Starbucks

Cheery Cherry Pie $2.09

Cheery .. Cherry .. Pie. It's come to this. We heard about Cheery Cherry Pie in New York and wondered if it was worth checking in Hoboken. Could there be a Jersey Cheery Cherry Pie? Or is this local to NYC? Not at all. Turns out there are Cheery Cherry Pies gracing pastry cases from coast to coast at Starbucks. Yep, you heard it. And here's what Jersey Pie thinks. We think that Starbucks bigwigs are reading Jersey Pie, and, one day at high Starbucks muckety-muck headquarters, the visionaries were gathered together envisioning the next BIG THING, and, of course, at the top of everyone's list was Jersey Pie's quest for the best cherry pie, and they hotly conspired to knock this one out of the park. Then they named it Cheery Cherry Pie.

Okay, so how is it? Simply put, it's a good pie. There. We admitted it. In fact, we find ourselves wanting another one as soon as possible. Did we want it to be good? Sure, well, sort of... well, maybe not. Maybe we wanted it to fit into our tirade about widget food. We have been working on a notion that attention and intention are important ingredients.

But maybe widget food can be good food, too. Starbucks has recently made some decisions about their ingredients with which Jersey Pie approves:

• No artificial flavors
• No artificial trans fats
• No artificial dyes
• No high-fructose corn syrup

(could it be true?)

In addition to its rainbow-in-the-sky moniker, a Cheery Cherry Pie has cherries, flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), butter (cream [from milk]), sugar, palm oil shortening, water, wheat flour, starch, sugar, apple cider vinegar, whole eggs, sea salt, sodium alginate, calcium sulfate, lemon juice, egg whites.

(Well?)

We had to get another one to help remember the experience. And we didn't regret it. Then the third Cheery Cherry Pie was just as good as the first two. They've overcome the individual pie pitfall of too much crust by folding four corners of a pastry square over the top so the crust doesn't quite go all the way around. Oh, what a clever mega-corp! Believe it or not, it is now Starbucks that is setting the bar for the best cherry pie in New Jersey. Oh, we do hate to say it. But wait! Let's return for a moment to attention and intention.

Let us say that Starbucks has fed us the best TASTING cherry pie in New Jersey. And let us ask, "Is that enough?" Our conscience still has questions about the Cheery Cherry Pie. (Where is it produced? How is it distributed? What is the carbon footprint? How are the workers treated? Where do they get their cherries? How are the cherry pickers treated?) Ever since seeing Food, Inc. we have felt we cannot go in with one hand over our eyes and another hand shoveling cherry pies into our gompers. Before we bestow the blue ribbon, we want to know what our $2.09 is supporting. We want our cherry pie to be truly .. Cheery.

Jersey Pie Road Trip 1

Delicious Orchards
320 Route 34 South
Colts Neck, NJ 07722
Cherry Pie: $10.99

Summer at the New Jersey farm stand is shaping up to be a rewarding side trip for us diner diving folks here at Jersey Pie. We drove down from the city to a quaint little farm store named Delicious Orchards, where, we were told, real old fashioned pies were to be found. When we left we actually had an assortment of desserts in addition to a whole cherry pie, which we brought home to share with M. Slices were dealt, followed by nods, grunts and raised eyebrows. The concensus: Now we're getting somewhere! That's a good pie!! What a flaky pastry crust! What tasty, tart cherries! If we had been served this at any diner we'd have called it an unqualified success. But wait, this is supposed to be a farm fresh pie. We've sampled so many (bad ones) that we're not sure of the criteria. This pie... Well, the matrix was a little sweet for our taste. That's not necessarily a complaint, possibly just a personal preference. But we were a little suspicious. We gave Delicious Orchards a call to see if the cherry pie was high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) sweetened. It wasn't. Maybe we are getting paranoid about our food after seeing Food, Inc.. Its pretty scary. Generally we don't go for fear-mongering (unless we can get behind it, we guess), but it's worth checking out. Maybe it's not showing in your neck of the woods, so here are some of the interesting points, in case you don't get around to it.

One likely ingredient in mass-produced pie filling (cherries + goo) is HFCS. That will serve as our cherry pie tie-in. We have been trying to avoid HFCS and partially hydrogenated oil. We heard HFCS is linked to the obesity epidemic, then we heard not, but hey, do we have to eat it? We don't even remember what's wrong with partially hydrogenated oil... free radicals? No, that's us... Anyhoo, we've decided against them. That pretty much rules out the cookie aisle. These days, most processed food contains HFCS. We learned from the movie this is just one of a large fistful of products made from corn, some of which have wormed their way into our cravings through processed foods.

