Taste factory: Everything in apple-pie order at new Pie Cycle stand

Pie Cycle opens stand at Mehmood Kasuri Road

LAHORE: After two years of running a home-delivery business in Lahore, the Pie Cycle has found itself a stand at Marble Slab on Mehmood Kasuri Road. The soft launch was on Sunday.It will open for business on Monday (today).

“I began making pies during my time in the US,” proprietor Azhar Zaheer says. He recalls the first time he had home-made pies and decided that was his calling. “I would eat half a pie a day.”

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Pie Cycle has been quite a journey for Zaheer. There were hits and misses but he eventually got the hang of perfecting pastry. He started baking from home with his mother and as orders started piling up, they got a chef to help. The pie stand at Marble Slab offers quite a variety featuring seasonal fruits like peaches and pears but also all-time favourites – apples and pumpkins. A slice costs between Rs190and Rs220 and you add ice-cream to the piping hot dessert for another Rs150.

However, the range of desserts is limited to pies. Zaheer explains that he prefers pies to any other dessert because they arenot overwhelmingly sweet. “I love rock-climbing and, one day, want to make a climbing gym with a pie set-up.”

Maryam Wasif Khan, an instructor at LUMS who was at the launch, said the pies she had sampled were at par with some of the best she’s had had over seven Thanksgivings in the US.

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“The pie I ate was simply superb,” says Bilal Tanveer, another instructor at LUMS who was also at the launch.

While most of the pies celebrated tart fruits, the pumpkin pie is an acquired taste. Some of the visitors at the launch felt that some of its flavours tended to dominate the subtle sweetness of pumpkin.

A barista machine at the stand could make all the difference as instant coffee tends to put a damper on a nice plate of pie and ice-cream.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28^th, 2015.