As planned, we returned to Bun’s 24/7 Bakery, this time at 12AM on a summer t-shirt night. I brought with me three competent tasters, hungry for conversation. Sitting outside for a while we observed the late traffic of teenagers and shift workers getting their eat on. Some young kids peed onto the sidewall and even tipped over a table and milk sign creating a furniture sculpture, which remained in place throughout the 40 minutes, we were there.






 The Ferry/Moorehouse/Waltham crossroads of activity makes for an adventurous outing on a Saturday. There were quite a few wobbling zombies on their way somewhere. One old lady with a cane & wearing a sleeping gown asked us for a cigarette. Another man warned us to “watch out for the blacks”. In all, I counted 24 people making transactions at Bun’s.






This is a place that sells buckets of lollies, milk, & bread but can not be considered a convenient store because it’s mostly ready-to-eat takeaway food that they provide. Our hosts were a large male Indian man and a busy behind the scenes woman, also appearing to be of Indian heritage. She was kind enough to offer the use of her store toilet for me. This is where I snapped some sneaky shots of the bakery background.









The man was surprisingly open to our probing questions, like… How often do you rotate in fresh new pies? (every 8 hours) …and… What kind of late night trouble have you seen in your experience? Perhaps unwilling to share the truly sexy memories, he told the story of a couple Maori guys that actually have come in and cleaned out every bit of food in the case. No joke, they pointed to it all, had it packaged and paid to take home a mixture of breaded, fried, roasted and  cheesy meals… enough for…?





 So, the pies we ordered were:


The Steak Onion Cheese and Tomato, with a dark salty sauce and big chunks of beef.

The Chicken and Mushroom, which I had observed before, but this time having 2 experienced judges- one labeled it jelly, the other found it too salty and couldn’t finish.

& the Peppered Steak, being dry with big specks of cracked black pepper. A cheese sauce perhaps? Needing additional tomato sauce to balance acidity. Overall, standard to average.






 I noticed the receipt identified two of these were considered “gourmet” and cost me more than any other pie so far at $4.40


I heard, from the judges, talk about “structure”, and discovered the telling detail of a pie pastry that has slowly dried in the cabinet. This is seen in the cross section strata of the crust being light/next to dark. I learned that a new pie might possibly burst, while an older aged pie will show signs of fluffiness (not flake) and contain a denser filling.