Page 171 - United States of Pie

If you’re a locavore, living in the West is as easy as pie.
The West Coast has a moderate year-round climate, so there’s
always something in season. It’s no surprise that many of the West’s
winning pies are produce-driven. Washington State alone grows 60
percent of all the apples eaten in the United States, Oregon and
Washington grow 80 percent of the pears, and California grows

nearly 70 percent of all the strawberries, grapes, peaches, and
nectarines in this country. The region is fertile to say the least.
California is the source of more unusual fruit as well. The
Coachella Valley produces sweet-as-candy dates; smooth, thin-
skinned, and fragrant Meyer lemons grow in backyards throughout
the state; and finger-staining olallieberries bud in the fog along the

coast near Half Moon Bay. Sweet-tart olallieberries are a hybrid of a
hybrid, a crossbreeding of the loganberry and the youngberry, each
of which is itself a cross between a blackberry and another berry. In
the loganberry’s case it’s a raspberry, and in the youngberry’s case
it’s a dewberry. Got that? In the universe of berries, olallieberries are
still in their infancy—they were developed in 1935 at Oregon State
University in cooperation with the USDA Agricultural Research

Service. Oddly, olallieberries never really took off in their native state,
but they flourish in California, where they’re grown in abundance
during a fairly short summer season.
Olallieberries are delicious fresh off the vine, but the purple,
staining berry makes an exemplary pie. For the best slice of
olallieberry pie—besides the one you make yourself—you’ll want to

head straight to Duarte’s Tavern in Pescadero, California. Duarte’s is
a big restaurant in a little town. If you weren’t looking for Pescadero,
it would be easy to miss entirely. Located two miles off Highway 1—
the scenic ocean highway that runs from Orange County to
Mendocino—and fifteen miles south of the relative hustle and bustle
of Half Moon Bay, its downtown is just two blocks long, with no
sidewalks to speak of. Breathe in deeply, and you can smell the

ocean, taste the salt in the air. Smack in the middle of downtown
stands this family-owned restaurant that’s been in business for more
than one hundred years, since its first incarnation as a bar serving
ten-cent whiskeys.