A Few Good Pie Places

There are delicious pies for sale at shops, restaurants, cafes and roadside stands across America. So, in this delicious documentary we celebrate A Few Good Pie Places where people still make flaky crusts and scrumptious fillings. In Millvale, Pennsylvania, Frank Ruzomberka makes pies every morning for the Grant Bar & Restaurant that his parents founded in the 1930s. His coconut cream pie is beautiful, creamy, full of toasted coconut, and usually sells out before the day is done. Paula and Jamie Eisenberg make superb pies in their small in-home bakery in Underhill, Vermont, and many of their wares are sold from their garden shed that’s been converted into a pie shed, open 24/7 on the honor system. Across from the zoo in Seattle, there’s a cool café called A La Mode Pies founded in 2011 by Chris Porter who calls himself the “Pie Guy.” His staff creates beautiful crusts, stylish meringues, and fanciful fillings like the blueberry-pineapple-coconut combination in their Blue Hawaiian pie. There’s an official state pie in Indiana: the sugar cream. We sample slices at Nick’s Kitchen in Huntington, at Rolling Pin Bakehouse in Roanoke, and at the Pie Lady on 5 in South Whitley. There are few rules about sugar cream pies except that the ingredients are good and simple. Everybody in Montana loves huckleberries, and Mary Lou Covey at Loula’s Café in Whitefish has become renowned for her excellent fruit pies mixing the wild berries with peaches, raspberries or cherries. Not far from the town of Elon, Virginia, you would be lucky to find yourself at Woodruff’s Pie Shop run by Angela Woodruff Scott with daily assistance from her mother Mary Fannie Woodruff. They make whole pies but will sell you a slice, and you may want to taste the fried pies too. Our program ends in Minnesota, where we find sweet potato pie at a party thrown by storyteller Rose McGee who also serves as a judge at a pie-baking competition in the small town of Braham. Braham Pie Day is an annual August celebration of everything about pies, involving the whole town in sweet, crusty, fun activities. A Few Good Pie Places is a celebration, a travelogue and an hour-long portrait of some wonderful people across America who make and eat pies.