Dozens of people sat at tables outside of Dominique Ansel Kitchen on Thursday evening, where large gold balloons spelled out the words ‘Pie Night.’ Dominique Ansel, the French pastry chef, has hosted six evenings of pie and drinks at his West Village bakery.
Each sold-out night is split into three, one-hour shifts, where 50 attendees-per-shift can grab bar stools at the silver high-top tables or sit on lavender-painted benches around wooden tables outside. By the end of the evening, 150 guests had stuffed themselves with Ansel’s extravagant pies.
The third annual pie night featured a completely new menu from the previous two years. Somewhat reminiscent of a Thanksgiving dessert spread, nine kinds of pie— four savory and five sweet—were served straight from the oven. Offerings included blackberry plum almond, Old Bay crab pot pie and wine braised oxtail pies.
To accompany endless amounts of pie, Ansel served warm cider, mulled wine and house-made ice cream throughout the night. “I’ll take a scoop of vanilla on this plate and then salted caramel on this one if that’s cool,” said Nina Rodriguez-Smith, 22.
Smith had four plates of pie on her table, carefully tasting and snapping above-shot photos of her slices of chocolate horchata and salted caramel apple pie.
As the final shift came to an end at around 10:30 p.m., guests staggered out. Some stayed to purchase 8-serving pies to take home for $48 to $50 each. Most people bought the ham and fontina pie, but Smith walked out with one of the salted caramel rosemary peanut butter pies.
A layer of sticky caramel sauce, covered with peanut butter was sprinkled with sugared stems of rosemary. “I can’t wait to Instagram this in better lighting tomorrow,” she said excitedly while hailing a cab.