Who ate all the pies? We suspect it’s going to be all of us, with the news that British Pie Week has arrived! Jo Roberts reports.

Steak and kidney? Pukka? Fray Bentos? Melton Mowbray pork? More upmarket tastes for quail egg? Experimental preferences for haggis and redcurrant? Or a sweet tooth for apple or cherry with cream?

Whatever your flavour, the British are a nation of pie fanatics and for the next week we have an excuse to revel in it.

British Pie Week kicks off on Monday, March 2, until Sunday, March 8, though for one Kent couple every week is pie week: Caroline and Michael Wilding run the award-winning Dine Thyme artisan food business in Sutton Valence, near Maidstone. Their quail egg pie won a Taste of Kent Award in the Kent Food Product category last year.

“We wanted to do something that was a little bit different to the norm so we try to do traditional with a twist,” explains Caroline. “Someone gave us quail eggs and we didn’t know what to do with them. The obvious would have been scotch eggs but we thought we’d try something different; so we added bacon and sausage to make a breakfast pie. It’s one of our top-sellers and it’s unique to us.

“Winning the Taste of Kent Award was a big surprise – it was the first time we’d entered a competition.”

So why do us Brits eat all the pies? Caroline has her theories.

“They are seen as comfort food, traditional food from childhood, so we’ve taken it to the next level as a quality, artisan product,” she says, adding: “Eating pie brings back memories.”

Visit www.dinethyme.co.uk

PIE-EYED

We want to know which Kent pie outlet you’ve gone pie-eyed for, and why. Tell us about your favourites, from the traditional pie and mash shop to the farmers’ market speciality piemaker; from the coffee shop that serves to-die-for apple pie to the gastro pub which devises its own. If it’s pie and you love it, then we want to know about it.

Early suggestions have included the steak and ale pie served at The Dolphin pub in Canterbury; the new chicken balti pie created by Goddard’s Pies of Borough Green, near Sevenoaks, and the apple and blackberry pie by Kentish Mayde, near Biddenden, which obtained class champion at the British Pies Awards 2014 in Melton Mowbray.

Share your top local recommendation in the comments section below, via email to whatsoneditor@thekmgroup.co.uk or via our Facebook page:www.facebook.com/KMWhatsOn or via Twitter: @KMWhatsOn

Name names! And don’t forget to hashtag #kentpies.

We will share Kent’s top pie outlets in next week’s What's On.

PIE - A HISTORY

9500 BC: The ancient Egyptians made honey-filled galettes, pie-like food baked on hot coals

160 BC: Roman statesman Cato produces the farming manual De Agri Cultura, which includes a popular pie recipe

43 AD: Cornish pasties are devised by the wives of tin miners, influenced by the Romans

1429: Partridge pie is apparently served at King Henry VI’s coronation

1589: Apple pie makes its first appearance in literature as the Elizabethan dramatist R Greene writes: “Thy breath is like the steeme of apple pies.”

1625: Pumpkin pie recipe appears for the first time in a British cookbook

TWEETY-PIE

Eat a pie, make a pie, tweet about pie! How will you get involved in #BritishPieWeek? - @pierateers

So now it’s #BritishPieWeek - would have made sense to have that at the same time as Chip Week #PieAndChips - @Janesgrapevine

@janesgrapevine That’s the week after, by which time we’ll all be fat as little piggies, lol - @ElaBluEyes