are renowned for!

Nice Pie Lamb Pie

Out of the three pies, I personally preferred the Lamb and Mint Pie and thought that stood out amongst other lamb pies I've had. Unlike many lamb and mint pies which are absolutely smothered in mint and lacking in meat, this was a perfectly balanced flavour and full of tender meat. The lamb easily shredded when the knife cut through it due to it being slow cooked, so while the pieces of meat were quite large it did not feel too big. I could have happily kept eating this pie all night!

Nice Pie Beef Pie Review

The Beef pie was also very nice, with thick rich gravy complementing the tender chunks of meat and bit of veg. I personally think the gravy wasn't quite my cup of tea compared to some of the red wine or ale gravy's I have had in other Nice Pie's or other pies lately - perhaps a result of the bone marrow - but at the same time I still enjoyed the pie and it does add a slightly different taste to the content. It balanced well with the crisp, golden pastry and I'd still happily eat another (there are just so many good Steak/Beef Nice Pies to choose from!!!)

Nice Pie Chicken Pie Review

The chicken pie was again packed with meat and although the pastry was a little flaky it still managed to hold in all the content well! The sauce was very nice and complimented the meat flavour well, and once again we struggled to fault much as it was a very good filling! A traditional flavour done well!


Once again Nice Pie have done us proud, producing two more Pierate Recommended pies AND a Pierate Highly Recommended pie! It's an absolute credit to Katharine and all who work at this small pie company that they are able to churn out top rated pie after top rated pie, and it's been great to hear about the success of their on-site Pie Shop and Cafe too! We hope to visit it one day soon!


Nice Pie Slow Cooked Lamb and Mint Pie
Score: 6.18/7
[Colour 5.75/7; Consistency 6.25/7; Cheapness 5.75/7; Chewiness 6/7; Condition 6/7; Content 6.75/7; Capacity 6.75/7]

Nice Pie Beef in Red Wine and Roasted Marrow Bone Pie
Score: 5.75/7
[Colour 5.75/7; Consistency 5.75/7; Cheapness 5.5/7; Chewiness 5/7; Condition 6/7; Content 6/7; Capacity 6.25/7]

Nice Pie Chicken, Gammon and Mushroom Pie
Score: 5.75/7
[Colour 5.75/7; Consistency 5.75/7; Cheapness 5.5/7; Chewiness 5/7; Condition 6/7; Content 6/7; Capacity 6.25/7]

RAS

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Pierate comes highly rated by Google for Vegetarian Pie Reviews!

You may not realise but this week (15th-21st May) is National Vegetarian Week, so to celebrate we’ve collated our top savoury vegetarian pies so that you know where to go if you don’t want to eat meat! Below are our top 5 vegetarian pies as of today and links to the reviews, or you can view all our vegetarian pies here!

Our #1 - Piglet's Pantry Spinach, Mushroom and Ricotta Pie

We've rated a number of top vegetarian pies over the past couple of years and are glad to see vegetarian pies being taken more seriously recently, with a great standard of vegetarian pies at the British Pie Awards in March this year. As you can read about in our review of the Awards, our current number 3 veggie pie from MyPie London won the Vegetarian pie class, which was sponsored by the Vegetarian Society.

Chris (in the MyPie van) creates our current #3, while Piebury Corner owners Paul and Nicky (outside the van) create our current #4!

Here's our current top 5 savoury pies - though you can see plenty more vegetarian fruit pies by looking out for the "V" in our main pie rankings list of almost 600 pies!!!

Rank	Pie Producer	Pie Flavour	Score	By	Info
1	Piglet's Pantry	Spinach, Mushroom and Ricotta	6.04	RAS	V
2	Sainsbury's Taste the Difference	Roasted Butternut Squash and Feta Cheese with Filo Pastry	6.03	TJP	V
3	MyPie London	Sweet Potato and Goats Cheese	5.93	ARL	V
4	Piebury Corner [N7 8DL]	Goats Cheese, Spinach, Sweet Potato and Mushroom [Reg Lewis]	5.90	RAS	V
4	Pieminister	Pea, Paneer, Spinach, Potato, Chilli and Mango	5.90	ARL	V

You'll also find that when you google "Vegetarian Pie Review" we're not just the first and second but also the third results! Clearly Google think we really are the home of the Vegetarian Pie Review!

