Apple Pie : PIES: We Pick the Best

Every afternoon, in the days during World War II when my father operated a diner in Greenwich Village, my sister and I would walk from school on 12th Street to Al’s Diner on Perry Street. We went there to, as one customer put it, “eat up the profits.” Our daily snack: apple pie a la mode. A huge wedge of the pie, oozing with velvety vanilla ice cream over syrupy apples, had a crust that dissolved between my teeth. It was a perfect diner pie.

In Los Angeles, Philippe the Original makes a diner-style apple pie that I think is as good as the ones I ate in New York. Philippe’s pies are hearty, he-man apple pies with a rather soft, chewy crust and an even softer filling. They are the kind you imagine being eaten by a lone diner in some wee-hour dive lit by the glow of a street lamp.

Martino’s Bakery in Burbank makes the pies for Philippe’s. It also bakes apple pies for Southland colleges, hospitals, other restaurants and the Meals on Wheels trays delivered to the elderly by St. Vincent’s Hospital.

Philippe’s serves a high-crust version of the Martino pie that has a more imposing look about it than the humble apple pie I remember from my father’s diner. But the taste is unmistakably the same. “The apples are red shiny apples in the morning and pie in the afternoon,” says Dave Van Laar, Martino’s general manager. “We cook them the same day we deliver. No canned, no candied and no frozen.”

And no cholesterol either. Unlike the larded diner pies from long ago, Martino’s pie crust contains only vegetable oils. The texture, says Van Laar, has not been affected, nor has the taste. I hope so.

Philippe the Original, 1001 N. Alameda St., Los Angeles, (213) 628-3781.