Pieminister, Westgate Street, Bath

I don’t really trust people who says they don’t like pies. Okay, fair enough, if they’re referring to potato- or meringue-topped versions, or latticed pies, or flaky, lid-only aberrations that, to me, are pies in name only, I get their point – there’s a fair debate to be had here. But real, proper, actual pies (as in, the shortest of shortcrust pastry wrapped around the juiciest of flavour-packed filling with, very importantly, no gap between filling and lid, and always served piping hot) top my “What’s Not To Love?” food charts, leaving even my beloved fish finger butties lagging far behind in their second place position.

Okay, I wouldn’t want to eat a pie every day – and I shouldn’t have to, either; a proper pie (which, by rights, has to be served with mash and rivers of gravy too) should fill you up and leave you craving nothing but lightly-steamed cabbage for at least three days afterwards. Your standard, off-the-shelf supermarket pie just ain’t gonna deliver on that score and, unless you’re prepared to put in several long hours honing the necessary skills required for pie success, few of us have the wherewithal to make the magic happen at home either.

Thank goodness, then, that Pieminister – the brainchild of Tristan Hogg and Jon Simon, who started their pie-venture in a little kitchen on Bristol’s Stokes Croft back in 2013 – are Masters of the Art of Proper Pies of the brazenly hip, new old-fashioned variety, and their newest piestop on the UK block (there are currently 16 in the small chain) is as brazenly hip/new old-fashioned as a pie restaurant gets: a giant suspended cast-iron bathtub hangs at the entrance; neon pies and related slogans light up the exposed brickwork walls; canteen-style tables suggest efficient, speedy satisfaction. There’s craft beer and cocktails on the drinks menu, flyers advertising Sunday Lunch, Bottomless Brunch and Student Discounts on the tables, and the menus are busy, busy, busy with all manner of combo-deals from a straightforward pie with gravy for £6.50 to the fully-loaded Mothership options (pies with all manner of trimmings, circa £13) by way of Express Lunch, nibbly things on sticks, Gravy Fondue (yes, really), a dedicated kids’ menu, an array of ice cream sundaes (hoorah!) and several mix’n’match small plates.

Small plates, in a pie shop where portions are known to go large? Oh, go on then! And so it came to pass that our order of super-crisp pork scratchings, nicely-spiced chickpea, spinach and sweet potato Chana-Rama Patties and the most delectably seasoned Halloumi Chips I’ve ever encountered arrived at our table in double-quick time, only to be duly gobbled up at twice the speed. But as tasty as they were (and they really were – and a bargain at 3 for £13), we didn’t really need them, because…

…our two Motherships landed: one Free Ranger (chicken, ham and leek in a dreamy, thickly creamy sauce, teeming with thyme) and one Moolin Rouge (velvety chunks of steak muddled with fat little nuggets of dry cured bacon in a deeply treatsome red wine jus), each one artfully plonked on top of a mountain of creamy mash dripping with minted mushy peas and scattered with cheddar and crispy onions that I was rather sceptical of but have now decided that my dine-in Pieminister pie can’t live without; cue total, concentrated silence at our table (a rare occurrence) until we were at least halfway through our feast.

Pieminister has landed in Bath in the perfect location at just the right time, when we all need a reliably good contempo-diner to dive into on a whim or for an occasion, on our own or with friends. All in all, it’s a happy place serving pies that make you happy; if anybody tells you otherwise, don’t trust them. When you go off in search of your own happy, just make sure you’ve got plenty of cabbage to dine on for at least the next three days…