The land of the ‘pie-eaters’: Why is Wigan obsessed with pies?
The first seven days of March is British Pie Week; a period where this glorious pastry-and-filling is given its deserved recognition right around the country. But there’s one town in Greater Manchester where every week is Pie Week: Wigan.
The beginning of March marks British Pie Week; a time of year where the glorious pastry-and-filling dish enjoys renewed recognition right around the country. But there’s one town in Greater Manchester where every week is Pie Week. Wigan is known as the land of the ‘pie-eaters’ – although there’s more history behind that nickname than you might think...
In Wigan, they treat pies a little differently / Image: David Blake via Twitter
On a balmy summer evening back in 2002, I was caught up in a current of Wigan rugby supporters, all gently floating in a sea of Cherry and White t-shirtstowards the JJB Stadium turnstiles.
St Helens were in town for rugby league’s flagship fixture, and the game was a near-sellout.
Wigan vs Saints invariably pulls in a massive crowd; with the two teams old enemies since time immemorial. The clubs are separated by just 9 miles and a grassy hill called the ‘Billinge Lump’; representing rival regions since the county borders were moved in 1974 (it’s now Greater Manchester v Merseyside, rather than a Lancashire derby).
The game was one of my first visits to the rugby as a young ‘un, and whilst my memories of the match itself are fuzzy, what has stuck with me ever since is the sight of Saints fans suddenly breaking out into a strange song.
ADVERTISEMENT
I didn’t quite understand the lyrics, so I tugged on my grandad’s coat sleeve and asked him: “Why do they keep shouting ‘pie-eaters!’ at Wigan?”
The St Helenian answer to that question – and one that’s often told in nearby towns – goes something like this…
ADVERTISEMENT
In 1926, more than one million coal miners were at loggerheads with pit owners over wages and working conditions. So, in a show of solidarity, many British workers went on strike. The protests lasted for several days, but Wigan workers were apparently among the first to return to their shifts – and in doing so were said to be ‘eating humble pie’.
They’ve been teased about it ever since. But according to Wiganers, that’s a little unfair.
Some point out that whilst Wigan workers were the first to stop striking, they were also the first to start. Others claim that townsfolk had the pie moniker long before the unrest of 1926.
ADVERTISEMENT
But perhaps the true origins of the nickname don’t matter. Because labelling Wiganers as ‘pie-eaters’ works on an elemental level, anyway.
Idioms aside, Wigan is a place that is inescapably besotted with pies.
The town’s penchant for pastry is everywhere. I noticed it from the moment I first set foot in Wigan’s sport stadium as a kid – from the pie posters slapped across the walls of the concourse to the pastry offer announcements crackling across the PA system. An advert for ‘POOLE’S PIES!’ (a company which produced pies in Wigan for 171 years) even danced its way across the scoreboard during the game.
Poole’s has sadly folded since then. But there’s still a minimum of 20 listed pie shops operating in the Wigan region today (with dozens of local cafes and food stores serving up pies as part of their wider menus).
Since 1992, Wigan has also been the prideful host of the World Pie-Eating Championships – where contestants aim to wolf down as many of these crumbly concoctions as quickly as possible (historically held at Harry’s Bar on Wallgate).
See, in Wigan, it’s socially acceptable to tackle any type of pie, at any time of day, in almost any way.
Residents even put pies between two slices of bread for a snack; which is known as a ‘Wigan Slappy’ or ‘Wigan Kebab’ (a local delicacy with the latter name features three pies impaled on a stick).
Wow!! Got to say Baldy's Pies are smashing it out of the park right now, reinventing the Wigan kebab 😡😡 I mean PIE BARM. Can't wait to get my hands on them!! #Wigan#piepic.twitter.com/BBUMoSBRvX
It’s true that many Wiganers are happy to embrace their passion for pies with good humour, but some evidence suggests that pies here are no laughing matter.
Wigan journalist David Barnett – who has written multiple pieces on the topic – concludes that pies are in fact a “way of life” for denizens. During his time working at the Wigan Evening Post, a fire ripped through the town’s pie factory, and Barnett was sent to cover the story. Despite the disaster, shutting down pie production was seemingly out of the question. Instead, the company drafted in “emergency pie-makers” to work through the night and get pie deliveries out on time. The article made the front page.
