Football Pie: Why Can't Wycombe Get it Right?!

Wycombe Wanderers/Pukka Pies - Chicken & Mushroom Pie Review

We have eaten many pies at Wycombe Wanderers matches over the years whilst we follow our home town team through thick and thin. Sadly though in recent years the pies served at their home ground of Adams Park have been pretty terrible. They are currently languishing near the bottom of our Football Pie League. You can read more about this in our 'Pies & Lows of Following Wycombe Wanderers' article.

There has been a recent upturn in performance on the pitch but this sadly hasn't been matched by an upturn in pie form. On Saturday I attended the entertaining 0-0 draw with top of the table Exeter and was pleased to note that there was a change in pie supplier. Instead of the dodgy 'Bisto' brand pies, Wycombe have enlisted the help of the ubiquitous Pukka pie empire. As I got near to the front of the queue in the lower tier family stand I could see just one pie remaining. With all my mental strength I willed those in front to order something else. A couple of burgers disappeared and I was home and dry at the front of the queue. I had no choice of flavour, it was a Pukka Chicken & Mushroom or suffer the ignomy of a non-pie choice. My delight soon turned to dismay. What I had been served very much looked like the kind of pie that would be left til last. A gravy explosion had rented a gaping hole in the side of the pie. What was remarkable was that somehow the gravy had dried and burnt like a grotesque gravy icicle hanging off the edge of the crust. I had never seen anything like this before in many years of pie reviewing. This was a bad omen, indicating the pie had been cooked for too long. Indeed the sides and base of the pie were very burnt and dried out. It was quite difficult to actually eat because the pastry was so hard, especially at the bottom. It was also far too hot and took ages to cool down. This indicated the problem was probably down to the hot locker the pie had been sat in. Being set so hot it hadn't just kept the pie warm, it had continued cooking it until the pastry had become not much more than a husk to hold the filling. Fortunately the Chicken & Mushroom filling was still enjoyable. There certainly was scope for more pieces of mushroom and chicken but there was by no means an embarassing lack of content. The creamy sauce maintained a good balance of chicken and mushroom flavours (although I do like my mushroom to be subtle). It actually made a nice change to my usual choice of steak pie. However, this couldn't recover what was overall a very disappointing pie due to the pastry! Next time I will have to try and get a pie before the game rather than half time. Hopefully it won't be so dried out!


Chicken & Mushroom (Wycombe Wanderers/Pukka Pies) 
3.34/7

SJL