Sassafras Tomato Pie Wins at 1st Annual Portland Pie-Off

The 1st annual Portland Pie-Off, organized by the newly-formed Portland Pie Commission was held on Saturday, August 30th at Washington Park.

Only publicized for three weeks, the Pie-Off attracted over 125 people and 49 pie entries. After a long wait for three judges to try all of the pies, the Best Savory Pie and Best Overall Pie awards went to Tricia Butler of Sassafras Catering for her Southern Tomato Pie.

One of the Pie-Off judges, Gary Walter, had this to say about the winning entry:

"The flavors of Tricia's savory tomato pie burst upon me as a welcome surprise. I was expecting either a quiche or "fried green-tomato" taste, but it was neither. Somehow she has been able to capture the essence of a complete meal wrapped in pastry.

Tricia has been able to pull together the right spices and herbs and combined them with great skill to make one of the best pies I've ever eaten!"

The other judges were Kir Jensen, local celebrity pastry chef and owner of The Sugar Cube, and Jack Bogdanski, local blogger and Lewis & Clark professor.

For more information on the Pie-Off and winners, visit the Web site at: http://pie-off.blogspot.com/.

About the Portland Pie-Off
The Portland Pie-Off is the brainchild of three pie loving gals, Gretchen, LeAnn and Lizzy. One day, just a few mere weeks ago, instead of working their very serious day jobs, they connected on Twitter and realized they all loved pie. Very much.

When Gretchen mentioned she had never had a peach pie, Lizzy mentioned her Mom's famous lemon chess pie and then LeAnn said, "wow, we should have a pie-off." The next thing we knew it was all over the internets, and LeAnn even created a website: www.pie-off.blogspot.com. From these humble beginnings, a wonderful event was born.

Interested in ordering a Tomato Pie? Please visit us at the Montavilla Farmer's Market or contact us via our Contact page.

Tomato Pies at the Montavilla Farmer's Market

I wanted to take this opportunity to let everyone know that we at Sassafras are now selling Southern Tomato Pies at the Montavilla Farmer's Market.

The market is from 10AM-2PM on Sundays and is located at SE 76th and Stark Street. If you are in Portland, please come by and say hello - we'll be there all of August and September and would love to see you!

Also, you can check the Calendar of Events to see what's happening at the market. There are usually musicians, rotating artisans and chef demonstrations each week.

Interested in the recipe? Read our blog.

Interested in ordering a Tomato Pie? Please contact us via our Contact page.

Thank you to everyone that has helped get us to this point. We appreciate all of your help, moral support and taste testing over the past few years!