Pies that stayed on my mind

There are two pies I still think about. I can name the fillings and who I was with, which is more than I can say for plenty of things I was supposed to remember.

The first was a pork, cheddar and leek pie at The Ginger Fox, with my Persian friend AV. Pork, cheddar and leek. Even writing it down makes me want one. There are combinations where I read the menu and wonder whether all of that really needs to be in the same dish. This is a combination where I have no further questions.

I don’t know how much of that memory is the pie and how much is sitting there with AV. I suspect trying to separate them would spoil it a little. When I think about the pie, I think about being there together. They seem to have been filed in the same place.

The other was the beef rib pie at Holborn Dining Room at the Rosewood, with ASF. Another pie that has apparently earned permanent space in my head. I could try to sound useful here and explain exactly why it deserves that space, but I would very quickly run out of things I can say with confidence beyond “I would like to eat that again”.

Maybe the red wine made things even better. I feel it should at least be mentioned before I give the pastry all the credit. A pie, a glass of red, someone I’m happy to be at the table with. My judgement was hardly being tested under difficult conditions.

And maybe I was hungry. I keep coming back to that because hunger is a very convincing food critic. It can make an ordinary dinner feel like someone has done something extraordinary. I can’t go back and measure how hungry I was, or take away the wine and the company and see what score the pie gets on its own.

I also don’t particularly want to. Both were delicious to me, there and then, and both have stayed with me. That seems a reasonable thing to say about dinner without turning it into a judging competition. There appears to be plenty of room in my memory for pie.