Twisted Pasty: Rhymes with Nasty (but Really Tasty)

Pasty (rhymes with hasty) is your complexion after a hard night; pasty (rhymes with nasty) is the pastry you might eat to help you recover.

Anyone who's ever had lunch at an English pub would be familiar with it, a crescent-shaped pastry that originated in Cornwall, where it would be filled with meat, potatoes and "swedes" (as turnips were called in the western counties). Smaller than the rounded pork pie (a slice of which is typically part of a traditional ploughman's lunch), the pasty evolved as lunch for miners, to be eaten like a hot dog, from the hand.

So why izzit that pasties haven't found great success in this country? Not for want of trying. The British Pantry in Redmond sells them at lunchtime; Smith, on Capitol Hill, sells what it calls a Hand Pie; and the Australian Pie Company in Burien bakes "meat pies" for retail sale, but pasties are not what you'd call a staple on the menus of local British pubs.

Enter Christie Ulrich and her daughter, Cassie, a recent U of Oregon grad in PR and marketing. They moved here from Farmington, New Mexico, where the family ran a diner. Having discovered pasties, the women thought the traditional meat-and-potatoes filling was too limited, so they decided to "twist it up:" everything from mac-and-cheese fillings to seafood, duck, even rabbit, priced from under $10 into the high teens.

The Ulriches have taken over the space at the corner of Fourth & Vine that was most recently occupied by Henry & Oscar's Supper Club (*), and they hope to open at the end of next week. Official website: www.twistedpasty.com.

Twisted Pasty, 2525 4th Avenue, Seattle, 206-402-3931  

(*) Footnote about Henry & Oscar: the owners, Mark & Katie Stern, will concentrate on their Big Picture cocktail-serving movie theaters in Belltown, Redmond, and Mill Creek.