Next stop was the Opawa Cafe and Takeaway, a busy eatery on Shakespeare Rd.  My helper again conducted covert questioning in the native tongue. This time, the owner is from Shanghai.  She has run the shop for the past year.



Opawa Cafe and Takeaway takes pride in baking their own pastries. Currently she sells 20-30 pies daily.
Apparently the secret to proper consistency in a pie (according to this woman) is to cook up the filling one day, and letting it sit for the next. On the third day, bake it into the crusts.



We ate at the couple of tables set up inside by the windows. $4 dollars it cost for one steak pie and a bag of chips. This was close to closing time and stocks were low.

Flavour notes:
creamy, pale, aged
...and my taster identified a chunk of pork meat 
...inside a steak pie





Since I don't eat pies, yesterday I paid a man to go eat some pies from the Whistle Stop Cafe.
This very valuable source provided me some beginning insights on pie culture happening at the corner of Shakespeare and Waltham roads.



The Whistle Stop Cafe has been around for 20 years. The young Beijing couple that bought it a year and a half ago took ownership from a friend who ran it 8-9 years.
Their pies are hand-made locally, not in house, but by an Irish cook who sells them for $5 each at another shop. This Irish cook apparently insists on throwing out old stock each day for hygiene purposes... unlike (apparently) "the neighbour's" pies. This next door neighbour apparently walks right in to their store some days to check prices, then goes back over to lower her's.
Whistle Stop also sells hot dogs, hash browns and sandwiches (which are more popular in summertime). On this day, my hired investigator purchased one regular pepper steak pie for $3.50- normally $4 and one mini chicken pie.
Observations and tasting notes: fresh, squishy, dark, tasty, & chewy.

www.mrsmacs.co.nz

Really enjoying the psychedelic scrolling feature on their homepage.



South of Moorehouse/Ferry, West of Ensors, North of Brougham and East of Waltham Roads is this crest/kite-shaped area of Christchurch. Just slightly right of centre, it contains light industrial warehouses, some residential and a condemned stadium. Rail lines traverse the space diagonally. Also, a large aggregate/landscaping supply business stores their dirt and mulch within a significant section.



 For this project, the idea was to focus in on the eateries contained in this area known as Charleston/Waltham (or skirting just outside of Opawa). Particularly interesting was the merchants that make a cheap pastry available for the community to eat. This pastry is commonly known as the pie.





 Mixed ingredients can fill this wheatflour encrusted hand-held hot pocket meal. Oftentimes it contains meat suspended in a gravy substance. Costs can be as low as $1.20NZD (2016).


This project aims to explore the availability of pies within the prescribed land area. Observing who eats pies. How far someone is willing to travel to fulfill a pie hunger. How fast they can be made available. The quality that goes into them. The alternatives to pies?