Pittsburgh, PAPie Shops

Sidecar is the small coffee and bake shop beside Butterjoint, and it kept the pie program going in the space the former Pie for Breakfast left behind. Vinegar pie is the seller. Pittsburgh Magazine says pastry chef Robin En. Wizard builds it from a handful of pantry ingredients in the Depression manner, using vinegar where fruit would go, and that a housemade sour cream crust gives it a tangy edge. TABLE describes the filling as curd-like. Order a slice with coffee.

Piebird is a husband and wife pastry shop making scratch pies in Lawrenceville, grown from a side project into a storefront, and NEXTpittsburgh notes the Pie of the Month Club that puts out one seasonal sweet every thirty days. TABLE singles out the lemon custard: an eggy custard fragrant with lemon and rich in texture, closer to what custard tasted like before boxed pudding mix took over. Order that, then ask what the month's club pie is.

The Pie Place is a South Hills bakery run by Julie Cobb Accamando and Jessica Culicerto Gombar, and NEXTpittsburgh counts fruit fillings and cream pies in equal measure behind the counter. TABLE picks the key lime, made without artificial coloring and leaning into the tang of the citrus, and rates the mixed berry filling alongside it. Order the key lime, and take a mixed berry home for the table.

Soergel Orchards is a North Hills farm whose family planted apple trees on the site in 1850 and opened a full bakery in 1987. Pittsburgh Magazine builds the case on apple: classic, apple cranberry, apple walnut, Dutch apple and a sugar free version, with blackberry, French silk, mince, peach praline and strawberry rhubarb alongside. NEXTpittsburgh notes half pies and six, eight and nine inch sizes. Order the apple, then something with peach in it.

Fat Butcher is a Lawrenceville butcher shop with a sandwich bar, and Pittsburgh Magazine put it on a pie list for the savory work of cook James Griffin, who joined to run the counter and spends his own time on meat and pastry. He makes Cornish pasties and British pork pies, plus Jamaican beef patties sealed in a dough of flour, butter, beef tallow and Jamaican curry powder. Order a patty from the takeout freezer before they sell out.