I Only Have Pies for You

Two friends hit the road in pursuit of cherry pie wishes, coconut cream dreams, and some BFF bonding.

Illustration by Lucila Perini

Editor’s note: This piece is part of a collection of stories on fat travel, curated by guest editor, author and activist Virgie Tovar. It’s the first in a series at the intersection of travel and inclusion, published by Airbnb Magazine.

My friend Angela Trakas is the definition of good company — quick to laugh, full of well-contemplated observation, and (like me) fat and entirely unafraid of eating delicious things with gusto. In fact, we met in 2014 at a retreat for women of size in Illinois called Abundia. We shared a room, bonded immediately, and started a long-distance friendship as she moved from Chicago to Belfast and back again. After sharing a room for a week in the tiny Greek farming village of Akra with Angela’s auntie Eleni back in 2016, we concluded we were officially travel-compatible and set the intention of another trip together — stateside this time. Last April, we decided to take a road trip across four states and 759 miles, during which we had one goal: to sample every pie, savory or sweet, we could get our hands on.

A month before the trip we’d set aside an hour to talk over the phone. We verbalized the fears that often go unspoken when you’re a fat traveler: walking speed, the size of hotel beds, what happens when strangers remind you that your body is unwelcome, and the reality of how budgets are tighter for many fat women because we get paid less (according to a 2004 study published in The Journal of Human Resources, an extra 65 pounds can lead to a nine per cent drop in wages).

What Angela and I don’t talk about — but are both deeply aware of — are the auspices under which we travel. Two fat women on the road enjoying food in public are subject to scorn for every part of who we are and what we are doing. We are outlaws.

The “Surf & Turf” of Pie at Pizzeria Beddia

Philadelphia, PA

I flew from San Francisco to New York, then took a quick train from Penn Station to Philadelphia. I was texting Angela exclamatory, all-caps updates on the ride to Pizzeria Beddia, our designated meetpoint and first stop on what we’d dubbed (and hashtagged) our “I Only Have Pies for You” road trip.

“Do you trust me?” she texted, a question about ordering our dinner but also about everything else. “YES!” I shot back. When I got there she was perched on a stool chatting up the bartender, surrounded by an Aperol spritz, olives, and a bowl of huge white beans in oil. Angela’s palate is impeccable, refined under the loving tutelage of a Greek family that mixes wine and lemon, honey and brine.

Beddia made it onto our list via a technicality. It was Angela, a native Chicagoan, who pointed out to me, a native Californian, that pizzas are also referred to as pies. To be fair, the earliest pies weren’t sweet at all, but in fact salty relatives of the meat pies that are still popular in the U.K. today. Beyond that, the word “pizza” means pie in Italian. I remember living in New York, where there abounds a pizza shorthand that could dazzle (and confuse) any West Coaster, and more than once I heard “pie” used interchangeably with “pizza.”

Angela ordered the anchovy and sausage pie, assuring me it was the “surf and turf” of the pizza world. Oil converged from the creamy cheese, perfectly spiced house-made sausage, and salty slender silver fish, and a rivulet slid down the valley of my forearm as I lifted the slice to my mouth. They say the flavor is in the fat. So I took this as a good omen.

Shoo-Fly Pie at Dutch Haven Bakery

Ronks, PA

We got into our rental car and headed to Ronks wearing matching white crop tops that announced the name of our trip in red puffy paint. When we pulled up, we saw a sign that read “The place that made shoo-fly famous” on the windmill-becked doors of the Dutch Haven Bakery.

Difficult to find in most parts of the country, shoo-fly pie abounds in Pennsylvania Dutch country, where it finds its roots. It’s typically made of molasses, sugar, shortening, and egg, although Dutch Haven’s recipe doesn’t include egg. Some food historians say that the name comes from the sticky layer that would pool as the pie cooled, attracting flies.

Angela took one bite and delivered a swift verdict: “Not impressed.” She explained, “I was expecting a gooey, buttery mess of caramelized brown sugar, like pecan pie without the nuts.” She said the pie had none of the complexity she was after. Not to be deterred, we hightailed it to the Amish buffet across the street, and for ten dollars unlocked access to a dazzling array of pie options: zesty lemon sponge, sticky pecan, tart berry, and velvety banana cream. Unable to designate any one slice as the best, we decided to give each its own unique prize. The electric neon key lime won for “Most Likely to Be Brought to a Swinger’s Party.”

The sun had completely set by the time we checked into the Nature Inn at Bald Eagle in Howard, PA, where there’s a taxidermied bear frozen forever in mid-growl and the rooms are named after obscure birds. The next morning I sat down on the balcony wrapped in a blanket with my journal and started to write:

“Angela and I were both taught to fear and hate food, taught to stay home and hide our bodies, taught to stay away from other fat people lest we look worse. Like the road, food represents a gateway to immorality for women; fatness becomes the outward symbol of traversing the threshold between innocent and not. Friendship emboldens us to do unlikely things.”

