Top ten places to buy Wild Garlic Pork Pies

Update... there's more than ten now!

Photo Alun Callender for Country Living Magazine

It's been an unusually late start to the Wild Garlic season this year, but, now that it's got going, the plants are looking lush and gorgeous and it's going to be a bumper crop. If you forage for your own Wild Garlic please ask permission from the landowner and pick sustainably, so not too much from any area and never the bulbs.

As seen in Country Living Magazine

So here's the top ten places to buy our famous Wild Garlic Pork Pies (the ones with a six page article in Country Living, such a thrill!). As we've only just listed the pies the current places to buy them are mostly local but more UK-wide stockists will have them in the coming weeks, so I'll add to the list as we go along.

Where to buy our Wild Garlic Pork Pies this week

1. Creake Abbey Food Hall - a few minutes from Burnham Market and home to the very famous monthly farmers market ( we'll have them there on the 5th of May)
2. Harveys Butchers. Norwich's best butcher, on Grove Road. NB the road from Queen's Road is closed at the moment, so if you are driving, head from St Stephens roundabout as if you were going to City College but turn left immediately after the traffic lights.
3. Christie and Son - the famously brilliant cheese stall on Fakenham Market on Thursdays, Dereham on Friday and Swaffham on Saturdays
4. The Green Grocers - on Earlham Road Norwich, our first ever wholesale stockist and still gorgeous.
5. The Norwich Providore - Row B of Norwich market and selling the fabulous Bread Source bread (as well as our pies and many other types of local food brilliance)
6. Earsham Street Deli - Bungay's finest (although the rest of Earsham Street sets a pretty high bar), run by the lovely Michelle.
7. Scrummy Pig at Wroxham Barns - our Broads stockist (soon to be opening another shop in busy Wroxham village)
8. Thyme Deli - one of our Northern stockists in Horwich, Bolton 
9. Ranbow Stores, East Rudham - already have an order in for Friday's delivery, look out for our A Frame on the A148
10. Spring Gardens Nursery, near Pulborough in West Sussex
11. Whelk Coppers in Sheringham - a cosy cafe overlooking the sea
12. Toft Shop, Cambridge. A fascinating local shop specialising in South African Food (and our pies!)
13. Picnic Fayre - the iconic deli in Cley
14. Franklin's Farmshop SE22 London - one of our brand new stockists
15. Jimmy's Farm - the most famous farmshop in Suffolk
16. Slate in Southwold - right next to the Adnams shop
17. La Fromagerie in Highbury, Islington
18. Harp Lane Deli, Ludlow, Shropshire. At the bustling heart of this most foodie of towns.
19. Walsingham Farmshop, Heacham 

The best pork pies - by mail order

Watch this space for more stockists, but if you can't get to any of the above they're also listed on our very own pies by post shop!

Meanwhile, I'll get out picking.

Photo Alun Callender for Country Living Magazine

Wild Garlic Pork Pies

““For those who like their garlic strong, ramsons will prove magnetic” ”

— Richard Mabey, Food For Free

In Praise of North Norfolk

I just love where we make the pork pies, we're in old flint barns, in an Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty, so surrounded by some of the best countryside in Norfolk and the UK, The River Glaven runs through it and the sea is just over there.

The Making of The Wild garlic Pork Pies

Little speaks of our glorious surroundings better than our Wild Garlic pork pies. Starting in March I take a basket, walk down the hill to our neighbours on The Bayfield Estate, Natural Surroundings, though the gardens, and into the wooded bit, beside the river, to see how "my" patch of Wild Garlic is doing.

The Art Of Wild Garlic Foraging

Once I think the leaves are big enough, with special permission, I take a basket down and carefully pick. Not too much from each plant and being very careful not to disturb the roots. I've always got an eye on making sure the patch stays strong and healthy for the rest of the season and next year, and the year after that, so I don't want to over-pick or damage any of the plants. I think of it a bit like farming. If you forage your local patch, please be kind to the plants too.