If you should pop high fructose corn syrup into a popular search engine, the first hit will be a delightful little website called Sweet Surprise. This website is the property of the Corn Refiners Association, who also funds the studies that present high fructose corn syrup in a positive light. (That last link will take you to a fun YouTube spoof of other Corn Refiners Association efforts.) Hopefully we will not be slapped with a food libel lawsuit for making fun of the Corn Refiners Association. It cost Oprah a million dollars to work her way out of one of these when she declared on television that she wanted to be sure she wasn't eating Mad Cow Diseased beef.

Defenders of high fructose corn syrup are employing a curious argument. They state that HFCS is no worse than table sugar. We here at Jersey Pie would like to know, is everyone else in America like 12 years old or something? How is that an argument? Those of us who grew up in the 1960s remember Sugar Smacks (mmmm). We also remember a day when, suddenly, folks were not so keen on foods whose first ingredient was sugar. Sugar Smacks was renamed Honey Smacks in the '80s to address this consumer trend, but it still contains more than 50% sugar by weight. So, the score is Kellogg's 2, Consumers 0. We predict the next move in the hide the sugar game will be to stop listing "high fructose corn syrup" and start listing its components: glucose and sucrose. We'll be sure to alert you when we find out!

Just one more corny point we'd like to make before signing off. Agent Orange producer Monsanto engineered some seeds that were resistant to their heavy duty pesticide Round Up. Engineering allows them to patent the seeds. Patented seeds allow Monsanto to sue farmers for patent infringement if pollen from their seeds spread onto crops on neighboring farms. Yup. They are really doing this. The crops Monsanto has engineered include corn, soy, sugar beets, and canola. Buying organic allows you to avoid these genetically engineered, patented foods. Just sayin'.

Our Delicious Orchards cherry pie was not organic but did not have HFCS. What more could we ask? Take a look as we plate our slices while Chip and Flip sing our theme song. Turn up the sound and enjoy.

MinuteMan Family Restaurant, Morristown

990 Mount Kemble Ave.
Morristown, NJ 07960
Small Cherry Pie (for 2): $4.95
Coffee: $1.25

It's funny when you really notice how things happen, how one thing leads to another. Last week's blog entry ended with a vintage New York Times article about a New Jersey Pie Shop robbery. The phrase "jersey pie shop" seemed like a "well, duh" key word search for a blog called Jersey Pie. The "jersey pie shop" key word search did turn up this interesting item: Minuteman Restaurant and Pie Shop.

Add to that, Jersey Pie received its first hate mail this week. An advocate for the Jubilee Park Diner wants to know whether we don't have anything better to do, and why are we so damn cheap (in so many words). So, maybe we were feeling doubly disinclined to return to the Jersey diner-scape. First because the cherry pie sucks, and doubly because now they hate us. Anyhoo, we headed out to the Minuteman where we could pick up a whole, fresh-baked cherry pie if we wanted to, and bring it home to eat with a cup of our own fresh ground coffee.

The Minuteman menu describes the origins of their Country Pie Shop. In a nutshell: they decided to sell pie. They give the sequence in which the different pies became available, first apple, then blueberry, cherry, and pecan. 1979 is when they started selling cherry pie, and that's all we need to know here at Jersey Pie. That's 30 years of baking experience. It's just got to be delicious, doesn't it? We had called ahead to make sure they had a cherry pie. By the time we got there they had sold it (sound of needle scratching across the vinyl). Cancel that vision of us sitting at home eating pie with a steaming mug of homemade brew. They did have a small cherry pie for us though, so we sat under the outsider art in the red-barn motif restaurant, sipped their pretty good cup of decaf, and ate the best cherry pie we have found on our quest. Don't un-follow Jersey Pie yet, though...

When the waitress asked us whether we wanted our pie heated with ice-cream, we consulted on the ice-cream then said "no." She took our meaning so far as the ice-cream goes, but, when, not long after that, we heard a "ding," we knew she had nuked our pie, the last cherry pie in the joint. Our hearts sank. Make no mistake, we ARE recommending the Minuteman cherry pie; it IS the BEST pie we have tasted so far. However, that had to be gleaned through the unfortunate effects of the nuking. The very, very flaky pastry was made soggy and a tad rubbery. The filling was scalding hot. But we ate every bite. Yum. It was delicious. And here's a heads up to all you Jersey diners out there: cherry pie does not have to be full of goo! This cherry pie was juicy, tart, and lightly sweet. Its juices had soaked into the pastry and burbled over the lip of the crust and burned a bit, just a bit, in a good way. As far as the whole mini-pie, small pie concept is concerned, however, Jersey Pie is voting "no." It's just too much crust.

