Shout it from the mountaintops: Savary Island Pie Co. is back, fully, completely. I visited the esteemed purveyor of artisanal sweet and savory pies one recent weekend, the first following the reopening of the shop/eatery’s main kitchen.
Last year proved unkind to Savary Island. A couple of months following the business’s announcement that delivery would be available seven days a week, 365 days a year, heavy late autumn rainfall overloaded the plumbing infrastructure and caused severe flooding. It was a massive blow to the shop, forcing them to layoff a number of staff and rely on their off-site production facility to keep goods in stock over the busy holiday season.
Pies, extraordinarily good ones that contain pounds of delicious, ripe fruit, are Savary’s specialty. But you probably know this already. The place has been serving up consistently great pies since 1989 and has been a fixture in the winner’s category of the North Shore News’s own Readers Choice Awards for many years.
So I’m not here to talk to you about those pies. If you are able to eat pastry, the only explanation for why you haven’t yet tried a Savary Island fruit pie is because you are averse to pleasure. To you ascetics I say carry on, well done, your discipline warrants acknowledgement, but in the end, it only means more pie for the rest of us.
No, my focus here is (mainly) on the lovely savory goods that issue from Savary’s on-site kitchen in West Vancouver, a facility forced into temporary hiatus but one that, through systematic and patient rebuilding, is now back in operation and good as ever.
It is a common adage in film that you cannot make a good picture from a poor script, but you can nevertheless make a poor picture from a good script. I think a similar principle holds true in the art of making sandwiches. It is possible, through sloppy miscalculation or lazy attention to detail, to ruin a sandwich that began with great bread, but it is simply not possible to make a great sandwich with poor quality bread.
Savary bakes extraordinarily good bread and builds its sandwiches from there. The bread is the hero of their sandwiches, none of which are terribly complex or fussy, but all which are likely to inspire a pause in the diner, a moment of head-nodding appreciation for how one of the western world’s foremost staples can shine so brightly with little appeal to supporting fillings or toppings.
My family and I descended on Savary’s cozy dining space fairly early on a Sunday and found it to be jam-packed. We opted for take-out and selected two sandwiches, a slice of pie, and, because history has proven that I simply cannot exit the shop without it, a loaf of freshly baked soda bread.
The first sandwich, unwrapped amidst the sly, food theft-prone crows at nearby John Lawson Park, was Grilled Cheese. Two thick slabs of lush and chewy sourdough bread, grilled to a pale golden colour and thoroughly saturated in butter, surrounded a gooey mess of sharp white cheddar, thinly sliced purple onion and sliced tomato. It was an exceptionally rich sandwich, but balanced overall courtesy of the tomato’s acidity. I’d describe it as a decidedly adult grilled cheese. It was a fairly hefty size too, which I suppose is why it was $12, the most expensive item in our meal.
The second sandwich was Toasted Tomato, a simple and satisfying combination of toasted, thick-cut multigrain bread, lettuce, plenty of fresh and ripe tomato and mayonnaise. This is the sort of quick and easy sandwich you might make at home one night when everyone else is out and think to yourself, man, I wish someone was here to taste how good this is.
I felt compelled to order a slice of Tourtiere, the traditional French Canadian ground meat pie, because it was a special occasion dish in my home when I was growing up and one to which I accordingly attach high expectations.
Savary’s version was good, densely packed with moist and fragrant ground meat in a buttery, flaky crust. For my taste the flavour of allspice was a bit too dominant in the meat filling, but I also need to say in the same breath that this is very typical of traditional tourtiere recipes; there are as many subtle variations of this dish as there are families who make it and I know that many people associate it in large part with flavours of allspice, cinnamon and cloves. I would suggest that the serving size was on the small side for $9.50, but I suppose this is not a dish that one ought to eat in giant quantities.
We grabbed a couple of Americanos for the road as well. Savary serves the gamut of espresso-based drinks.
Now, about that soda bread. It’s a $10 loaf, so maybe it’s not your everyday staple fare. However, for me it is worth every penny as it is some of the densest, richest, most thoroughly rewarding bread available anywhere. It is brilliant served simply with cheese (try thinly sliced Dubliner atop this bread), a slather of fine liver pate, with preserves (toasted and buttered with raspberry jam stops just short of foodie nirvana) or even just with a smear of creamery butter. Great stuff and not something I have ever been able to replicate baking at home.
Our take-out order of two sandwiches, a slice of tourtiere, two Americano coffees and a loaf of fantastic soda bread, was $50.
Savary Island Pie Company is located at 1533 Marine Drive in West Vancouver. 604.926.4021. savaryislandpiecompany.com
Chris Dagenais served as a manager for several restaurants downtown and on the North Shore. A self-described wine fanatic, he earned his sommelier diploma in 2001. He can be reached via email at [email protected]. North Shore News dining reviews are conducted anonymously and all meals are paid for by the newspaper.
