Michigan's famous pie shop makes five dozen flavors
The scene: Fall is in the air, Thanksgiving is just three weeks away, and Christmas is not far behind: that means pie is taking center stage on many festive menus. Lots of restaurants and bakeries specialize in pie, but nobody takes it as far as the Grand Traverse Pie Company, a popular Midwestern chain built on 60 varieties of the stuff, with 15 locations across Michigan, as well as one in Terre Haute, Ind., west of Indianapolis.
With pies and other foods displayed behind glass cases, counter service, self-serve coffee, and seating in booths and at easily cleaned tables, Grand Traverse Pie Co. has the same slightly upscaled fast food atmosphere you’d find at bigger café-style chains like Panera, Au Bon Pain and Corner Bakery. But unlike those, it is family owned and through both its menu, quality and many other subtle touches, really maintains a distinctive sense of feel, serving Michigan-centric food that goes way beyond just pie. The coffee beans are roasted in Grand Traverse, the tables in some locations are made of reclaimed wood from Michigan barns, and more than 90% of the ingredients are sourced in state. In summer, they even operate tables at farmers markets in locations that have them, such as one near the State Capital in Lansing, Mich. The result is something that looks like a typical mid-level chain but serves food that is much better than you might expect.
Mike Busley was an aerospace engineer working in San Diego who missed his native Michigan and wanted to return with his wife and raise his children there. A wonderful local pie shop in California gave he and his wife, Denise, inspiration, and the shop’s owner took them under her wing and taught them.
Michigan is famous for its fruit, especially cherries, so the Busleys returned home and opened a pie shop in Traverse City, Mich. where they embraced the state’s bounty of fruits. That was 1996, and 20 years later, they have built a beloved local institution that also ships its now famous pies all over the country, both through its own site and gourmet food ordering specialist FoodyDirect.com.
Reason to visit: Cornish pasties, pot pies, pies
The food: Grand Traverse Pie Company serves breakfast, lunch, dinner, and of course, dessert at all times, and most of the items on the menu have some connection to the sweet specialty or to Michigan. For example, the very popular Hudson’s Maurice Chicken Salad, one of the bestselling main dishes, was inspired by a bygone beloved chicken salad at the now defunct historic Detroit department store, Hudson’s, which the Busleys re-created. An excellent pot pie is available, clearly derived from the other pie specialties, along with an array of Cornish pasties, an English meat pie in the style of an empanada that Cornish coal miners used to take down into the mines with them. Many Cornish miners later made their way to work in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and ever since, the most famous food product of Cornwall has found a second home in Northern Michigan, where it was adopted as a beloved regional specialty. It is hard to find a Cornish pasty in most of the country, but it is easy in parts of the Great Lakes State.
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Much of the secret to the chain’s success is its delicious pie crust, which are all made in its main kitchen and then delivered to the other locations, where all the pies, as well as the quiches, pasties and pot pies, which use the same crust, are made on-site and baked fresh daily. The crust is delicious and it makes the savory dishes that use it delicious as well. The pot pies sing because of the crust, and the innards standout as well, with big chunks of chicken, peas that are snappy and corn that still crunches (not soggy veggies like in many takes on the dish).
I love pasties, know quite a bit about them, have had them all over the United Kingdom, and these are excellent. The mainstay is the beef pasty, which has a rich, meaty, flavorful filling, not just bland ground meat like many pasties, and of course, benefits from the flaky delicious crust. A rotating limited-edition flavor is offered, such as Buffalo chicken on my last visit, which was excellent. They are currently offering a breakfast pasty. Limited and seasonal editions are huge here, and right now turkey pot pie joins the omnipresent chicken and beef options through mid-January, and a bacon pesto quiche temporarily augments the four mainstay flavors (Lorraine, spinach mushroom, broccoli cheddar and Mediterranean vegetable).
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The rest of the non-dessert menu is entrée salads, wraps and sandwiches. The composed Maurice salad is tops, featuring fresh iceberg lettuce layered with ham, turkey, Swiss cheese, gherkin pickles and sliced hard boiled eggs tossed in Maurice dressing. Salads are more elaborate than you’d expect: the Strawberry Fields mixes lettuce with apples, mandarin orange, strawberries, red onion, cinnamon roasted pecans and cheese, topped with homemade berry cherry vinaigrette, and Spinach Goat Cheese mixes spinach with Michigan blueberries, red onion, apple cinnamon roasted pecans and goat cheese with honey mustard vinaigrette. Local fruit also finds its way into the Cherry Chicken Salad: lettuce, chicken breast, tomato, cucumber and feta with Michigan dried cherries and homemade croutons. Wraps can be made with any of the house salads, while sandwiches on fresh baked breads have their own long list of options, from basics like club and BLT to the bestselling Grand Traverse chicken salad, which includes dried Michigan cherries, on a croissant.
But the focus is pies, and as the company’s vision on its website explains, “First and foremost, we are pie makers. Pie is a celebration of family and tradition, neatly and deliciously packaged in a flaky crust. Our passion is to recreate those memorable 'pie moments' from long ago. Our bakers take great pride in crafting each of our pies by hand and baking them slowly until they are just right. Like our grandmothers, they have the ‘eye for pie.’ To that end, we celebrate pie. Every one of us, every day. Our vision is to spread this love of pie throughout everything that we do and make at the Grand Traverse Pie Company.”
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The pies are fantastic, and one friend who found out I was visiting begged me to bring one back across the country for him. Surprisingly, while Michigan is most famous for its cherries, the cherry pie is the second bestseller behind the beloved apple crumb, with the famed ABC pie (apples, blueberries and cherries, all from the same Michigan orchard) runs a close third. But including the cream pies, there are a whopping five dozen or so flavors, including rotating specials, to choose from, though not all are available all the time or at all locations (the original flagship on Front Street in Traverse City has the biggest selection daily). Seasonal highlights include pumpkin this time of year and peach in the summer. By using a great crust and first-rate fruit, they make great pies – I don’t even like cherry pie and the lattice topped version here was the best I’ve ever had, and beautiful to boot. But my favorites were the crumb topped versions, the apple and especially the ABC. It really is hard to go wrong when it comes to one of these pies.
What regulars say: “If you go to the Upper Peninsula you’ll see pasties all over the place, but hardly ever down here — except at GTP," says Tony Cuthbert, executive producer of the state’s top syndicated drive time radio show, the Michigan Big Show, hosted by local broadcast legend Michael Patrick Shiels, whose Lansing, Mich. studio is literally connected to an outpost of the Grand Traverse Pie Company. "The Buffalo Chicken pasty is awesome. For pies, the ABC is the best, just really good.”
Pilgrimage-worthy?: No, but if you love pie or Cornish pasties it’s a must try — in person or by mail order.
Rating: Yum! (Scale: Blah, OK, Mmmm, Yum!, OMG!)
Price: $-$$ ($ cheap, $$ moderate, $$$ expensive)
Details: 15 locations across Michigan and one in Terre Haute, Ind.; 866-444-7437; gtpie.com
Larry Olmsted has been writing about food and travel for more than 15 years. An avid eater and cook, he has attended cooking classes in Italy, judged a barbecue contest and once dined with Julia Child. Follow him on Twitter, @TravelFoodGuy, and if there's a unique American eatery you think he should visit, send him an e-mail at travel@usatoday.com. Some of the venues reviewed by this column provided complimentary services.