Then I take my pickings back up the hill to HQ and we wash and dry it and make it into our Spring special, Wild Garlic Pork Pies. We can only make as many as the woods provides, so it's first come, first served for the shops and pubs who buy them from us, but they're always very popular. And we only make them into small pies because the Wild Garlic is so precious. They're also available from us online - whilst stocks last...

Wild Garlic Pork Pie Mail Order

So. Head over to our Pies By Post shop and, for a very short while, you'll see one of the options is Wild Garlic Pork Pies. Unique and deliciously delivered to your door.

Natural Surroundings, our Bayfield neighbours

An Historical Pie

Why PIE?

First a small digression on Strangers. Or muse, if you will.

We're all feeling a bit jittery about the darker side of where 2016's politics has dragged us. I don't know if it should make me feel better or worse to know that nothing changes much, but one of Norwich's lovelier small medieval museums (full of food, textile and domestic history) is called Stranger's Hall. The name Strangers in Norwich dates back to the 16th century North European weavers who were invited over as persecuted refugees by an England which needed their wealth-creating skills, but still managed to make sure they were jolly well aware of their difference by calling them Strangers and sometimes giving them a very hard time. Those Strangers, bringing their canaries over here, eventually, as families and individuals, vanished into mainstream Norwich society whilst helping make the beautiful City the place it is today, still full of reference to those Strangers. Thus proving again that, wherever we live we'll never be free of immigrants because scratch the surface and, of course, we're all those immigrants. Us. Welcome Stranger.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO PIES. P.I.E.

P.I.E. and pie in Stranger's Hall

For long years I've been sitting in a particular traffic queue waiting for the lights to change, staring at Strangers Hall, one of Norwich's oldest buildings, and wondering why ever they had a little reproduction of a graphic saying PIE in the window. Why, why, why? Why not of course, but why? Apart from being an actual sign, it must be a sign. Was Stranger's Hall calling to me? Was Norwich trying to lure the piemaker after my own escape (back) to the country? The last few years of my city-living Norwich life had been on St Benedict's, in a 16th century house on a medieval street, a couple of dozen buildings away up the road so I was almost home.

And so it came about that, when we were doing a pie photoshoot, one rainy Friday, I remembered my siren PIE and we all trooped off to Strangers Hall to ask why. Why PIE? Why?

Actually, one of the first things you see in this fascinating building is a big table, groaning with large ornate pies, as part of a banquet from its Medieval and Tudor times. We felt quite at home, our pork pies have deliberate ingredient references to those times, especially at Christmas, when we include fruit such as figs and prunes and warming spices like cinnamon. But then the bombshell fell from the lips of the museum curator, who'd kindly invited us strangers in.

It wasn't PIE. Sorry? Not pie?

Yellow jumper courtesy of Working Title Clothing in Norwich

For all those years I'd been staring fondly at the picture of the little red, black and gold crest and it wasn't saying PIE to me. It was saying PJE. Or more specifically, Joseph and Emma Paine. 

What a thing. Joseph Paine was a hosier, he became wealthy on textiles (presumably with a bit of help from those refugee weavers), and lived in Strangers Hall, with Emma, from 1612 to 1628, popping his insignia over the fireplaces as he became wealthier, schmoozing his King with sacks of gold and becoming Mayor Paine. And cheekily making that insignia look a lot like PIE to catch out the innocent pie maker, centuries later. What a joker.

Anyway, I do strongly recommend spending a few fascinating hours in Stranger's Hall in Norwich, with its beautiful collections, food history, and garden and thank them very much for their friendly welcome, making a pie maker a little better informed and allowing us to take lovely pie photos there. 

To complete the PIE experience, you can buy our fine pork pies near to Stranger's Hall at Amaretto, The Rumsey Wells, Biddy's Tearoom, Clarke and Ravenscroft, or The Norwich Providor,

Or of course, from us online.

Photos by Jay Ner.

