Allan of MissionMission apparently really likes Banana Cream Pies. At his birthday this past weekend, hosted at Bender’s in the Mission, he had three completely different Banana Cream Pies on hand for an epic birthday pie tasting. One from Mission Pie (pictures above), a butterscotch one from Mission Beach Cafe, and finally, a homemade pie which could have just used a wee bit more time to set.  Which was the best? 

After a quick game of Egyptian Rat-Screw, we steeled ourselves for the oncoming sugary onslaught with pints of Pliny The Elder, which is $4 regularly, and $3 during happy hour at Benders, making one of the best deals in town.  Then we dug into the pies. 

 

 

 

 

The Mission Pie was a good example of a classic banana cream pie.  It was well built, was a bit too sweet, but overall  nothing too exciting. The crusty was flakey, but a bit too dry.  The butterscotch pie was also good, although the butterscotch budding seemed to overwhelm the banana slices, and it too was a bit sweet.  The dark horse, the homemade pie, was a bit on the loose side.  OK, so it was a lot on the loose side, flowing into the rest of the pie tin as each slice was cut. It fell apart on the plate too, but it didn’t matter – it was delicious, having the most overt banana flavor of all three, and avoided the cloying sweetness of the first pies. 

A few beers later, it was revealed that there was another (!) even runnier homemade pie hiding in a car outside.  It was retrieved, and creative methods of trying it out had to be invented. 

 

 

Then, full of pie and beer, I headed home, and encountered this scene along the way.  As Allan likes to say “I love the Mission!”

 

  

Tags: mission, pie

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.