Nick Ryan: On the pie chart, it’s no surprise South Australia’s are the best in the land
SOUTH Australia has the best pastries, and that’s no pie in the sky claim, says Nick Ryan
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AS far as big news goes, the announcement this week that South Australia leads the nation in its love for pastry-wrapped meat rivals only the revelation of Liberace’s homosexuality for utter absence of shock value.
If we could put a pie into Parliament we probably would and it’s a wonder someone hasn’t tried to egg wash and crimp our borders to keep the tasty bits in.
Ours is a community that truly understands the pleasures of biting into a self-contained dollop of hot, saucy meat and there’s a reason this state is the only place you can insult a man with no personality by calling him a “pasty without sauce”.
Which is why the results of a recent Roy Morgan poll into the pastry predilections of the nation are far less surprising than the fact they conducted such a poll in the first place.
Obviously sick of the responses they get when ringing people to talk about politics, the pollsters at Roy Morgan decided to take it easy on themselves by picking up the phone and asking a bunch of randomly selected Australians: “ So, pies – whaddya reckon?”.
Adelaide leads the nation’s capitals when it comes to answering that question with a “Yeah, I could go a pie.”
A total of 50.2 per cent of respondents from Adelaide professed a fondness for something warm, flaky and internally brown, with Hobart coming second on 48 per cent, followed by Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane. Sydney trailed the field with a dismal 43.2 per cent.
The Sydney result doesn’t surprise. Having lived there for most of my twenties and all of my thirties, I’ve always been puzzled why a city blessed with so many pleasures fails so miserably when it comes to bakery items.
There were a couple of places that did a decent pie – one in Collaroy is fondly remembered – but a city in which it’s easier to find cocaine than a pasty is one that can’t be trusted.
If you were lucky you’d occasionally find some poor facsimile of a Cornish pasty neglected in a pie warmer – fat, overstuffed and assaulting you with more peas than a stutterer trying to tell you to piss off.
True bakery aficionados will know you bring the punters in with your pies but you make them stay with your pasties.
But if Adelaide’s results were pleasing, the fact country SA comes out as the most bakery obsessed part of this wide, crust-brown land, that makes me especially proud.
Country South Australians know you judge a town by its bakery and won’t bat an eyelid when you suggest a 50km detour between Point A and Point B just because Point C has a bakery that does bloody good pies, sensational pasties and a pretty smart Kitchener bun, too.
The only thing confusing me is the actual figure. According to Roy Morgan, only 61.6 per cent of regional South Australians responded in the affirmative when asked if they fancied a pie.
Now that’s a bigger number than anywhere else, but I still reckon it’s a little on the low side.
Is there some huge commune of vegans hiding out in Quorn we don’t know about?
Has the entire population of the West Coast signed up for the Michelle Bridges Body Challenge?
Or perhaps there’s an explanation that makes more sense. I’m thinking 38.4 per cent of those surveyed simply hung up the phone because the question was redundant and the answer so obvious it simply went without saying.
