FINNIGANS OF CREWE
I heard about this bakery in Crewe from a bunch of Wiganers of all people. There’s a very well put together nostalgia website called Wigan World, a real hive of information and great pictures and memories although some of the old boys who post on the messageboard probably don’t like me much as they are all old school rugby men who spent fifty years down the pit and that and think football is a game for jessies.
One area where I will defer to their superior knowledge is of Wigan past and I generally enjoy reading their opinions, especially when it comes around to the topic of pies. As you’d expect, the long lost original recipe of Pooles Pies is much lamented as is a whole plethora of pie shops lost in the realms of time. Yet for all the talk of Wigan pies, one or two speak very highly of the pies on Crewe with a place called Finigans mentioned in passing. You can always tell when it’s a traditional bakery because when you try to Google it you still can’t figure out how it is spelt, where it is, there’s definitely no website for it, you might be able to source an address at best from one of those myriad of ubiquitous business directory website plastered with shitty adverts.
So find an address I do and I set off on a journey into the unknown. Is it still going to be there? Sometimes when I turn up at a place I find that some of the older places recommended just don’t exist anymore but we’ll see. Best find a Crewe back up option in just in case and jot it down on my scraggy Post It note. You’ve always got to have a back up pie shop; I’d hate to end up salivating with nothing to stick my gnashers into.
I head into Crewe through the village where the car steering security device was invented, Wheelock – look I’ve got all day – and onwards into Crewe, past the station and the football ground and on the edges of the grotty Nantwich Road with it’s ropey nightlife. The Olympic torch is touring the area as signs are up everywhere but the only hot thing I’m interested in is a tantalising package of meat and potato wrapped in shortcrust pastry.
Down Gresty Road, Crewe and it’s only the second time around I spot Finigans, a small corner terraced shop with a green painted front. Given it’s proximity to the football ground, I’m amazed I’ve never heard of it before; I’ve certainly frequented the blinder of a chippy behind the home end in the past. There are people queuing outside, which isn’t ideal as it’s pissing down. As I join the queue I realise that there are only actually two people inside the shop, yet four queuing outside including me. The woman stood just inside the shop is shall we say, a rather large lady, in fact I’d go as far to say that she’s fucking enormous; about six foot four with the girth to match. I hope Giant Haystacks knew he had a long lost daughter all this time. I get a little bit drenched whilst waiting but when I get inside, I find that it is a very small counter shop and also a bustling butty shop with just the one woman behind the counter who is taking phone orders and serving customers and making sandwiches all at the same time. Soon enough, things start to move though and I step inside the tiny shop. They sell lots of sandwiches and pizza slices but I quickly home in on the pie selection. They’ve got meat and potato, one of which I purchase for £1.40, steak, steak and kidney, chicken and mushroom pie. They also sell Oggies; lamb and traditional Welsh Oggie. We’re not THAT close to the Welsh border unless I’m missing something about the immigration patterns of Crewe’s population. Chicken tikka pasty, Cornish pasty, the range goes on and on and as the sign says on the door: “Pies are baked here fresh every morning for 50 years”. Clearly a place with a good reputation as evidenced by the queue out of the door.
There’s no hot meat and potato pies so on this occasion I allow the serving lass to bung it in the microwave to warm it. How does that sit with Pasty Tax? It was either that or a cold pie so I had to bite the bullet.
Anyway, onto the review:
Bakers: Finnigans
Company Address: 2 Laura Street, Crewe, CW2 6HA
Website: I very much doubt it somehow
The purchase: Meat and Potato pie £1.40
Service: 8 The poor lass was run off her feet and did an admirable job considering and it’s
hardly her fault if her hungry customers haven’t got the brains to shuffle up a bit and let those getting soaked cower in the doorway
Filling: 8 a mash of potato with small chunks of beef in there to chomp into
Crust & Pastry: 7.5 the glaze was a bit sticky on the old gnashers
Taste: 8.5 absolutely bursting with flavour, very strongly seasoned but also felt like a
traditional taste, like a pie from bygone days before people saw fit to continually scaremonger others over salt content and the like.
Value for Money: 7 hmm
Warmth & Smell: 8 I could certainly smell this one coming despite it being reheated
Size: 8 of above average size and density
OVERALL VERDICT: 55/70 Potentially one of the finest Southerly staging posts of meat and potato pies in the North West before you head deep into oatcake and faggot (pardon?) country.
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