Morecambe FC wins ‘best football pie’ award again

The catering team at the football club, which sells between 800 and 1,200 every home game, has just picked up four honours in the British Pie Awards, including Best Football Pie for its steak and ale pie. The club also won a special award to recognise small producers as well as the vegetarian (butter pie) and other meat pie (pork, apple and cider) categories at the awards. The Lancashire club won Supreme Pie in last year's British Pie Awards, the first year it had entered the national competition. More than 900 pies were entered in the event this year, staged in Melton by the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association. The pies were scrutinised by a panel of 93 food experts for awards in 18 different categories. The judging panel included celebrity chef Andrew Chisholm, food critic Charles Campion, food writer Xanthe Clay and TV chefs Rachel Green and Phil Vickery. They scored the pies on a range of criteria including appearance and texture and taste of pastry and filling. Matthew O'Callaghan, chairman of the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association, said: "Pies are one of our nation's favourite traditional foods and we organise this event to celebrate the quality and heritage of these iconic products. "This year's event was a resounding success and yet again we were impressed with the high quality of the pies entered by passionate pie-makers. Our judges, who faced the difficult task of choosing the winning pie out of 900 entries, did a superb job. "It's fantastic to see that the value of these awards is recognised not only by large pie-makers but also by small producers who submitted over 70% of entries."