Pie Rolla’s: Grandma’s recipe the secret to Auckland pie shop craze
Sunday, 4 August 2024
A new pie shop in Auckland has been popping off, with lines of people queuing up down the street on most days.
Pie Rolla’s sits on Karangahape Road and is the brain child of Lewis Mazza-Carson.
Mazza-Carson puts the popularity of his pies down to them being handmade with love, and thanks to a recipe passed down from his grandmother.
Pies! New Zealanders love them. We love them so much we even have an annual, hotly-contested pie awards.
Our pie-loving culture has been on full display in Auckland recently, thanks to a new shop that has seen lines forming down the street.
Pie Rolla’s is the creation of Lewis Mazza-Carson and sits on Karangahape Road as an old-school hole in the wall store.
Their pies have taken off since they opened in June, and have proven so popular that they are sold out most days, sometimes even before lunch.
Mazza-Carson told Stuff he puts the popularity of his pies down to the love put into them - and the fact they come from a family recipe passed down through the generations.
“My grandmother died in 2020. She passed down that first recipe to my mother and then my mother passed that down to me. It’s really just a mince and cheese recipe, that classic mince and cheese, Ozzy style, nice and chunky.”
Mazza-Carson said his grandmother used to make pies in Australia and sell them to soldiers on the beach.
“She was born in the 1930s and she was excellent at cooking. The dishes my parents served at their cafes in the past were just a couple of variations of what she used to make and what I have grown up eating.”
Mazza-Carson traces Pie Rolla’s roots back to his parents’ old Avondale cafe Salvation Kitchen. “They used to make the best homemade pies with love, and people used to come from who knows where just to try them.”
It was years later when working at KFC that Mazza-Carson decided to resurrect the family pies.
“I wanted to start my own business and be my own boss and that is where the whole idea of the pie shop came up.”
The pies are all handmade, exactly like his grandmother’s were, and don’t contain anything processed, something Mazza-Carson says is quite common with a lot of other pies.
“We make everything by hand from nothing but butter, flour, a little bit of salt and water. That's the basis of it,” he said.
Aside from his grandmother’s original mince and cheese recipe, Mazza-Carson comes up with the other recipes alongside Pie Rolla’s chef Patrick Marckus, who has cooked in Michelin-starred restaurants in France.
“We kind of just sit down, me, Patrick and my mother, and discuss what has been done, how can we take that a step further and make it a little bit better, and we just come up with some ideas and use Patrick’s Michelin-star training skills to put a spin on things.”
The most popular pie so far, Mazza-Carson says, has been the brisket pie, which comes with jalapeños and American cheese.
“It is made from proper ingredients and nothing’s pre-bought either. It’s the extra steps also that we take in preparing the brisket that gives it that little extra flavour,” he said.
Alongside the brisket is Mazza-Carson’s personal favourite, the creamy Béchamel chicken. “It’s got a little bit of cranberry in there just to contrast on the creaminess. It is amazing.”
Since opening the shop, Pie Rolla’s is already selling three times the number of pies they originally started with on a daily basis.
When Stuff visited the shop, the pie warmer was constantly being restocked to match demand, with trickles of people lining up to get their pie fix.
One man Stuff spoke to said the beef brisket with jalapeño was the best pie he had ever had, while another praised the pastry, calling it the best he’d tasted in New Zealand.
Word appears to be spreading, with several people saying they were partaking for the first time.
One man said he was “hopping on the bandwagon”, while another said his workplace told him they were so good he had to try them. Another skateboarded all the way from Mission Bay just for a taste.
Mazza-Carson says the pies have been speaking for themselves, and this shows through their popularity.
“Everyone knows that a good product speaks for itself, and going the extra mile by making everything handmade is what I believe sells them.”
“To see something from my grandmother and the love that she made them with, and now we’re continuing that reflects through our work and the customers that eat them,” he said.
Mazza-Carson is not stopping at pies though. He has also taken over the old Thirsty Dog pub next door, which he plans to turn into a Melbourne-style bistro.