Pie Champ

[June 10th, 2009]

“Six! Six pies! Let’s go for seven!” a voice shouts over the top of the late-night crowd milling around the Hawthorne food cart pod. The contestants in “Pie Champ 2.0” are a picnic table full of bloated techies raising cash for Free Geek. But the pies they’re devouring—flaky, buttery-tasting, addiction-forming half-moons of goodness—those are the work of Gregg Abbott, the 30-year-old former RingSide valet that opened Whiffie’s Fried Pies (Southeast 12th Ave. and Hawthorne Blvd., twitter.com/whiffies , 8 pm-3 am Tuesday-Saturday) just a month ago. His housemade, empanadalike hand pies, whose innards range from salty-sweet pulled pork and “breakfast” bacon and eggs to molten sour lemon goo and tart, silky blueberries ($4 savory; $3 sweet pies), are the kind of epic drunk food you won’t regret the morning after. Hot but not greasy, his pies each get a quick dunk in rice bran oil to give ’em a clean, toothsome crunch. Plus, all the fruit pies are vegan—yes, vegan. “My dad [a chef] makes those same pies, but he bakes them,” says Abbott, who came up with his cart idea on a trip home to Maui. “I told him, ‘Gimme one of those things, Dad,’ and dropped it in the deep fat fryer. ‘Trust me,’ I said. ‘It’ll be good.’” That’s an understatement.