The best pie money can buy 🥧

Where to find excellent Thanksgiving pies.

I do not like making pie. I especially don’t like making pie for Thanksgiving because the three big ones — apple, pumpkin and pecan — are traditionally made with butter crusts, something I just don’t get along with very well. The taste and texture are usually there, but they’re never as frilly and fluted as pie crust should be, or could be if someone else made them. It’s nice to have a pie that is not just delicious, but also gorgeous and impressive. This is why I buy beautiful pies from people who are experts at making them every year. Of course, the same way mine are always ugly but delicious, the reverse (pretty but bad) is true about a lot of pies out there, and that's what today’s guide is for. Broken down my pie type (the big three, fun pies & even a few recipes) this is designed to save you time searching for the perfect pie and money on one that will disappoint you.

Still, this text felt like a bullet grazing my ego:

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Apple pies 🍎

I’ve professed my love for Little Pie Company before, but I am once again telling to that the most delicious, exciting, comforting pie you could dream of having on your table is their sour cream apple walnut pie. Crunchy, fluted, buttery crust. Paper thin apples, laced and softened with sweet sour cream, somehow still crispy. A heroic pile of toasted walnut-ridden cinnamon coffee cake-like crumbs covers the whole thing. A gooey slice, hot from the oven with a scoop of cold vanilla ice cream will solve all of your problems, at least for the minute you’re eating it.

Room temp sour cream apple walnut pie, hot-from-the-oven sour cream apple walnut pie.

The salted caramel apple pie from Dominique Ansel Bakery is stunning and marries textures exceptionally well, but still feels pretty classic. A ring of extra crispy, sugar-sprinkled dough borders the whole thing, and a much lighter, puffier, ethereally flaky lattice tops the remainder. Inside, apples are cooked for what tastes like forever, giving them a super sweet and golden flavor that’s accentuated by the pie’s sticky little pools of dark caramel sauce.

A functional work of art.

For reasons I can’t explain, I’m fascinated by this oatmeal crumble apple pie that the club Jean’s is making for its Thanksgiving day service. The recipe allegedly comes from chef Jake Dietrich’s grandmother and while not explicitly available for purchase, if you shoot them a kind and clever email, maybe they’ll let you buy a whole one the morning of.

Pumpkin pies 🎃

Radio Bakery is making delicious-looking spiced pumpkin cheesecake pies covered in fluffy, torched brown sugar meringue. Their preorders are already sold out, but they’ll have limited pies for walk ins on Wednesday, 11/27. If you’re considering that move, I would get there way earlier than the 7:30am opening time.

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I like this funky Thanksgiving menu from Gem Home. My friend Mo bakes all of their bread (his focaccia stuffing is on that menu, too) so I can confirm it’s all wonderful. The 10-inch honeynut squash pie with whipped cream for $50 sounds like a good deal to me.

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Costco’s $5.99 12-inch pumpkin pie is a better deal. It’s probably not as good as Gem’s, but it’s certainly better (and bigger) than any other supermarket pie.

Janie’s Life Changing Baked Goods makes pie crust cookies, which small, handheld discs of pie crust, filling and streusel. Even better sounding than the classic pumpkin pie crust cookies are her sweet potato marshmallow pie crust cookies. You can pick either up at her bakery (she has locations in East Harlem, the West Village and on the Upper West Side) or have them shipped to wherever you’re having Thanksgiving this year.

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Next are wildcard pies (chocolate, custard, ice cream, things of that nature), homemade pies and:

Pecan pies 🍯