How To Carry Twelve Pies

I had a brief career as the baker for the collective restaurant FOOD created by artist Gordon Matta Clark.  When they told me there was no place to bake inside the restaurant, I was not fazed.  “I can make pies and cakes at home,” I said brashly.  I was twenty-two.

Besides the obvious health code issues (none of us gave that a second thought), the main problem was transportation. Food was the first restaurant in the fledgling Soho district (Fanelli's was basically a bar), and I lived a dozen blocks away on the Lower East Side. How was I going to get the pies from my loft to the restaurant?

My husband came up with a clever solution: a pie-carrier that fitted around my neck like an old fashioned milkmaid's yoke. Dangling shelves held six pies on either side. 

On the first day Doug loaded me up with six lemon meringue pies and six chocolate Rigo Jancsi cakes.  I carefully descended five flights, crossed the Bowery and made my way down Prince Street. Sadly, this arrangement was short-lived; despite my care, the pastries suffered along the journey, and arrived slightly bruised. 

Although these days I tend to deliver pies one by one, transportation continues to be a problem.  That's why I was so thrilled to find Petee's Pie Company, a wonderful little pie shop on Delancey Street, not far from my old loft. They sell delicious pies - lemon poppyseed chess, anyone? - along with these  practical pie boxes. With or without a pie, it would make a great gift.

Should you care to gild the lily Petee's also has a perfectly beveled blackened cherry wood pie server. Homey and ancient looking, it's a fine object of desire.