ADVERTISEMENT
Wigan’s appetite for pies has been rumbling for decades – and remains insatiable to this day.
One of the most recent examples of this fixation can be found in 2019 – when Wigan Athletic needed a new mascot for their football team. Club officials turned to local school children for inspiration – and over half of entries featured a pie in the design.
Wigan’s love affair with pies is well-entrenched and utterly unapologetic.
When one study dared to rank nine regions above Wigan on a list of the UK’s top pie-loving places, World Pie-Eating Championships organiser Tony Callaghan was aghast.
ADVERTISEMENT
“I’m stunned. This can’t be right,” he told Wigan Today.
“The table is very misleading. Everyone knows that Wigan is the capital of the pie world and home to the World Pie-Eating Championships. It goes down in history as such.
“Even now the pie shops are open and they’ve been trading throughout the pandemic. Wiganers can’t get enough of them.”
Wigan has revelled in many other achievements outside the oven, of course.
It’s home to one of the most successful rugby league teams of all time in Wigan Warriors. It also has a plucky little football club that has repeatedly defied the odds to make sporting headlines (including a famous FA Cup triumph over Man City in 2013). The town’s name features in the title of classic Orwellian work The Road to Wigan Pier. And Wigan is also the birthplace of legendary singer-songwriter George Formby.
ADVERTISEMENT
But every time British Pie Week rolls around, all eyes are always on the Greater Manchester town for its inextricable link with the golden brown grub.
Wiganers, meanwhile, will be scoffing down pie barms as if it were any ordinary time of year.
That’s what they do there. It’s a town with pie-sonality…
Feature
In celebration of Momo Shop: a Chorlton favourite that has flourished since its rebrand
Danny Jones
It’s not often we go out of our way to hammer home just how staggering we found a restaurant, but after now losing track of the number of times that a member of our team has eaten at Momo Shop in Chorlton and come back near speechless, it deserves more than a review.
We regularly hold ourselves back and resist the urge to talk in superlatives wherever possible, especially because we worry we might be falling into the recency bias trap, but in this instance, we’re going to go out on a limb and fall on our hospitality sword. Well, this particular writer is…
It’s official: Momo Shop Nepali Street Food – for our money, anyway – is up there with one of THE best restaurants in Manchester right now.
And there are plenty of reasons why, not least of all because of the years of practice they have feeding increasingly discerning Manc diners under a different moniker.
Simple but charming – all the focus is on the foodAnd the food speaks for itselfSome of the most flavourful fillings you’ll find in ManchesterBusy any given night of the weekNo review (Credit: The Manc Eats/Momo Shop via Instagram)
If you don’t live in/frequent Chorlton, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that this gaff was a somewhat new addition to Chorlton, but in actual fact it’s been gradually growing a loyal and passionate following for more than seven years.
This is because before the miniamlist rebrand that saw the walls stripped back, the exterior painted blue and cutesy little bits of artwork hung amidst that familiar and atmospheric festoon lighting, Momo Shop was once The Little Yeti.
Its former iteration boasted hundreds of glowing reviews in its own right, which already plated up plenty of stunning Nepalese food, but since switching primarily towards serving a menu primarily made up of momos (Tibetan-style fried dumplings hand-folded into various shapes) they’ve well and truly shone.
Now approaching a full 12 months under the new name, the Nepali street food spot isn’t just one of a relatviely small handful considering how much great South Asian food there is across Greater Manchester, we’d wager it could be the very best representing that Alpine-Himalayan belt in our region.
Our latest visit was genuinely just as good as our first, second, third and so on – take your pick.
From the simply incredible deep fried pork dumplings and the deeply moorish butter sauce that goes with literally any momo filling, to the super traditional buffalo ones that are not only authentic but, come on, where else can you find such a unique meat in these parts? It’s some of the best food we’ve eaten.