The results when you Google "Vegetarian Pie Review"

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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I think it's one of the worst kept secrets on Pierate that we are fans of Wycombe Wanderers Football Club. After all, most of the football pie reviews we've done have been at games involving the club - and we've done 4 different pie reviews at Adam's Park in the past 4 and a half years (they seem to change their pie suppliers as often as their kit suppliers!) It's also no secret that we've not been too impressed at the pie provision at our home town club recently either - seeing the Blues slip down our Pierate Football Pie League as a result of poor scores off the pitch.

Pie at the Oxford v Wycombe match - May 2016

While all football clubs still look up to Morecambe FC's as the pie-nicle of football pie-fection - and we will soon be reviewing our latest Morecambe FC pie eaten at Saturday's game against who else but Wycombe Wanderers! - there is still a wide range of pie quality throughout the four divisions of league football. And that seems to be the case lower down in non-league football too, if the reviews by friend of the blog and non-league football pie blogger Kate are anything to go by, as she tackles the pies at Telford United matches.


Being the world's leading pie review blog - featuring almost 600 pie reviews with multiple football pie media appearances - we can't deny we're disappointed at the quality of pie served at our hometown club. Yet it appears we are not suffering alone, with a current Premier League football pie survey looking to unearth the golden treasure from the pre-heated rubbish of Premier League pie provision. Looking at our football pie league only 7 out of 23 pies have scored 5/7 or above (our indicator of "Pierate Recommended" status), which works out at just 30.4%, compared to a whopping 338 out of 586 pies scoring 5/7 in our overall pie rankings (57.7%)!

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

It's over two years ago now since 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.

And it really begs the question that if Morecambe FC - who have one of the smallest budgets in League Football - can produce such great quality pies, then why can't Wycombe, or anyone else for that matter?! Even looking at the three pies Wycombe have sold in the past 4 seasons, it seems crazy from a pie eating point of view to change supplier to such a worse scoring pie! Maybe it was a commercial deal too good to refuse or a particularly well cooked pie sample when the pitch was made, that far outstrips the quality of pie served in the terraces on a matchday? And that's not to mention the game earlier in the season that caused a bit of outrage on social media when our beloved Wycombe announced that they didn't have any pies to sell at the match! Serious own goal!!!

In any case, whatever happens in the final games of the season, let's hope that there are more pies than lows come next season - at Wycombe and beyond!

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

Steak... but where is the pastry?!

Wycombe Wanderers Player Awards Dinner 2017

As a little aside - and not particularly pie related (as they decided to serve a delicious steak but not fully encase it in pastry - go figure?!) - I had a great time supporting the Wycombe players at the annual Wycombe Wanderers Player Awards Dinner at Adam's Park on 30th April. I can confirm the food - while sadly not pie - was of a great standard and the awards was a great evening. I was fortunate to be sat with Wycombe left back Joe Jacobson (who is also in the photo near the top of this article, holding a pie) and had a great chat with him about topics such as GPS tracking, Boxing Day matches and - of course - pies!

Pierateer Rob and Joe Jacobson (minus the pies!)

Awards host Rachel (minus the pies!)

I also had a good chat about pies with the awards host Rachel Stringer, who is no stranger to a pie despite her slim appearance, having once downed 4 pies in a TV publicity stunt and also as host of Nick Kicks had the honour of pie-ing some of the Wycombe players (though we all know a cream "pie" isn't really a pie!!!)

Check out the video of the Wycombe Players having got pied from Rachel's twitter feed below:

This is happening right NOW - @wwfcofficial getting PIED 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/7tHH0juKUy

— Rachel Stringer (@RachStringer) February 3, 2017

All in all, it was a great evening and while it's only a slim chance, it's still all to play for in the final game of the season this coming Saturday! Come on you Blues!!!

Adebayo Akinfenwa (Beeeeeast!!!) winning player's player of the season and celebrating with the lads!

RAS

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