KO Pies: Sydney chef's Australian pie restaurants pulling locals and expats alike in Boston

Just about every Australian who travels overseas gets homesick. Not just for family and friends, but also for the weather, the beaches, the animals, the smells of eucalypts or the food.

Recently on a hot northern summer's day I had a hankering for something from home. A little packet of pastry filled with meat that I could liberally coat in tomato sauce.

And I wanted somewhere that called it tomato sauce.

KO Pies in the shipyard of East Boston is about as far away from Australia as you can get, but it's surviving on a "decent amount" of Australian expats and a lot of curious and loyal locals.

"Word's got around the street and the dock," said owner Samuel Jackson — a Sydney-trained chef who set up his first pie shop five years ago.

"I don't think it was ever going to work if it was reliant on Aussies.

"People aren't stumbling across you, they've done their research and they've figured out what we're already doing because half the battle with American customers is explaining what we do."

Fighting the 'cultural battles'

But there has been other cultural battles too.

"Having knives and forks available was one," Mr Jackson said with a laugh.

"When I first started I was adamant that people were not going to use a knife and fork. It was sacrilegious and I probably lost my voice within the first three months of just stating that and getting the shits with people — 'come on man you can't do that!'."

Then there is the red stuff.

Photo: The menu board at KO Pies advertises the Mick Dundee pie-making competition. (ABC: Michael Vincent)

"Tomato sauce. It's ketchup. I have to call it ketchup. People will ask — oh, what's tomato sauce — it's ketchup, that'll do."

But it does not end there. On the outdoor tables is a sign with a photo of Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett screaming: "Please cleeyahhh your taaable!"

"People will still say we've got to take our own plates?" Mr Jackson said.

"America has these funny laws where you can pay these service staff a pittance — $US2.55 an hour, and I refuse to do that.

"If [by having the clear your own plate rule] it means my staff get paid a bit more money — a lot more money and people aren't necessarily inclined to tip — and Australians aren't going to do that.

"The flipside is you have to put a few plates on a rack, that's a fair swap.

"It's part of everything, our experience."

He also does not call the customers sir or madam because "again Australians wouldn't really do that".

"I find it odd and weird when I go to a bar [here in America] and you go to order at the bar and they say you're sitting in a section being served by Tracy 'OK, OK'."

Two shops provide 'therapy' for visiting Australians

Mr Jackson's success has allowed him to run two shops — the other in more genteel South Boston.

"I treat them like children and two keeps me busy," he said.

"In the two locations they're not exactly how I want them. There's still room for improvement and room for growth. I want to keep doing that."

For now he is happy with his lot which also involves providing "therapy" for the odd visiting Aussie.

"We were featured on the travel channel the other night and a guy came down who was staying about 50 kilometres from here," Mr Jackson said.

"I was catering a wedding that day and was running around like a madman — that guy must have asked the counter help five or six times 'I want to talk to the boss'.

"I didn't know the guy was Australian and finally I got a chance to talk to him and he said, 'I just need to talk to an Aussie' — he wanted to talk about the footy and other stuff that was important to him."

Not unlike a grief counsellor.

"To a degree," Mr Jackson said, having another laugh.

As for the menu — yes there are pies, pie floaters, sausage rolls, Anzac biscuits and pavlova, but they have also been trying sausage sangers — "sayn-garrs" — or even rissoles "which kept on being referred to as a 'riss-oh-lay', which was funny".

"If people want to go to work on a Monday and say I went to this Australian place and had a riss-oh-lay, well that's pretty cool."

Source : ABC News    July 5th 2015