Aldi | Elmsbury Meat Pie | A Review

Posted by malekei on April 4, 2013 · 7 Comments 

According to the internet, Aldi supermarket has received some pretty high praise lately for their Elmsbury meat pies. They fared better than other supermarket pies (i.e., Coles Smart Buy pies & Woolworth‘s brand pies) in a relatively limited survey conducted by the Federal Government’s National Measurement Institute, commissioned by the less-than-reliable Today Tonight show. It made perfect sense to write a review on this one, especially since piesaregoodforyou has almost completed its database of reviews on the cheapest pies that are available in Australia. And really, what do the people of the survey committee really know about pies? This is a job for a professional.

Cost: $3.39 per 6-pack (or, 56 cents a pie)

Pastry: extremely thin and wafery. Crisp and brittle, which meant this one fell apart easily. It’s pastry shell was Icelandic-white and it’s roof had the texture of puff-pastry, but not as … puffy. It’s taste was uninteresting and floury. Conclusively, this pastry is very boring.

Meat: interesting, but not necessarily in a good way. A flood of gravy disrupts the ceramic canvas as a knife slides through the pie like an iceberg through the Titanic, and, as one digs about the shameful globs of meat-gravy, with a little bit of analysis it’s hard not to notice that this pie is very light: light-tasting, with a light gravy (I presume chicken stock is used). The pebbles of meat are dispersed throughout the thin gravy, and are noticeably more sizable than the meat-mush that usually comes pack in these cheap pastry morsels. Overall, this pie leaves the palate feeling rather clean, which is unusual. A good pie should make the stomach gurgle at least a little bit.

Overall Satisfaction: quite average really. Not awful, but nothing special either. Comparatively, the Coles Smart Buy pies had an interesting, if not entirely unconventional taste, which I believe is more interesting than this pie specimen from Elmsbury. Don’t expect to feel filled by this pie, because it is quite small. Its cheap price of 56 cents a pie is worth considering. Overall, this pie is … average.

Grading: D+

Filed under Aldi Supermarket · Tagged with Aldi, Aldi Elmsbury, Aldi supermarket, Australia wide, cheap pie, Elmsbury, Elmsbury meat pies, Elmsbury pie, food critic, humour, pie review, piesaregoodforyou, Stop! in the name of love