While we were not totally disappointed, we agreed (with the help of some word deconstruction) that perhaps we could not honestly say that we were really "appointed." As we rolled back toward Jersey City over NJ-24 E we reflected on all the pies-sibilities represented by the road signs, the white on green beacons guiding drivers back home, to work, or maybe to cherry pie: Caldwell, Livingston, Chatham, Summit. But those slices will have to wait, for these pie hounds are howling farewell to slices and coffee, at least for the summer. No, we aren't so thin-skinned that we can't take a little hate mail. Jersey Pie will be busy this summer tracking down home-baked, farm-fresh cherry pies from farm stands and blogging about them. Mmmmmmm. Jealous much? And in case you are reading along and haven't recommended your favorite Jersey pie place yet, please chime in! We want to hear from our readers in other states about their cherry pies, too. Send us a comment! We love you all, and we'll be blogging to you soon, direct from a Jersey farm stand.

Legends Diner, Secaucus

130 County Avenue
Secaucus, NJ 07094
Cherry Pie: $2.75
Coffee: $1.15 Fuhgeddaboudit. Best diner coffee in da state. It's not getting any better. Go ahead and drink it black.

Ran out to Home Depot in Secaucus on Wednesday for a new set of house keys. Jersey Pie was literally at a loss on Tuesday due to a traffic court date. But we were victorious. The judge accepted our argument that the Parking Authority should not have been enforcing alternate side parking and handing out parking tickets like tickets to the prom after posting Emergency: No Parking signs all over town. We won the court case but lost the house keys, so it was off to H.D. for new ones. While in Secaucus we reconnoitered Legends Diner.

Legends Diner couldn't possibly be more adorable. It's a classic, gleaming chrome diner with a working clock crowning its glory, and eight blooming rose bushes add their charm to the entry. When we returned for pie on Friday, birds were peeping their sunset song, and we fell right into a diner swoon. Sheer perfection, interrupted only momentarily by an icy blast of AC in the vestibule. Was this a foreshadowing of doom?

It didn't seem so when we ogled the dessert case and were bowled over by their genius solution to the refrigerator burn problem you have heard about so many times here on Jersey Pie. It is so simple, so easy. We looked at it and suddenly all of life's problems seemed solvable. Legends has innovated a system of 4 X 4 inch squares of rigid, clear plastic abutting the exposed edges of all their displayed desserts. Wow! Simply elegant!

Unfortunately, we can't recommend actually eating at Legends Diner. The food was beyond crappy. We think they gave the (chef?) the evening off and let the dishwasher do the cooking. And, they failed to employ their own dessert-butting method to the cherry pie! There was 3/4 C of hardened, tasteless matrix on one edge of our slice, and the rest of it was also nearly inedible in all the old familiar ways. The crust looked like a Cub Scout badge project! They call it Legends because 8 X 10 b&w glossies of celebrities adorn just about every inch of available space in the place. Our booth was surrounded by The Munsters, Gary Cooper, Lynda Carter, Stan Musial, Shirley Temple, Lucille Ball, and Sinatra and Kelly. When we sat down we were cheered by their legendary faces. But as we took one last glance back at them we felt a bit sad, their eyes seeming to say, "Don't leave us like this, don't go...." (Fred Gwynne and Yvonne DeCarlo notwithstanding). They're hanging there right now, looking down, perplexed. We may go back to see them again and have some of that coffee. Could Legends possibly screw up breakfast?

As possible evidence that New Jersey has a long history of disregard for good pie, we submit verbatim the following item, an article we came across while perusing the archives of the New York Times:

Jersey Pie Shop Robbed
Special to The New York Times
Copyright c. The New York Times

Elizabeth, N.J., Oct. 30, 1958--
Intruders, who apparently worked with a
truck or a car, broke into the Jones Pie Shop
on Route 1 here early today. They carted off
a 200-pound safe, containing $500 in cash,
the police reported. They ignored hundreds
of freshly baked pies.

