On Watchung Avenue in Upper Montclair, the giveaway is not a Union Jack waving from the roof or a red phone booth parked out front.
It is the glass case filled with steak-and-ale pies, sausage rolls wrapped in puff pastry, and a shelf nearby where HP Sauce, Heinz Beans, Skips, biscuits, curry powder, and British sweets quietly announce that this is not your average Jersey bakery.
The Pie Store sits at 100 Watchung Avenue, close enough to the Watchung Plaza train stop to make a quick pie run feel almost dangerously easy. It is small, practical, and wonderfully specific: a bakery built around the kind of food that makes gray weather feel useful.
The menu leans savory first, but anyone with a sweet tooth will spot the banoffee soon enough. Add in imported groceries and a tea shop two doors down, and suddenly Montclair feels a little closer to Essex, England.
A Little Slice of Britain on Watchung Avenue
The Pie Store has a real origin story, not a theme-restaurant backstory dreamed up in a branding meeting. Samantha, who moved to New Jersey from Essex, England, first opened The London Food Company on Bloomfield Avenue before moving the business to Montclair’s historic Watchung Plaza in 2008.
The shop now calls itself New Jersey’s premier destination for homemade British pies and baked goods, and that claim makes sense the moment you realize how focused the place is. This is not a bakery that happens to sell one chicken pot pie near the cookies.
The savory pies are the point. The groceries are part of the point. The whole place feels like someone missed the food from home badly enough to build a shop around it. The address matters here, too.
Watchung Avenue has that Upper Montclair rhythm: small storefronts, neighborhood errands, train-station convenience, and just enough foot traffic to make a tiny specialty shop feel like a local secret that somehow everyone knows about.
The Pie Store is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., with Monday listed as closed, so this is more of a midday mission than a late-night craving stop.
That timing actually fits the experience. You pop in before dinner, grab something to heat later, maybe add a scone because restraint is overrated, and leave with a paper bag that smells like butter and gravy.
It is a very Jersey kind of discovery in the best way: tucked into a normal commercial strip, deeply local, and far more memorable than its modest storefront lets on.
The Savory Pies Are the Main Event
Start with the Steak, Ale, and Mushroom Pie because it tells you exactly what this bakery does well. The official menu describes it as tender chunks of steak with mushrooms, onions, and garlic soaked in Brooklyn Brown Ale, which is a nice little New Jersey-adjacent twist on a very British comfort-food format.
It is not subtle food, and it should not be. A proper meat pie should feel sturdy, warming, and slightly dramatic when you cut into it, with the crust doing more than just politely holding the filling in place.
At The Pie Store, the savory lineup goes well beyond that headliner.
There is Shepherd’s Pie with ground beef, peas, onion, red wine, and mashed potatoes; Chicken and Vegetable Pie with chicken breast, carrots, celery, onions, mushrooms, and thyme; and a Cheese, Potato, and Onion Pie made with mashed potatoes, caramelized onions, and extra-sharp cheddar.
The prices also make clear that these are not impulse-snack pies pretending to be lunch. Current menu pricing lists the Steak, Ale, and Mushroom Pie at $26.95 for a small and $48.95 for a large, with other full pies ranging by filling and size.
That makes the shop especially useful if you want a low-effort dinner that still feels like someone cooked. Pick up a pie, warm it properly at home, and suddenly Tuesday night has pub-dinner energy without anyone needing to parallel park in Hoboken.
The appeal is not just nostalgia for British expats, though the shop has built a reputation with British and Irish communities in the area.
It is also for anyone in New Jersey who understands the pleasure of food that does one job extremely well: feed you, comfort you, and make you wonder why savory pies are not more common around here.
Cornish Pasties and Sausage Rolls Bring the Pub Energy Home
There is a very specific joy in buying something you can eat with one hand that still feels like a full meal. That is where the pasties and sausage rolls come in.
The Cornish pasty on the menu keeps things classic with ground beef, carrots, onions, and potatoes, while the Steak and Cheddar Pasty adds tender chunks of steak, mushrooms, and sharp cheddar.
Then the shop gets a little more playful with options like Chana Masala Pasty, BBQ Pork and Cheddar Pasty, Lamb and Feta Pasty, and Sweet Potato, Blue Cheese, and Onion Pasty.
Prices currently run from $13.95 to $16.95 for pasties, depending on the filling. This is the part of the menu that makes The Pie Store feel less like a special-occasion bakery and more like a place you could work into real life.
A pasty is lunch. A sausage roll is the thing you say you are saving for later and then eat in the car before you make it out of Montclair.
The regular sausage roll is Irish pork sausage in puff pastry for $6, while the gourmet sausage roll uses organic ground pork with parmesan, sage, and parsley in puff pastry for $8.95. That puff pastry detail is important because sausage rolls live or die by texture.
