Introducing: Bridgeport Pasty Company

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Sep 6, 2011 3:00PM

2011 has been the Year of the Food Truck in Chicago. Here in Bridgeport, it's also been the Year of the Pie. Pleasant House Bakery, with its wonderful take on Yorkshire style meat pies, has been one of the best restaurant openings of the year and they make an amazing steak pasty.

Today marks the launch of Bridgeport Pasty Company. The pasty, a style of meat pie that originated in Cornwall, England, was very popular with Michigan tin miners in the 1800s, who would leave orts from their pies in the mines to appease the spirits they believed haunted the mines.

Bridgeport Pasty owners Jay Sebastian and Carrie Clark hit upon the idea of selling pasties locally after stopping at a pasty kiosk while in London two years ago. "We said to each other, 'Why doesn't Chicago sell these?' " said Clark.

Clark, who works at Argonne National Laboratory during the day, and Sebastian, a business manager at a downtown law firm, started doing their homework, researching pasty recipes and the labyrinthine Chicago health and business codes with an eye toward starting some sort of mobile pasty service. The two decided to source as much of the ingredients for their pasties locally and also wanted to have their mobile service be off the grid.

Originally they wanted Bridgeport Pasty to be a food bike. Sebastian had gone so far as to buy a bike cart similar to the ice cream and frozen fruit bar cart vendors who patrol the parks and lakefront every summer. After going back and forth with various city departments, Sebastian discovered the city "would not allow a bike with propane tanks attached to them to keep the pasties warm" - an effective missile hazard.

Instead, he and Clark bought an all-electric GEM car - one of the first legal all-electric vehicles in Chicago - and, with the help of Sebastian's brother-in-law in Virginia, retrofitted it with a recirculated heating system used by the Swiss Army to keep their pasties warm for transit.

While Sebastian oversaw the "Pastymobile" construction, Clark narrowed the recipe research down to six. She tweaked the recipes and tested them out on a group of locals, her old college friend, Chef Art Smith and, in the interest of full disclosure, me, to get to the final three recipes she and Sebastian will be rolling out today.

Bridgeport Pasty will carry a traditional Cornish pasty (the "Yooper") with ground beef, onions, potatoes, rutabaga, garlic, parsley, seasoning; a curry-seasoned chicken pot pie with peas, carrots and a Béchamel; and a veggie pie with spinach, mushroom, Gruyere, onion and Béchamel sauce.

Sebastian and Clark have been eager to roll out Bridgeport Pasty for months. The research into licensing and recipes and unforeseen happenings like Sebastian's brother-in-law breaking his back during the retrofitting of the GEM car, have afforded them the chance to scale back the expectations, if not the excitement.

I was at Zaytune Mediterranean Grill in Bridgeport in July as Sebastian and Clark prepped a small order of pasties for a test run during the Newberry Library Book Fair. Sebastian was able to reflect positively on the gestation of his and Clark's new baby.

"If everything fell neatly into place and we launched this six months earlier, we would have gotten lost in the excitement and quit our day jobs," Sebastian said with a laugh.

Bridgeport Pasty Company launches its first official run at 11 a.m. at Dearborn and Monroe. Follow them on Twitter to see where they'll be stopping every day.