Me and Jill aren’t your typical Pie Girls, we’re too sophisticated, cultured and well-mannered to be caught standing on street corners necking growlers (one look at our profile pics tells you that.)
But then there’s Green’s Meat & Potato Pies. Made in Barrow in Furness (‘the end of a 97 mile cul de sac’ according to Mike Harding) it’s a land that time forgot. When David Cameron bangs on about his Big Society, some self-important flunky on a pay grade above his ability left Barrow off the itinerary. On the corner of Jarrow and Brooke Street on a grim inter-war estate stands the unprepossessing shop, selling pies they make in the back. No good going in asking for anything but pies, that’s all they sell. The Boyfriend, who’s from Ulverston, tells me that at one time, every couple of hundred yards or so there was a pie shop. Now there’s just Greens.
But that’s not the only reason they’re special. Someone in there makes pastry like an angel. The pie has layers of thinly sliced potato and chunks of beef, some salt and pepper and that’s it. Unbelievably more-ish, impossible to resist; I lay down a challenge. Anyone who can last more than seven minutes after leaving the shop and not have eaten at least one (in our case, three, still warm, in the car which was parked at a safe distance in order not to be spotted (on Jarrow Street in Barrow? Who do I think I am?) gets some award or other. We’ll think of something. In the meantime, The Pie is its own reward.
Green’s Pies, 24 Jarrow Street, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, LA13 9SZ T: 01229 822960