What is a pie floater? This South Australian food has a surprising history

Though the popularity of pie carts dwindled in South Australia, the obsession with floaters did not.Credit: iStock

PLATE UP

Are Adelaidean pie-fanciers the original hipsters? Do we have to gaze back to the mean streets of the South Australian capital in the 1870s to discover the origin of a modern-day trend? Maybe. But we'll get to that.

For now, let's just talk about South Australia's key contribution to Antipodean gastronomy: the pie floater. You take a meat pie, and you plop it into a bowl of pea soup. You garnish with a few squirts of tomato sauce. You tear into the pie with a spoon, scooping up pastry and meaty innards, along with peas and sauce. You yell at the footy. You chat to your mates. You live the dream.

FIRST SERVE

If you take any notice of modern food trends you would be aware of the food truck, a fad kicked off (for Western audiences at least) in the US but now ubiquitous the world over. Cooks set up their kitchens in the back of a van, park somewhere popular, and dish out treats.

What's maybe not so well appreciated is that there were people doing this in Adelaide in the mid to late 1800s. "Pie carts" – horse-drawn trailers offering hot pastries – could be found on many a city street, and around the early 1890s one of their owners, either Scottish migrant James Gibbs, or Port Pirie baker Ern Bradley, hit on the idea of mimicking English pea-and-pie suppers by dumping the pie into soupy peas. Though the popularity of pie carts dwindled, the obsession with floaters did not.

ORDER THERE

Sadly, none of the Adelaide pie carts remain, though you can still get an excellent floater at one of the classics, the 24-hour Cafe de Vili's (cafedevilis.com.au).

ORDER HERE

In Sydney, grab a floater at Harry's Cafe de Wheels (harryscafedewheels.com.au). Melburnians, head on a road trip to Pie in the Sky in Olinda (pieinthesky.net.au).

ONE MORE THING

There is, technically, still one pie cart in Adelaide. Cafe de Vili's, mentioned above, has a cart available for rent for concerts, festivals and other events. So if you're really keen you could just splash out on the entire thing.