Pie+Tart owners Lisa Yelagin and Anne Gerr’s story started four years ago when there was an empty space for rent in downtown Easton.
At the time, Yelagin owned a cafe selling savory pies at Common Space, a commercial kitchen in downtown Easton. After crossing paths with Gerr, who was doing a one-month Mediterranean pop-up restaurant in Common Space, the two decided to combine their talents into one.
They claimed the space for rent and opened Pie+Tart, a business that combines Yelagin’s passion for savory pies with Gerr’s for tarts.
“It happened very quickly,” Gerr said of their decision to leave their jobs and open the business. “We met in the summer … In September, we said, ‘Hey, let’s not do that anymore, let’s do something else.’ And we got in here and opened about a month later.”
Originally, Pie+Tart allowed customers to come inside the small area of the store. When the business started up again after the shutdown from the pandemic, Yelagin had the idea to create a hole-in-the-wall system. Customers order from outside through an opening in the door, referred to as the “pie hole.”
According to Yelagin, a lot of the business’s customer base comes from word-of-mouth.
“We get people texting or emailing saying, ‘Oh, I just had one of your chicken pot pies at a friend’s house last night. I’m going to come this week,’” Yelagin said.
“We also happen to have the best customers in the world,” Gerr added.
Pie+Tart is known for its savory pies. Yelagin, who is Australian, has been eating savory meat pies for as long as she can remember and wanted to bring the unique cuisine to Easton.
“Nobody else does savory pies,” Yelagin said. “There’s a limited number of places from here to New York.”
Yelagin and Gerr stand by the concept of making real, simple food. According to them, customers often say that their treats taste authentically homemade.
“We don’t cut corners. It’s all just real food — real food seasoned with real seasoning. It’s very simple,” Yelagin said. “But pie and pastry is something that people don’t tend to do [in their homes] a lot, so we’re happy to do it for them.”
The duo is still learning as they go. With just the two of them working day in and day out, Yelagin and Gerr follow a path to “expand without expanding.” Within the business, they are constantly testing out new recipes and expanding their flavors.
Yelagin said that her favorite part about the business is being able to make “something that we’ve never done before that works and is delicious.”
“We get to play. It’s really a playground,” Gerr said.
A recent creation that sparked joy for Gerr is their concord grape pie, a regional specialty from the Finger Lakes area. Though a time-consuming and tedious process, she thinks that the outcome makes the effort worth it.
“When you taste it, it’s just revelatory,” Gerr said.
Throughout the course of the week, Yelagin and Gerr produce a mass of pies to be sold. Though they do not take special orders, they maintain seasonal trends and have a rotating selection of pies.
For those who can’t get enough pie, Pie+Tart offers a membership known as the “Secret Pie Society,” which offers a unique pie for subscribers each month. Further information about the membership in addition to the business’ weekly menu can be found on their website, 2inhand.com.