Chocolate Cream Pie at Mama Jo Homestyle Pies

Amherst, OH

It was raining as we crossed from Pennsylvania into Ohio, so windy that my umbrella inverted as we walked from the edge of the strip-mall parking lot into Mama Jo Homestyle Pies. Two white-haired women scowled behind the vast counter with walls of refrigerated pies stacked neatly behind them. As we cooed over the expansive menu, hoping to pull them into a mutual love fest, we were met with the indifference of seasoned pie-slinging veterans. They answered our questions curtly and with the clear intention of moving us along even though we were the only people in the place. Rebuffed, I finally picked the cherry and Angela the chocolate cream pie. We sat down at the single table, and before long we were creating a hybrid that became a kind of Black Forest pie — a forkful of tart, gooey cherry chased by a forkful of creamy, bitter chocolate mousse.

In search of snobby coffee to keep us awake, we landed at Rustbelt in Toledo, Ohio. Angela’s charm got us an off-menu dish: whole blueberries mixed into cream cheese, slathered on toast, and topped with crumbled bacon and maple syrup. Much moaning ensued on their big, overstuffed leather sofa. We reluctantly headed out of town, but got quickly sidetracked and ended up getting a tarot reading from a man named Chris with a pointy movie-villain beard. He told Angela she will meet a gentle lion tamer who will become her husband. I pulled the Queen of Swords. “One doesn’t become a queen by deciding she wants to call herself one. She becomes a queen when she is ready to be a queen,” Chris warned me.

We spent the night at a hotel in Port Clinton, Ohio, complete with an in-room hot tub and fireplace. We cozied up to one another, me in my favorite banana-print bikini and Angela in her black sweetheart-neckline one-piece, as the warm water bubbled up, loudly releasing prickly splashes onto our faces. Angela was pretending to be Robin Leach, famed host of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, as I offered a tour of our room for my Instagram feed. “Cherry pie wishes and coconut cream dreams. Adieu!” was her send-off before I finally put away my Samsung. Even though we’re both nearly 40 we were able to access this spirit of play that felt at least a little connected to the culture’s unwillingness to see us as “real” or “proper” women. There are so many rites of passage that fat people aren’t allowed to participate in, like proms and weddings: because we can’t find clothes to wear to an important event, or because we aren’t seen as viable bosses or desirable romantic partners. This moment in the tub was, of course, more than that, but I was grateful for this thing we shared that let us have this kind of fun.

Apple pie at the Amish Acres Easter Buffet

Nappanee, IN

We crossed the border into Indiana and spent the night in an Amish town called Shipshewana. The clodding sound of horse-driven buggies echoed through our hotel window past sunset. The next morning it was Easter. In a little town called Nappanee, we waited two hours in a line that rivals those at any of the trendiest San Francisco brunch spots to get into Amish Acres, a massive buffet in a converted barn. There were many pastimes meant to help us forget the unbelievably long wait: an Easter egg hunt, a fudgerie and ice cream parlor, and portraits with pet rabbits.

For a flat fee we got turkey and ham, mashed potatoes, salads, and a table completely covered in pie slices atop Styrofoam plates. I realized I hadn’t really given any thought to the top of the U.S. pie pantheon: apple. Apple pie’s connection to wholesome Americanness is unclear, but during World War II U.S. soldiers were known to tell journalists that they were fighting for “mom and apple pie.” I picked my slice, returned to my table, and found that the filling was so thick it was difficult to extract my fork to bring the bite to my mouth. But I managed. Even inexplicably viscous pie is still pie, and I’m not one to complain about unlimited prepaid food.

Shaker lemon pie with kumquat and sour cherry at Spinning J

Chicago, IL

By the time we reached Chicago we had sampled so many pies that we developed a weird connoisseurial swagger. As we ordered, we leaned in, eager to talk shop with the people behind the counter, name-dropping our road trip as credential.

The inside of a traditional Shaker lemon pie is made with nothing but eggs, sugar, and paper-thin slices of citrus. The rind is left on, macerated in sugar to take the edge off, and then cooked. It gives the pie a little bite of bitterness. It’s believed that the practice of using the whole lemon had to do with the frugality prized by the 18th-century Ohio-based Protestants after whom the pie was named.

This avant-garde slice at Spinning J was ceremoniously served on Art Deco china. The sour cherry had turned it pink, and as I dug in, my mouth puckered and I remembered the first time I made this pie for a boyfriend — a tightly wound IP attorney — who was obsessed with lemons. I remembered that my grandmother told me she used to love biting into whole lemons so much as a little girl that she almost stripped off all her tooth enamel.

Food is an entry point to culture, people, places, and history. If you’re lucky, it leads to warm conversation, a tarot reading, or a sacred item from a secret menu. Each bite of pie on our trip anchored us in a time and place. When you travel somewhere you invite it to change you, and you in turn change it. The places we visited made a mark on us, and I know we made a mark on them, because what’s more memorable than two fat friends in puffy-painted crop tops, laughing and savoring a slice of good ol’ American pie?

About the author: Virgie Tovar is the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat and started the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight. She is one of the nation’s leading experts and lecturers on weight-based discrimination and body image.

About the artist: Lucila Perini is a freelance illustrator based in Buenos Aires. She graduated from the University of Buenos Aires with a degree in Graphic Design, and now works as a designer and illustrator for leading brands in fashion, gastronomy, and lifestyle.