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Top 10 Dishes of 2011: A la Mode Apple Pear Ginger Pie

‘Twas a fine, fine year to be hungry in Seattle. For ten days I’m reminiscing about just how fine, in my annual recap of the top ten plates of the year. #7 Call 2011 the Year of the Pie Shop …but the one that had my socks rolling up and down was more butter and […]

‘Twas a fine, fine year to be hungry in Seattle. For ten days I’m reminiscing about just how fine, in my annual recap of the top ten plates of the year.

#7 Call 2011 the Year of the Pie Shop …but the one that had my socks rolling up and down was more butter and sugar than bricks and mortar. A la Mode Pies was pie maestro Chris Porter’s online bakery—you order, he’d deliver—so my first taste of his signature apple pear ginger pie with the all-butter crust came directly to my door, in a box smartly tied in a bow. Best pie I’d ever tasted: from the gnarled golden top crust, whisper-light and flavorful, through the sweet surprised-by-ginger filling, all the way down to the toothsome bottom pastry. Unbelievable. Last month Baker opened a bona-fide shop on Phinney, right across from the zoo. I think he got tired of driving to my house.











Kathryn Robinson
Kathryn Robinson
Senior Writer Seattle native Kathryn Robinson, award-winning restaurant critic and senior writer at Seattle Met, has been anonymously reviewing restaurants for over 30 years—first as editor of the Best Places guidebook series, then as staff critic at Seattle Weekly and contributing critic at The Seattle Times and Seattle magazine.  Midcareer she spent a year-long sabbatical studying comparative religion as a Knight Fellow at Stanford University where she had been an undergrad 10 years earlier, gaining a knowledge base she now calls upon for her monthly “Back Fence” column on our collective urban existence and the meaning it holds for our personal lives. In her off hours she is a partner and a parent—which means she has no off hours.