Handmade pies tell a story of our evolving food culture
Eating on the Edge: Chris Porter grew up in a slice of American culture where home meals were prepared from scratch. The Mountlake Terrace boy who was cooking his own pies by age 10 grew up to go into TV journalism and the PR profession before launching a brand new pie baking venture in Seattle.
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One way of doing that is by looking to and adopting the eating traditions of other cultures, like the Italians, or the Chinese. Another way is to revisit our own past for long-lost rituals and the comfort they provided.
This marketing strategy works especially well with the generations that followed the baby boom. Perhaps it is latch-key syndrome, a reflexive desire to repair a deficit left by divorce or some other emotional deficit. Perhaps it is the extended childhood that adults today are allowed — how many times have you heard "40 is the new 30?" — that has turned aging into a circular rather than linear process.
So many television commercials aimed at serious adults deploy cues from our childhood, like the AT&T commercial whose soundtrack is borrowed from the 1971 movie, "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory," and the song "Pure Imagination." The line between child and adult, and relationship between the two is more blurred.
Or maybe, as Porter said, when times are tough, you look to safe memories. When Porter became disillusioned with work, he did the same. After graduating from Pacific Lutheran University — he grew up in Mountlake Terrace — he went to work as a television reporter in Missoula, Mont., and Fort Wayne, Ind., moving back to Seattle to work in corporate public relations, representing technology clients.
The idea of baking pies for a living appealed to his creative instincts, which have always lived strong inside him. He realized that he has wanted to bake all his life. When he finally worked up the nerve to quit his salaried job and start his company last year, he said, "I had a lifetime of practice.
If you go: A la Mode pies are served by the slice at: Knee High Stocking Company, 1356 East Olive Way, 206-979-7049, 6 pm-2 am daily. Order pies at www.alamodeseattle.com.
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Comments:
Posted Sun, Jun 13, 11:36 p.m. Inappropriate
Let's see... first there was fetishized coffee, then fetishized doughnuts, then fetishized cupcakes, and now, fetishized pie. I've always thought the reason there are only two specialty pie places in Seattle is because their pies aren't any better than the ones you get at Safeway, QFC, etc., but they are lot more expensive.
I think you may have hit on the Next Big Thing in the 11th paragraph: fetishized candy bars...
Posted Mon, Jun 14, 10:30 a.m. Inappropriate
Oh please, what a lot of hokey narratives. What is the evidence of all this psychological opinings? There is none, there is no empirical evidence that these "childhoods", either the yearnings or the fantasy ones that are written about as if they existed, existed; the same with these "grandmas" that everyone has such fond memories or claims existed.
People don't leave corporate jobs because some cosmic awareness hit them either, another one of the fairy tales - more fantasy that both the writer and the subject are promulgating.
There is nothing special either about any of the foods, the way we are eating, the way we are growing, that some universal knowledge has now been realizes - it's called utopian thinking in response to crisis - nothing more, nothing less. Instead of dealing with the crises of modern living, people create fantasy worlds, narratives, and the like - which the whole food fetish craze is about. It's a corrective response, and not the final one, but also not the cure.
And there is a reason there are not a lot of pie companies, not because they are a "lost" food, that everyone is now discovering, they are just more expensive to make and the public at large is not willing to pay the price for a handmade pie, along with pies are not high on the category of desserts demanded. Another fantasy, that people are willing to pay for high quality food, if it was just available - WalMart alone is proof positive that this is false.
There is also nothing inherently better about "handmade" anything; in fact it can be quite inferior to machine made products. Just because someone grubbed around with their hands making it does not add to its flavor, consistency, the quality of the finished food product, or even to its food safety. In fact, handmade food has less quality consistency, has greater deviation in volume, has a higher level of contamination which results in if nothing else, earlier spoilage of the product than if it were food made through a mechanized process. So even more fantasy narratives, this preoccupation with "handmade" equals better quality and flavor - it doesn't.
Posted Sat, Jun 19, 8:07 p.m. Inappropriate
How come that guy is making a pie in a house with no furniture? Check the dining room in the background.
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