This was the return of the KCRW pie fest in-person since the pandemic! There was a massive turnout. I heard there were around 500 pie entrees. The wait for tasting tickets was hours long. The weather was perfect. There were live demonstrations, a cook book swap, tons of swag and some cool craft vendors and food stalls. It’s definitely my favorite food event of the year.
by Celestron5
19 Comments
KCRW should hit their demographic in the feels and hold this on March 14th every year.
I’ve never heard of this before, Looks like it was fun!!
Which one was the winner?
Looks so fun
I stood in line for over an hour and there was no pie at the end–well before the closing time of 5 pm. 🙁
I went too! I’d been once before and knew this time to get in line early, so when we saw a line forming at 2:45 we hopped in and were about 40 people back. They started handng out tickets at 3:14 instead of 3pm like they originally said, but we got two tickets each and walked over to the tents and had our pick of every pie, often the first slice served.
We loooved that butterscotch sesame candy in the first pic. The crunchy honeycomb candy on top was amazing. I chose a spiced lamb pie and a Taiwanese pork belly pie with scallion crust, the latter was so bomb.
Waiting hours to get a ticket to try some pie seems bad. They need to work on that one.
so many talented people there
This was a complete mess and shit show. The fact KCRW pumped ads out for this and didn’t have anything set up for the actual event was pathetic. Food had run out at the beginning for some vendors. People could walk in with no tickets. The line for members was super long because no one actually was checking. Shit show.
Thanks for posting!
I agree with some of the other posters ITT, it was definitely a mess. I showed up around 3 and ended up waiting in the members line for about an hour which no one actually checked if I was a member. I was able to snag my couple of slices of pie, but it was slim pickings by then and no one was really taking tickets. The other vendors and activities seemed pretty cool and I wished I had arrived sooner to see more of it.
Had a thought that it’d be better if the pie tasting tickets could be released upon entry to the event and do the pie tastings by category throughout the day so it’s not a mad rush at the end. Would’ve also been really nice to see a map of vendors or signs directing people. The lines for tasting tickets were a mess.
Overall a cool event, but plagued by bad organization.
Yeah this seemed like it would be disorganized from the start, it was the first one so maybe if they try again they’ll improve the experience.
My friend and I went but even by 230 the lines for tasting tickets were way long. Member tickets line went from center quad to the stairs, non-member lines went from center quad to the end then around the corner. It wasn’t really communicated how the tickets were distributed. We saw the pies and enjoyed the vibes but left before the tasting.
It’s also one of my favorite events! I arrived at noon with my friend to check-in and submit his pie. The lines for the tickets to sample and the crowd to try the pie were long and I understand the frustration, however, this was a free community event.
This is the most American thing I’ve ever seen
Soooo bummed they ran out of pie! I definitely like the idea of having tastings for different categories at different times or even at different places instead of all at once in the same place. And make all the entrants bring like 2-3 pies for tasting, not just one for tasting and one for judging.
Hey I saw some of these posted earlier! By u/megpi sooo good.
Edit: typos & grammar
That’s my pie in picture number 2!
This year felt really crazy compared to previous years. I’ve never seen so many people not get to try pie. I think there were just a lot more spectators than usual. I usually tell people to show up by 2pm to be safe, and this year was definitely true.
Also, in previous years, the staff took home left over judging pies, but this year, they asked us to pick them up and serve them, I think, because there were so many people still waiting to try pies. This seemed like a very last-minute decision. None of us heard about this until we were almost done serving our first pies.
I participated! My pie was the pomegranate chiffon pie and the rice pudding pie! It was a really fun event but I agree the line for tickets was really long.