When was the last time you saw a good pasty? If you said at the strip club last weekend or on the woman with the huge gazongas in the movie Coraline, both would be correct but neither would be the answer to my question. The kind of pasty I am referring to is a pocket of pastry dough brimming with vegetables and possibly meat. The kind that takes hours to make and may take just as long to eat since each pasty weighs in at approximately one pound. The kind hand-delivered at lunchtime by John Goddard, owner of a one-man operation called Nob Hill Pasty Co.
Goddard approaches his pasty business as a niche that needed filling—no pun intended. “I’ve heard there are a couple of pubs over on the Eastside that sell them,” he says casually. “I haven’t tried them, but I hear that they aren’t all that great.” (Actually, Saraveza Bottle Shop and Pasty Tavern offers some tasty hand pies up in NoPo). But Goddard’s pasties cost $5 for the vegan version and $7 for a beef pasty. And he delivers.
Goddard expressed concern for lots of things—the environment, the poor people panhandling in Nob Hill, the way that alt-weeklies (except for WW, of course) are becoming more “tabloidy”—but the one thing that doesn’t concern him is opening his business in the current economy. “Economy be damned,” he says, his words oozing with a laissez-faire attitude toward the incessant chatter about everything being so bad. “I don’t care. I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do.”
And that’s exactly what he’s always done. When he wanted to write in 2003, he became a freelance writer for the Riverfront Times in St. Louis. When a friend called him to offer him a job in Croatia in 2007, he spent three months working and playing in the village of Marina. When he decided to move back to the states, he sold his media equipment, flew to St. Louis, and bummed a ride to Oregon. And when he lost his job a month ago, he opened Nob Hill Pasty Co. on a shoestring budget.
For the time being, Goddard feels his pasty company has given him some autonomy over his culinary skills. “Working for other people in restaurants is not going to get me where I need to be professionally,” says Goddard about his decision to open his own business. “Ultimately, I plan to open a bricks and mortar restaurant. This is a small step in that direction.”
Pasties can be ordered on the Nob Hill Pasty Co. website, and all orders must be placed one day in advance.
Photo courtesy of Nob Hill Pasty Co.
I’m thinking that this recession/depression is going to spawn some great new business’s out of a need to make a living.
These are awesome!!! I ordered a half dozen of them for my office as a lunch time treat and everyone LOVED THEM! Thanks for the delicious food!