Baker’s delights: Angelwood Pies brings irresistible blend to Leederville
Does tracking down elite baked goods sound like your idea of a weekend well spent? Do you consider the warmth of a barista’s welcome just as important as a granular knowledge of coffee beans and roasting techniques? Do you find yourself constantly daydreaming about ’80s country bakeries, but dad won’t let you borrow the DeLorean? (“One day,” he says, noticing your disappointment, “I’ll let you take it from time to time.”
If this is you, you’re going to like Leederville’s newly opened Angelwood Pies.
Patrick Wallis and Maddie Scurry at Angelwood Pies. Credit: Max Veenhuyzen
When word got out a talented, fine-dining-trained chef and a popular barista were teaming up to open a pie shop, Perth got suitably excited. If you’ve ever attended a Capsule pop-up or dined at one of Perth’s better restaurants over the past two years during Richard Overbye’s jobbing chef era – Wildflower, Gibney and Yiamas are among the kitchens he would magically materialise in – you’ll know he can cook. During his stint with the Modus group, smiley barista Patrick Wallis proved he had both the coffee-making and people skills to pay the bills. Together, the pair’s combined skill set and energy promised good things, and Angelwood delivers.
Team Wallis-Overbye have transformed the former Vinyl Cafe into a neighbourhood, all-are-welcome bakery, painting the shopfront deep forest green, erecting a green and white awning over the yellow door and painting the interiors white. The room was gutted and a semi-open kitchen built next to the coffee counter, and a wooden ledge for customers wanting to eat instore. The walls are bare save for a handwritten slogan proclaiming “pies for the people”, a reclaimed leadlight window-turned-menu, and a framed print featuring the blown-up cover of Feed The Beasts, a 1969 fundraising cookbook from Manjimup Lions Club’s ladies committee. It’s a setting that makes you feel good.
Equally good is the coffee (Modus beans) and service, care of Wallis and Maddie Scurry, an all-rounder who splits her time between counter and kitchen, where she helps Overbye and chefs Mattia Perego and Rohan Todd with cooking. But even if you can’t see the cooks – a larger production kitchen sits behind the smaller prep and oven area where Overbye is often found prepping and chatting with guests – you’ll likely smell them in action.
When talking to WAtoday in December about his plans for Angelwood, Overbye said all-butter pastry was non-negotiable. The sweet, deeply reassuring aroma of caramelised milk solids (see also “bakery smell”) that fills the room suggests Overbye has made good on his promise to only cook with “real ingredients.” Eat one of his pies and your hunch is confirmed.
The pie list causes major FOMO. Credit: Max Veenhuyzen
Despite being just 13 items deep (10 pies baked with a combination of shortcrust pastry bases and rough puff lids, plus three all-rough puff sausage rolls) the core menu is still capable of triggering major FOMO for anyone with a soft spot for old-school pies. Country bakery favourites such as mince and steak and mushroom share billing alongside pies packing apricot chicken and corned beef. Those Japanese golden curry pies and pork and prawn sausage rolls inspired by the dim sum trolley favourite, siu mai? Not so traditional: but we wouldn’t expect anything less from someone with Overbye’s far-reaching curiosity.
“A lot of our [cooking] decisions are driven by tradition,” says Overbye who also bakes splendid renditions of classic Australian sweets such as caramel slices and musk sticks to accompany the savouries. “Sometimes, that sense of tradition leans into authenticity, and then it becomes about finding the best balance between the two and creating something different.”
Take Angelwood’s pepper steak pie, for instance. While the use of knuckle and chuck from O’Connor Beef (grass-fed Angus cows, Gippsland) feels straight outta CWA, sharpening the meat with a potent blend of three different peppers – cracked black, black pepper powder plus pickled green – demonstrates how clever thinking can reanimate the familiar. Slicking thickly sliced pieces of steamed silverside with sauerkraut and a bitey blend of Dijon and English mustards puts a Reuben-esque spin on the corned beef.
The apricot chicken pie, meanwhile, is an apricot chicken pie in that it contains chook and fruit. Whereas some cooks (or restaurant critics; ahem) might have used instant onion soup powder and nectar to flavour their version, Overbye turns to ras el hanout – an Arabic-influenced spice mix – to subtly guide the dish from the great southern land to northern Africa. Who says you need a fancy time-travelling car to go places? Turns out a good pie can be just as effective at taking you somewhere different.
Angelwood Pies (18B/663 Newcastle Street, Leederville) is open 8am-2pm, Wednesday-Sunday.
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