Stuff Your Piehole

Sometimes when you are dining with a group it is hard to please everyone, with so many different tastes in this world you may find yourself in the midst of the following conversation:

“What do you feel like?”

“I don’t know I have been craving something like a waiter who looks at a different direction with each eye while he is talking to you.”

“We just had that last night, how about a waitress who is missing the end of her finger?”

“That’s usually good but I will tell you what I am really craving…  a random dude covered in tats with his teeth chiseled into points.”

Well for days that you just feel like you can’t satisfy all of these diverse needs I have just the place for you.  House of Pies, on Kirby Drive just south of Alabama (there is a second location on Westheimer between Fountain View and Voss) is the place for you to get your early morning, mid day, or late night fix for all of these cravings.

I personally had never given my patronage to this finest of establishments, but somehow my mom and sister in their insomnia and pie cravings have found this place suitable to both problems, and after a late night at a Lastros (that is the Houston Astros for those of you not really into baseball) game I decided to tag along.  I am a big fan of these greasy spoon diners, Lulu’s in San Antonio is one of my favorites of all time that I may just have to make a road trip some day for to write up for you, but for now I will continue to eat food prepared under questionable sanitary conditions locally just for you.  Damn I really care about my fans don’t I?

First a disclaimer on the pictures, for some reason the light above our table had a slight reddish hue to it, so all of my photos look like I was eating on the front steps of a brothel. 

So back to the issue at hand, my dinner for the night was breakfast of course, and I decided to go big with the chicken fried steak and eggs, I mean after all I am a Texan and I am pretty sure there is a clause in the state constitution that if you don’t do this once in a while your citizenship is actually revoked.  Unfortunately, I do not think that this one is going to count toward my quota, it simply was not up to par of what I have come to expect from CFS between awesome joints like Wall Street in Midland, Texas or even working at Texas Star in Manhattan, Kansas and having to hand bread each steak myself. 

The CFS from House of Pies was clearly a frozen premade breaded patty that was edible but definitely nothing that I will be ordering in the mean time.  In terms of the rest of the plate, the gravy wasn’t bad definitely not something to write home about but the fluffy biscuits made up for that, the eggs were eggs, and  the potatoes O’Brien were greasy but that didn’t take away from their goodness. 

Then came the star of the show, I mean heck this place is called House of Pies and as you can see on the menu here they have no shortage of pie variety in this place.  It was a struggle making a decision in my mind and finally I whittled it down to two options, Bayou Goo (description from menu: A pecan crust with a layer of sweet cream cheese, then a layer of vanilla custard swirled with chocolate chunks and topped with whipped cream and chocolate shavings) and the seasonal peach pie (for those of you out of the loop Fredericksburg peaches are in season and boy I had high hopes that I would get a pieful of these delicious fruits), so I had to go to our resident expert the waitress.  She informed me that the peaches tend to be a bit on the hard side so the Bayou Goo was the better way to go, I love a good honest waitress who has no problem telling you that some of the items suck. 

So the pies showed up, I went with the Bayou Goo, my sister got a slice of Dutch Apple Pie, and my mom went with a Lemon Icebox.  They were all delicious, so the waitress did not lead me astray on the Bayou Goo.

So in closing I would like to institute a rule on House of Pies here in Houston, if it is before 10 pm I would like to issue you a 5 beer minimum I think that would vastly improve the food and people watching, if it is after 10 lets institute a 10 beer minimum because yes the late night crowd is that much more crazy and I don’t think the food prep improves as the night goes on.  If all else fails, just go there for a slice of pie and all will be right with the world, you can even get it to go if crazy wait staff or patrons are not exactly your scene.