Brendan Carter took two bites of the pie in front of him and made a face. “Too salty,” he said and placed it into the box at his feet. Around him, judges probed, sniffed and chomped into Australia’s most beloved snack: the meat pie.
The meat pie is consumed year-round in Australia, on cold winter mornings after a sports game or at country town pit stops on long summer road trips. Australians consume an estimated 270 million meat pies a year, usually smothered in ketchup and served piping hot. It is an egalitarian snack, with filling known for spilling down the fronts of business shirts, team uniforms or favorite T-shirts.
But once a year, those who know meat pies even better than the average Australian, gather to decide which pastry-and-filling deserves to be set apart from the others and recognized for its excellence.
Over four days, 16 judges tested 1,800 single-portion pies and sausage rolls made by the country’s bakers, chefs, pastry cooks and butchers at the Official Great Aussie Meat Pie Competition, held this week at the Fine Food Australia trade fair in Melbourne. Other pie judging contests exist, but this is one of the oldest and biggest in the country. Established in 1989, the competition is also a test of endurance for the judges, who can taste up to 60 pies a day as they strive to find the winners.
Mr. Carter, a senior judge in the gourmet pie category, said he felt “as you’d expect to be feeling” halfway through the tasting on Wednesday. One year, he tried more than 100 pies in a day.
“I enjoy doing it,” Mr. Carter said, adding that judging was a way to give back to the industry that he had worked in for decades as a baker and teacher.
When he is not judging pie competitions, Mr. Carter admitted he does not eat that many meat pies. “I don’t need to; I have enough here,” he said.
Indeed he did. This year, there were of course plain meat pies for judging. But the competition also welcomed more creative entries: a butter chicken pie, a wood-smoked wallaby pie, a prawn and garlic pie, a chipotle pork and pineapple pie and a beef and taco pie. Then there were sausage rolls with flavors like Texas BBQ with onion rings or Mexican beef and cheese.
Judges worked in pairs to assess three pies from each competitor. First, they scored the color, uniformity, meat coloring, meat quality, meat-to-pastry ratio, pastry top and base thickness, as well as creativity.
Then a dedicated “pie crew” brought freshly warmed pies to the judges for tasting. These were evaluated for aroma, mouthfeel, flavor and pastry taste. Under each table is a box where judges discard the parts of the pie they did not eat. In between bites, bottles of peach- or lemon flavored ice tea acted as a palate cleanser (some judges opted for water). In prior years, chardonnay or chunks of pineapple were used.
Mr. Carter, who has been judging since 1999, needed no more than two bites to deliver his verdict. One pie got a nod of approval for its creativity, while another’s pastry was deemed very good. At one stage, he was called over by another judging team to ensure their evaluation of a “high scorer” was accurate. As Mr. Carter turned the pie over in his hands, he had three words: “pretty darn nice.”
Pies, Sweat and Tears
Among the competitors were sisters Sandy and Hannah Do, who run Ming’s Bakery in Perth, the capital of the state of Western Australia. Their father opened the bakery there in 1991 and when he died almost eight years ago, the sisters took over.
This year, their entries won multiple medals, including gold for a meat pie made using their dad’s “secret recipe.” He passed it on to Sandy ten days before he died, she said.
Their father escaped Vietnam during the war and moved to Australia with nothing, Hannah said. Although he did not have a background in baking, he learned everything from scratch: from rolling pastry to making the meat fillings.
The sisters said they felt their father’s presence this week.
“On my hardest days, I will always think if Dad could do all of that with nothing, I can literally survive and do anything,” Sandy said.
“Just hope Dad’s proud,” she added.
The Official Great Aussie Meat Pie Competition was established in 1989 with the aim of raising the standards of pies throughout Australia. The competition has become so popular that this year the organizers capped the total number of entries.
Meat pies hold a special place in the Australian consciousness — in 2018, then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull horrified the nation when he attempted to eat one with a knife and fork rather than with his hands, a scandal that became known as #piegate.
For Mike French, the competition’s chief judge, the contest is about more than finding the best pie.
“These bakers are the caretakers of the Aussie icon,” he said.
An Enduring Symbol
As the judging came to an end, hopeful competitors gathered to hear whether their entry will be named best in its category. The “most prestigious” categories are best plain pie, best pastie and best sausage roll, said Steven Watson, who runs The Little Red Grape bakery in the rural town of Sevenhill, in South Australia, with his wife, Jackie.
He said the competition was a good way to be recognized for the hard work that goes into a bakery — the couple works about 70 hours a week (this week is their “holiday”).
The best plain pie award went to Sarel Hok, who runs Buddy Bakery Melton in Victoria and who also won in 2024. His secret?
“What I focus on is flavor. I flavor everything from the top to the bottom,” he said.
The award was recognition that “our hard work is paying off,” he added.
Other winners included a roo rendang curry pie, made with kangaroo meat, which won best overall gourmet pie, and a jalapeno beef and cheese sausage roll, which won best overall sausage roll.
And as the winners celebrated, the team of judges wheeled in a big bin. It was time for the untasted cold pies to be disposed of. The smell of meat and pastry wafted through the air as they were thrown on top of each other in the bin and then wheeled out. The smell was overwhelming.
As the day came to an end, Mr. French, the competition’s chief judge, was looking to the future — he had already shortlisted some of his judging team for next year.
He was philosophical about pies and their place in Australian life. While the tastes and creativity of consumers and bakers keep evolving, “pies won’t die,” he said.
“The pies themselves will always be there,” he added.
