I
visited the Tempe location on October 10, 2015 with Sandy Wilts and Annette
Savory.
. It has a real pub atmosphere. The menu is huge. I started with a cup of homemade soup –
Cream of Leek, Potato and Stilton…and served with homemade bread and
butter. The bread was a white hearty
bread. It tasted wonderful.
Sandy
and Annette each ordered the Roast Dinner Pasty – house roasted beef, roasted
potato, candied carrots, sautéed brussel sprouts, cheese sauce and rutabaga
mash. Served with red wine gravy and
horse radish cream.
Since
this was the Phoenix Magazine choice as the best pasty in the Valley because
they magazine had identified the pasty as the signature Montana food, I had to
try The Oggie (the traditional pasty) – steak, potato, onion and rutabaga
(swede) with a side of red wind gravy.
The
pasties were huge…thick dough…beautifully designed….filled to bursting with
contents.
The
menu lists fourteen signature pasties – fifteen premium pasties – thirteen
vegetarian and vegan pasties. Nine sides
are on the menu and include items like Mushy Peas. They also offer six different types of
desserts that include all of the favorites such as Sticky Toffee Pudding.
I
am so happy to have found this pub. This
is the best pasty I have ever eaten. I
will be taking many of my winter visitors here for lunch.
The
Company was founded in January, 2005 by Cornwall native Dean Thomas at the
Tempe location.
The
Cornish Pasty originates from Cornwall (Southwest England) and can be traced
back as far as the 13th century.
Mining was once a thriving industry in Cornwall and at that time pasties
were baked by the wives and mothers of the tin miners. Pasties were made with a thick crimped edge
along one side so the miners could use the crimp as a handle to hold onto while
eating. The hands of the miners would
often be covered in arsenic from the mine, so the miners would discard the
handle when they were done. The crusts
were never wasted though, as many miners believed that ghosts, or “knockers”,
inhabited the mines and their leftover crusts would keep these ghosts content.
Traditionally,
pasties were made with different fillings at each end; one end containing meat
and vegetables, and the other end with a sweet filling. The sweet end would be marked with an initial
so the miners knew what side to eat first. Today, Cornish Pasties are filled
with steak, potatoes, swede (rutabaga)
and onions.
At
one time Cornwall had nearly 2,000 flourishing tin mines, but by the 1880s tin
mining had become a rapidly declining industry.
At this time Cornish miners began immigrating to Michigan’s Upper
Peninsula for copper mining. Bringing with them the tradition of pasties. Cornish Pasties are well known throughout
mining towns across America as well as the British Isles.
Butte,
Montana, was the center of a mining boom in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, and at one point, Irish immigrants who came to work the mines
composed a quarter of the city’s population.
With them came the miner’s tradition of the meat pasty, which is still
extremely popular not just in Butte, but throughout the state. The Oggie from Cornish Pasty Company is a
descendant of the Butte pasty, its flaky crust filled with steak, potatoes,
onions and rutabagas. While folks in
Montana might scoff at the rutabagas and insist on beef gravy rather than red
wine gravy, the Oggie is otherwise a reasonably close approximation of a Butte
pasty.
The Cornish Pasty Company
960 W. University
Tempe, Arizona 85281
Hours: Sunday – Wednesday
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 a.m.
Thursday – Saturday 11:00 a.m. – 2:00
a.m.
Other locations:
1941 W. Guadalupe Road
Mesa, Arizona 85202
3800 N. Goldwater Blvd.
Scottsdale, Arizona 85251
953 E. Sahara Avenue
Las Vegas, Nevada 89104
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