Versailles Diner, Fairfield

398 US 46
Fairfield, NJ 07004
Cherry Pie, $3.50
Coffee, $1.25

Ode to Fair Plainness

Passion for pie and sensing fruitlessness,
Our New York friend M. crosses the Hudson;
Conspiring with her now to locate bliss
From fruit-filled pies that would win a ribbon,
To Fairfield, New Jersey on 280's
Mass of concrete, through the Caldwells, past Or-
anges, we drive together in Chevy's
Practical, 2001 Prizm for
Thirty minutes, no more, hoping to ease,
At the Versailles Diner (not Versai-eeze!),
A self-inflicted mania for "best."

Who would behold our waitress and ask more
Cleavage, flattery, or wit, must be blind
To simple service, an everyday reward;
Wallflower at the whirling dance of mind,
Rhythm of menu, order, serve us - sleep
Drowsed with the fume of hope pies. A good look
Reveals the virtues of glasses, focal powers,
And time not spent making-up for a beep
From some guy who for all we know's a crook;
Rather: iceberg, chicken, burgers, and coke;
Clockwork, plain, goodness, twenty-four hours.

And the cherry pie, we saw it rotate
(Think not of pie, your dinner is good too,
While French fries, and coleslaw yet grace your plate,
And touch your stubborn chins with greasy hue;
Perhaps it's not for cherry pie you're born
Though dreaming after pie keeps souls aloft
And flaky pastry calls to spirits, "rise!"
Though mouths brim full of cherries cannot mourn,
And songs of sweetness' praises are heard oft,)
And maybe it is "best" that should be scoffed;
That Versailles waitress serves good cherry pies.

Nutley Diner, Nutley

372 Centre Street
Nutley, NJ 07110
Pie $ don't know
Coffee $ too much for this so-so cup o' Joe

For those of you just joining us here at Jersey Pie, we offer a quick review of our efforts thus far. After sampling the mediocre cherry pie offered by our local diner we decided to begin a search - chronicled in a blog - for the best cherry pie and coffee in New Jersey. Little did we know we had entered a nightmare world of refrigerator burn, coagulated goo, irascible boogers, high fructose corn syrup, and widget pies. Along the way we did get some pretty good cherry pie at the Bendix Diner (where the crust is too dense), some darn good cherry pie at the Tom Sawyer Diner (where the crust is not quite flaky), and what we think was probably very good cherry pie at the Jubilee Park Diner (where a mop bucket of bleach water overpowered our taste buds.) Six months later, we're still looking for New Jersey's best piece of cherry pie. Which brings us to the self-proclaimed #1 diner in the state.

Jersey Pie experienced a vision in the parking lot of the Nutley Diner, but it wasn't a vision of pie. It looked more like a Belgian waffle with strawberries and whipped cream. Now a lunch of waffles with cherry pie for dessert is not at all sensible, we know; we struggled with the order, but the power of this vision overwhelmed the wisdom of having an omelet, so it was done. In addition we ordered a Swiss, lettuce and tomato on whole wheat toast and an order of waffle fries. Our waitress returned a few minutes after we placed our order to make sure we wanted whipped cream on the waffle. She understood the meaning of our "Yes" with psychic astuteness, for our waffle was served in a veritable helmet of whipped cream. (She knew she was good, and proclaimed it outright, in so many words.) The strawberries were abundant and absolutely fresh, and the waffle was light on the inside and toasty on the outside. If this were a waffle quest, this would be the final, triumphant post of Jersey Waffle. Our other orders were just as fresh and flavorful. The CLT sandwich and fries, for all their simplicity, could not have been better, and, yes, even the ubiquitous slaw was delicious.

So we were encouraged as we sat waiting for our pie and coffee. Maybe the #1 diner in the state was going to knock this one out of the park. But there at the Nutley Diner we were faced with yet another insipid, jejune piece of...pie. A slice so pale, so wan it seemed to have been barely sustained by--weeks?--of refrigeration. And even the coffee had plenty of room for improvement. We ask you, Nutley Diner, "Why, oh why, do you not rotate the pie?" We had so much hope for you, Nutley Diner. Why disappoint us with your inferior pie and coffee?

