Pie Spy - Fat Apple's Restaurant & Bakery

A road trip to Berkelely on the last Friday of January necessitated some Pie Spying.

In San Francisco Magazine's January issue, we had read a short blurb about Fat Apple's. Fat Apple's is a breakfast-lunch spot - actually two spots: the home location at 7525 Fairmount Avenue in El Cerrito, and 1346 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way in Berkeley. They have a range of salad, soup, sandwiches, and hot entrees, but what really hooks us is the full bakery case. Fat Apple's makes scones, cookies, pastries, cakes, and you-know-what, under the masterful watch of Hildegard Marshall, the founder and owner.

At the Fairmount Avenue location, the skylit, barrel-vaulted interior (a former grocery store, our hostess told us) is dominated by a very large, square oven situated in the very middle of the building. The oven is probably close to 15 feet on each side. Our hostess explained that this oven runs 24-7 during the holidays, when the place pumps out pies non-stop (especially pumpkin). Although it was well past the peak of lunch hour (and traditional bakers' hours) when we visited, there were still at least a dozen workers visibly hustling around the place. By the way, pie crusts are made with butter, and also with love and skill.

There is a diner counter and tables for 80 or so people. Reproductions of Wayne Thiebaud pictures, as well as other, temporary exhibits by artists, adorn the walls.

Fat Apple's most widely acclaimed favorite pie is the ollalieberry, shown below:

You can choose from several flavors of pie, if ollalieberry is not what you came for. There was a slice of lofty lemon meringue going by as we ordered lunch. The chocolate creme pie looked as dense and dark as chocolate mousse. The apple pie was puffed up, and my imagination ran wild. Just for the sake of research, we ordered a slice of the cherry pie after a filling lunch of spinach salad and a portobello mushroom sandwich (both pretty good).

Pie by the slice is $4.25. You could purchase a whole fruit pie there for $17.00 (and be very happy).

The pie slice comes unadorned with whip or ice cream. Which is good, because usually I forget to request that these be deleted. Despite the neon-red color of the filling, I could tell this was no institutional pie. The cherries were tart, firm, and still individually imbued with flavor. The red matrix in which they floated was pleasantly sweet and a little bit thick, but never gooey, chemical, or dominating. It was definitely more cherries than red gel. I could tell that the crust had been made with butter because of the distinct flavor note as well as the flaky, light texture as I broke it - in my delicate way - with the fork. I had to increase the shutter speed on my camera, because this piece was of the stealthy, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't variety. It disappeared in what seems like a flash!

The finishing touch to our Fat Apple's experience was the receipt. Pie Spy finds wisdom in unexpected places. Be sure to read below the bottom line. That's what I'm talking about.