Top ten places to buy a piccalilli pork pie

Our brand new Piccalilli Pork Pies are extremely gorgeous and there's a bit of a clamour for them, so we thought you'd like to know the top ten (in no particular order!) places across the UK to get your hands on one (or two, or three...).

Back To The Garden (Letheringsett, Norfolk)

Algy's Farmshop (Bintree, Norfolk)

Eat17 - Walthamstow and Hackney shops (London)

The Green Grocers (Earlham Road, Norwich)

Harveys Butchers (Grove Road, Norwich)

NWT Cley Marshes Visitors Centre (Cley Norfolk)

Thyme Deli (Horwich, Lancashire)

Walsingham Farm Shop (Walsingham, Norfolk)

Vintage Deli Delights (Bourne, Lincolnshire)

Go buy!

Holkham

Things are afoot at Holkham, the North Norfolk Coast's stately home (that one with the world famous beach attached). 

I was on pork pies and sausage rolls delivering duty there yesterday and had a good nosy round. I came away impressed and pleased, I liked it before and, as with anywhere you are fond of, was that little bit apprehensive about the end result, especially having seen it as a building site over the winter when I dropped in for meetings. But it all looks just fabulous. Much improved and so much more appropriate for the destination that Holkham has become over the last few years, but still retaining oodles of character. The courtyard (where the Bygones exhibition was before) has been used to create a single smart cluster of resources for visitors.

The Courtyard Cafe is more spacious and the entrance has been swivelled round, so that you access it from the courtyard. The park opened to visitors, after the winter, this weekend and I know they were busy from the huge number of sausage rolls and pies they have got through in just three days. The ever-accurate pork pie barometer.  The family have always been keen to use local food, and the cakes have always been stunning, but in the alterations the recently appointed manager, Simon (who has come from some well known and very well thought of food places), has been supplied with a brand new pro kitchen that gave me equipment envy. 

Usually there on business of one sort or another, I'd never taken enough notice of the shop, where it was previously on the far side of the Stables courtyard, but it's suddenly got chic and spacious, housed in a beautiful, glass fronted, airy side of the courtyard and has some perfectly beautiful things. It is an absolute pleasure to browse round. There are some very covetable pieces of metalwork from Holkham Forge, a great range of doggy items, including leads from The Traditional Rope Company (who live and work in my village) and a lot more Holkham badged products than I'd been aware of before, including some clothing that I really had to drag myself away from, in the estate's tweed.

Being a long time ceramics fan, some very stylish black and white china in the kitchenalia area lured me in and called out  to me photograph it. When I got back to HQ my Twitter friend, Steven Moore, the Antiques Roadshow's ceramic expert, informed me that they are made for Holkham by the famous Staffordshire Burleigh Pottery (of which he's Creative Director), so not much wonder it's jolly nice! I reckon sales of that will be as brisk as sausage rolls.

The remaining wing of the courtyard is the new interactive Farm to Fork exhibition. Telling the story of agriculture on the Estate, one of the first things I saw was local food star Norfolk Saffron which rather delighted me. Holkham's all about the whole family experience and the exhibition, whilst fascinating as an adult, has also been designed as an education resource with lots of touchy feely and unexpected things for children to explore and learn from.

All in all, a great improvement. For visiting times and admission information click here.

White House Farm Pick Your Own, Sprowston, Norwich

Pies down on the farm

This board - it sums The White House Farm up so well.

Friendly, and just on the right side of quirky and fun. A bit of trendy grey and rust, but it was lying around anyway, rather than tracked down somewhere in Putney* ("...bash that bit from the tractor shed out flat and drill some holes in it would you? I can use that.").  White House is unique in Norwich, a real working farm, with a young, keen family, that feels like it's in the heart of the country. But head back down the (long!) track and you're back in the 'burbs.

As always, check with them that the pies are in stock before making a special journey. They sell out fast!

Here's their video - nice shot of our pies!

*Putney? No I've no idea where that came from either. Do they have the sort of shops that sell nicely rusted agricultural metal for signs in Putney? I imagine so. But do let me know if not.

It might be a niche opportunity...