Found Treasure: Rogue Pye

January 21, 2022 – Not sure how it happened, but somehow I accidentally pasted a GIF with the text HALLELUJAH GLOORAY—and a well-fed dude doing a happy dance down a church aisle—into a random document. 

At least it seemed unrelated at the time.

Instead it turns out this portentous cut-and-relocate may be God working her mysterious ways, because the document where it landed contains things that are very much hallelujah worthy. 

It was a page of my notes from a visit to El Pajaro Community Development Corporation. The El Pajaro CDC doubles as the best incubator kitchen for upstart food businesses in the area. (More on its trainings in a second.) 

I was there to meet with Rogue Pye creator Ed Fordyce. And his savory pies are nothing if not heaven sent. 

If you’re like me, chicken pot pies are something of a grace to begin with. Maybe it’s the nostalgia for the basic-but-beautiful frozen pot pies my sister and I would eat on babysitter nights, maybe it’s the gravy gooeying around with all the peas and carrots and chicken, and most certainly it’s the glorious crust.

So the fact that Fordyce is making by far the best pot pies that I’ve ever tried leaves me muttering prayers of gratitude. 

By the way, “best I’ve ever tried” is a sinful phrase used too frequently in food writing, and one that I avoid religiously, but, honest-to-God, I can’t phrase it better here. 

Fordyce’s goal has always been to be the best. While working in engineering around the world, he has tried English-style savory hand pies and pot pies everywhere from Australia to Ireland to his native South Africa. So he knows his pies.

“I want someone who’s traveled the world to say ‘I get the best pies in Santa Cruz,’” he says. 

The crust he makes borders on miraculous, but it’s the product of an obsessive process that involves experience baking pastries for two years before he started on the pie side. 

For years he took a classic French puff pastry approach that involves folding and folding and folding and butter and more butter and folding and more folding, to the point hundreds of layers result. (He’s since found a customized fresh preparation company that delivers his pastry in squares.)

The result is a top that is soft and flaky and buttery, which goes with a separate bottom with its own process that matches the top in flavor and texture but brings the heft and density needed to support the onboard payload. (Pro tip: Remove the tin they come in when baking to get a toastier bum.)

It’s important to note his goodies go well beyond his classic chicken pie with 80% slow-cooked chicken breast, 20% peas and carrots, though they are legion by their lonesome. (They include chicken-leek-ham, chicken-and-cremini mushroom, chicken Marsala and a flagship “peri-peri” with African bird’s eye chili, Nando’s Peri-Peri Sauce, chipotle, arbol and green hatch chili direct from New Mexico.) 

He has some 40 different varieties of pies, and will stock upwards of 20 at a given farmers market. Greatest hits include roast lamb and a Guiness-steak-and-mushroom pie.

“I get bored very easily,” he says. “I manage to have my base [pies] but I have to do something special regularly.”

At this point I’ve tried or offered friends and family more than a dozen flavors. When the texture and taste hit their lips, eyes become marbles that roll in their sockets and they speak from their tongues.

Beyond his relentless recipe development, the fact that Fordyce fastidiously sources his ingredients is a big part of the flavor. Partners include Fogline Farm (of Santa Cruz) and Rocky Free Range (of Petaluma) for chicken, something he takes personally after raising and selling chickens as a kid. 

He also depends on Five Dot Ranch of Napa for beef and local farms for produce. No crisco or palm oil touches his pies, as they do many mainstream versions. 

He’s only all-natural butter and cream, unless it’s his runaway hit vegan versions of mild-spiced vegetable tikka masala with organic cauliflower, carrots, butternut squash, potato, garbanzo beans, onion, tomato, coriander, cumin, cardamom, allspice, mace, turmeric, cinnamon, nutmeg, paprika, ginger, cilantro, salt, pepper and garlic.

“I wanted to make a proper pie,” Fordyce says. “In Australia or South Africa, they’re everywhere at filling stations and corner stores, but it’s a race to the bottom as far as pricing ingredients.”

He doesn’t skimp on the stuffing, either. His pies are plumper than my HALLELUJAH GLOORAY GIF inspiration.

“I make sure the pies have as much filling as they can take,” he says. “They pop a little bit when you reheat them because they’re so full.”

While it’s fine if you take my word for how impressive these pies prove to be, it’s ultimately unnecessary, and perhaps helpful given how slammed the South African-American is. 

Rogue Pye has blossomed into such a hit at Santa Cruz farmers markets that he can no longer keep up with demand—which bloomed bigger amid COVID—and he’s trying to figure out a way to expand capacity beyond what he can do at El Pajaro CDC. He knows how to scale, just lacks the space, and what he calls a “pye apprentice” to take over the reins. 

“America, for me, at its best, is small business,” he says. “All my progress has been to develop one and prove people want to buy my pies. I didn’t create it for myself, but to pass it on to someone with passion and hunger for business. I’m looking for someone like me.”

As this publishes, El Pájaro Community CDC readies to launch a series of trainings on how to start a food business, with classes running completely in Spanish across four sessions in the evening. 

There’s a bunch more depth to this operation, but the aim with Found Treasures is to hit the audience with inspiration and send the congregation searching out more flavor that ultimately has them saying Amen.

Find Rogue Pye’s farmers market schedule and more at roguepye.com and elpajarocdc.org.