166 Churchill Ave, Braybrook. Phone: 9311 3388

Gotta love an old-school pie shop – and it’s a delight that there’s so many in the western suburbs, happily holding their own amid the multicultural swirl.

The Pie & Pastry House, operating since 1952 according the its business card, certainly fits the bill right from the decor and screen door to the milkshake machine and technicolour display of doughnuts.

It lives in a Braybrook shopping strip that features a couple of Filipino places awaiting our further exploration and opposite a park and adventure playground at which we’ve attended many a birthday party.

I order my standard lunch in such places – a plain beef pie and a sausage roll.

The plastic cutlery is a bit of a downer, offset by the tomato sauce coming in squeeze bottle form rather than the a horrid sachet.

The pastry outer of my sausage roll is incredibly flaky, and soon the whole table is flecked with it. It’s just OK, tending towards blandness – as sausage rolls tend to do.

The pie, pastry not so flaky, is better, though in need of a seasoning boost by my way of thinking.

I like my lunch items, and I sense that they and the other lines the shop sells are perfectly suited for its loyal and long-term customers, quite a few of whom come and go as I am going about my lunch business.

The vanilla slices look scrumptious.

The ginormous family-size pasties, at $9.50, look like an outright bargain and destined soon for a test run on our dinner table. Visual appraisal suggests that with a bit of help from salad on the side, they’d feed two adults and two kids no problem

All I take away with me though are a single lemon tart ($1.25) and a single cream shortbread ($1).

The former is, fittingly, old-school, with a slightly chewy filling.

The latter is a sensational taste grenade – two pieces of light, fresh shortbread, joined by a smooth vanilla cream and dusted in icing sugar.

It’s not just the highlight of the day – it’s the best of the week.

Such a simple, affordable pleasure!