They need that flaky outer shell, the kind that leaves crumbs on your sweater and does not apologize. The Pie Store’s version fits neatly into the shop’s larger charm: it feels imported in spirit, but not frozen in tradition.
Yes, you can get the classic British flavors. You can also grab something with curry, BBQ pork, hatch green chile, or feta. It is a British bakery with enough Montclair personality to keep things interesting.
The Sweet Side Goes Well Beyond Apple Pie
It would be easy to walk into The Pie Store thinking only about steak and gravy, but that would be amateur hour. The sweet case has its own little universe, and the banoffee is the one that tends to stop people who know what they are looking at.
Banoffee, for the uninitiated, is the glorious British-style combination of banana, toffee, and cream, the kind of dessert that sounds almost too simple until you remember that sugar and butter have rarely needed much help. The Pie Store currently lists Banoffee in small and large sizes, priced at $23.95 and $45.95.
The menu also includes double-crust apple pie, double-crust cranberry apple when seasonal, double-crust raspberry, apple, and blackberry, plus key lime, coconut custard by preorder, chocolate mousse by preorder, and seasonal brandied pumpkin.
Mini key lime and chocolate mousse options are listed at $7.50, while the larger pies sit in that take-home-dessert zone that makes sense for dinner parties, holidays, or any gathering where showing up with another supermarket cake would feel mildly depressing.
There are smaller treats, too. Portuguese egg custard tarts are listed as a weekend-only item, and the fresh daily scones come in flavors like fresh strawberry, sharp cheddar cheese, golden raisin, and chocolate chip, with seasonal varieties available by inquiry.
That mix is what keeps the sweet side from feeling like an afterthought. You can stay fully British with banoffee and scones, go familiar with apple pie, or wander into custard tart territory because the case made the decision for you.
The savory pies may bring people through the door, but the sweets are how The Pie Store quietly turns a quick errand into a full bag of “well, since I’m already here.”
The British Groceries Make It a Tiny Treasure Hunt
The shelves are part of the fun, especially if your definition of fun includes spotting a candy bar you have not seen since a layover at Heathrow.
The Pie Store’s own site calls this side of the shop “high-street sundries,” which is a much better phrase than “random imported groceries,” and the list backs it up: Skips, HP Sauce, Heinz Beans, curry powder, chocolates, sweeties, biscuits, crisps, soups, drinks, and other pantry finds.
This is where the shop becomes more than a bakery. For British and Irish expats, it can be a practical stop for familiar brands.
For everyone else, it is a tiny edible scavenger hunt. You might go in for a pie and come out with beans for breakfast, a packet of crisps you bought mostly because the flavor sounded odd, and biscuits you swear are “for the house.”
The about page mentions hard-to-find imports and sundries, including Galaxy Bars, Fairy Liquid, special Easter chocolates, and Christmas crackers, which hints at how seasonal the shelves can get.
That rotating, while-supplies-last feeling is part of the charm. You do not browse The Pie Store like a big supermarket, where every shelf is engineered to look the same forever.
You browse it like a small shop where the good stuff changes, disappears, returns, and occasionally convinces you to buy something you cannot quite explain to anyone else later. It also makes the bakery especially good for low-stakes gifting.
A savory pie for dinner is practical. A bag of British sweets or a bottle of HP Sauce is the kind of extra that makes the stop feel personal.
In a state full of Italian bakeries, bagel shops, and diners, there is something quietly delightful about finding a Montclair storefront where the grocery shelf speaks fluent U.K.
The Tea Store Next Door Completes the Trip
Just when The Pie Store seems like enough of a destination on its own, there is a second act two doors down. The Tea Store sits at 106 Watchung Avenue, just steps from The Pie Store on the other side of Montclair Music Studio, and it leans into tea, sandwiches, soups, British treats, coffee, matcha, and global teas.
This is the detail that makes the whole Watchung Avenue stop feel oddly complete. One storefront covers the pies, scones, groceries, and sweets.
The other gives you the proper cup of tea energy to go with it. The Tea Store describes itself as Montclair’s destination for global teas and British treats, which keeps it from being only a companion shop.
It is its own little pause button, especially if you are the kind of person who thinks errands improve dramatically when there is a hot drink involved. Together, the two shops make a very specific kind of New Jersey outing: small, local, food-focused, and just unusual enough to feel like a find.
You are not driving to a sprawling attraction or waiting in a two-hour brunch line. You are going to a modest stretch of Upper Montclair for a steak-and-ale pie, a sausage roll, a box of biscuits, maybe banoffee if the dessert mood wins, and tea close enough that “two doors down” is not a figure of speech.
The best part is how normal it all feels once you are there. Of course Montclair has a British pie bakery.
Of course there are imported crisps on the shelf. Of course the tea is nearby.
New Jersey has always been good at hiding tiny worlds inside ordinary storefronts, and this one happens to smell like puff pastry, brown ale, and a proper cuppa.