The pie, the pie, the pie... It seems the odds are stacked against us; at a rate of only three so-so or better slices of cherry pie in twice as many months of searching, is there more going on here than our clever use of the semi-colon? Is this Jersey pie a pie in the sky? Those of you who have been journeying along with us probably aren't even expecting good pie. Isn't that sad? Call us ingenuous ; ) We did believe that this blog would be spent comparing the finer distinctions of a mighty fine dessert. We really did. Since then we've come to know the harsh reality of commercial dining, even of the supposed home-style variety. A reality harsh enough to leave us wondering if our whole endeavor was futile. We felt so alone : (

It was heartening to meet Joe Hill* (or re-meet, as we had heard the Joan Baez song), through this "pie in the sky" phrase, just after asking ourselves (see last week's post) whether industrialization had dulled our senses, dulled our expectations. We won't venture a guess as to whether workers in control of the means of production would bake a better pie. We suspect that the problem of caring, the problem of investing oneself in the task at hand, whether baking a cherry pie or doing any other task, may well remain. How do we respond? The IWW emphasized the primacy of human life and happiness, and their mission was to respond consciously to industrialization. Jersey Pie is simpatico with this. We steadfastly assert that the cherry pie product should be of the highest quality, no matter who produces it, and we will continue to alert the public to purveyors of shoddy pies. Dining establishments, if the pie is not going to be good, do us all a favor and take it off the menu. This is our answer (for now) to our readers, who must by now be asking - as we are asking ourselves - why do we keep ordering cherry pie in New Jersey diners?

____________________________________________________________________

*Joe Hill, the most prolific songwriter of the Wobblies, coined the phrase "pie in the sky" in the early 1900s. Joe was stickin' it to the Salvation Army, suggesting that working folks needed pie here and now, not promises of heaven. Some folks will tell you that it was Joe's insistence on pie for the common man that got him shot full of holes by a firing squad in Utah. You see, Joe was in bed with another man's wife the night two thugs robbed and killed a merchant in the same town. When Joe turned up with a jealous man's bullet in him, the same night as the robbery took place, it looked suspicious. All the united workers of the world, and even President Wilson, couldn't save the 36 year old pie-idealist from the firing squad. His martyred body was taken to Chicago, IWW headquarters, and cremated. His ashes were mailed to IWW locals all over the world, and freed to the winds the following May 1st. Except for one envelope of ashes that was confiscated by the United States postal service and stamped "subversive." These ashes were released from the National Archive to the IWW in the 1980s, and in deference to Abbie Hoffman's prankish vision a portion of them were eaten by Billy Bragg. Jersey Pie's pie clamoring will hopefully not have such a dire outcome. Here's to you, Joe Hill.

Park Wood Diner, Maplewood

1958 Springfield Avenue
Maplewood, NJ 07040
Pie $2.50
Coffee $125

The Park Wood Diner gave us every reason to believe we would get good cherry pie. The chicken soup was good. The salad was fresh. Even the coleslaw was good. The place mats boasted "You'll like our food." A sign on the coffee maker said "God Bless America." We really believed it might happen. The slice we were served was fresh on both edges, which seemed to bode well. But that pie was nothing more than crust on the outside and red stuff on the inside.

It looked like a pie. Yeah, in a court of law it could be proved they had intended to make a cherry pie. They probably have a paper trail - invoices for cherries filed away, a testimonial from a 'baker' ( "I am the baker what make ze pie. Yes. I make ze crust. Also, I fill ze crust wit ze cherries. I swear I do zis.") - just in case in this litigious society someone asks for their day in court. The plaintiffs' discussion with counsel might go something like this:

Jersey Pie: We feel that by implication they were saying that there would be cherries in the pie.
Lawyer: So, are you saying it was a blueberry pie?
Jersey Pie: No, we mean the quality, a thing can't have no quality at all. Could they serve anything beige on the outside and red on the inside as cherry pie?
Lawyer: I think you've got no case, is what I think.

Trader Joe's cherry crumb pie last weekend was not much better. All real ingredients, no preservatives, a little more than 50% crumb. Something slimy happened between the cherries and the crumbs. And sweet. Not HFCS sweet, but sugar sweet. Not good. We are starting to think we can distinguish the flavor of disregard. This Trader Joe's pie carried the taste of the bottom line. And that brings us back to the assembly line. On television this week they're advertising the new Terminator movie. And here we pose a pie-quest inspired philosophical query: Have the machines already won? Is it not so much they might gain a survival instinct and human-like consciousness as they have already dulled our own awareness...of the quality that human care brings to a pie? Rather than rising to our level, have we already fallen to theirs, with questions like: how much filler can I use and still call it pie? How little effort can I apply and still keep my job? How little can I possibly care about what I am doing and still get it done?

It's a dark day for Jersey Pie. It's hard to believe we'll find any reason to carry on with our quest, and yet we continue our search. There are some lights on the horizon. We've heard of an orchard in South Jersey, where folks line up for pie. Seems positively Edenic. Is that what we're really looking for here? A sort of Platonic ideal to feed our souls as much as it stuffs our pie holes? What are we really looking for?