And we don’t just mean of late; Momo Shop might genuinely among of the nicest scran we’ve had in ages and it’s no exagerration to say that the first taste we enjoyed from many of these flavours have formed some of the strongest culinary memories we’ve created in quite a while.
It’s also worth nothing that it isn’t just one main snack-sized dish. The chow mein, keema noodles and cheesy chops are showstoppers themselves, and we’ve already booked in again for a 30th birthday celebration purely so we can try those lambs ribs and their take on a shashlick.
Nevertheless, we love the idea of the numerous configurations and concotions by pairing different dumplings and owner Niti Karki gave us some pro-tips of the best duos and even let us in on the trade secret of her go-to combo when she’s hungover. Legend.
Once again, at the risk of sounding too hyperbolic, odd moments have felt like core foodie memories on a par with our favourite all-time meals.
Personally, I’m glad to report that this isn’t just a review: consider this a declaration that Momo Shop has quickly become my favourite restaurant not just in Chorlton but in all of central Manchester, something I haven’t had since the heartbreaking closure of Cocktail Beer Ramen + Bun in 2023.
Plenty of varietyDamn straightNiti = absolute iconWe’ll keep your condiment secret forever, Niti…
There might be an element of the almost HakkaPo-esque style drawings, the colour palette and the carefully curated pop-punk, old school emo and post-hardcore playlist that’s over half a decade in the making that makes particualrly partial to this place
But before we wrap up this glorified love letter parading as a ‘review’, we also want to give a special nod to the charming staff and Niti’s mum, specficially, who was too modest to even let us share her picture, but whose wealth of wisdom, influence and experience has clearly inspired Momo Shop’s success.
Don’t be shy, Sue – the only thing more stylish than the food was you, girl. Pop off.
Put simply, we’ll be going back here as regularly as possible until we try every different momo + sauce variation there is, and there’s nothing you can do to stop us.
If you are in the mood for more dumpling excellence, by the way, you might want to check out the unassuming Northern Quarter gem that is Chef Diao.
Lady Gaga is a tour-de-force of talent at the Co-op Live Manchester
Clementine Hall
Lady Gaga proves she’s a truly world-class act after two sold-out nights at the Co-op Live Manchester, as if we needed any reminding.
The city of Manchester has been flooded with harness-wearing, mesh-sporting little monsters over the past two days.
And that’s because the absolute icon that is Lady Gaga brought her ‘Mayhem Ball’ to the Co-op Live for two nights.
I don’t think you’ll find anyone who doesn’t know who this fabulous woman is. Over the past decade, she’s won an Oscar, headlined the Super Bowl, performed in blockbusters alongside Al Pacino, no less, and her songs are literally ingrained into our minds.
It’s been a whole 11 years (yes, really) since she performed in Manchester, and it’s safe to say she was back with a bang.
The performance was split up into five distinct acts, and each one was as exhausting and exhilarating as the next.
She begins the show by bopping out of a comically huge red dress, but this staging was only the start of what madness was about to ensue.
Luckily, we’d been prepared by the other half of the Audio North team, who had the equal privilege of seeing her on night one and were left similarly speechless.
Throughout the 30-song epic, we had crutches, sand pits, cages, skeletons, enough wigs to produce an amateur production of Annie, and we didn’t question any of it. Why would we? It’s Lady Gaga.
Kicking things off with ‘Bloody Mary’, the two and a half hour marathon didn’t leave any stones unturned.
We had all the bangers, from ‘Just Dance’ and ‘Paparazzi’ to ‘Bad Romance’ and ‘Applause’, it had us wondering why any other superstar even bothers putting a song out these days.
Pop is in a good place at the moment with the likes of Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish and so on, but you can make a strong case for Gaga having helped pave the way for every lady in the business ever since.
Gaga truly had us in the palm of her hands (or claws at one point), even more so when she left the stage to de-robe and show her more vulnerable side for the last two songs – beanie firmly on.
It wasn’t just a concert: this was a fully-fledged tour de force of talent that Manchester won’t forget any time soon.
Sometimes there’s no point in intellectualising why someone has that ‘X-factor’; sometimes you just have to take a step back and say WOW.