Chef Malcolm's Handmade Pies
Chef Malcolm Craig is blunt: If you’re looking for fruit pies, look elsewhere. But for savoury filling inside a flaky crust, the English expat has you covered.
Craig’s pastry passion long predates the opening of his Handmade Pies shop. His foray into pastry began as a child — his dad was a baker, and his mom and grandmother made pies at home. Over the course of his 29 years working in kitchens — including as head chef at Beer Bros., where meat pie was on the menu for years — he has perfected his pastry.
The pies he makes are the kind he grew up eating in England. The kind he seeks out when he returns home for a visit. They’re the pies that expat Brits, Aussies and New Zealanders crave, but are hard to get here.
The butter-rich dough is made fresh daily. Rolled out on the counter, you can see flecks of salted butter. Baked, it’s crisp and puffy and beautiful.
The pies don’t have a lot of gravy, which is probably why they hold their shape so well: They require no utensils to eat.
But even for a gravy lover, these pies pass muster. They’re packed with from-scratch filling, moist with ingredients like grated cheese and fish, cubed potatoes with green peas and ground beef, mushrooms with chicken and ham.
Craig’s personal favourite is the steak, Guinness and mushroom pie.



