Deep Dive
Eight pies, one judge
Fallow lined up eight British pies and had Tom Kerridge, the only chef to run a two Michelin star pub, taste and rank them. The contenders ranged from the hearty steak and ale pie made with braised beef cheek and short rib in Guinness to London's pie and mash with beef, onion, and jellied eels. Tom moved through them systematically, rejecting pie and mash early on, then testing his own gala pie from his cookbook — a recipe featuring runny egg, minced pork, spinach, and caul fat in a polenta-lard pastry. The stargazy pie from Cornwall with sardine heads poking through the top drew a sharp critique, and the suet pudding with braised oxtail faced skepticism about whether it qualified as a true pie at all. By the final rounds, it came down to technique and execution.