Pans, pies and plenty of the finest fare

Pots and pans are meat and drink for the children doing music lessons at Westfield Primary Community School in York. They hammered out a tune heralding the York Food and Drink Festival where they will be performing on the final weekend.

Under the supervision of music teacher Diane Rowsell, the school's Pantastic Steel Band regularly performs at events in the city and recently entertained the Archbishop of York and the festival, which starts today, is their next gig.

How old do you have to be to qualify as Ye Olde? Not very in the case of a shop in York's Shambles. Ye Olde Pie and Sausage Shop has yet to celebrate its first birthday. But newness is no bar to quality. One of their traditional pork pies is in the finals of the Yorkshire Post Taste Yorkshire Awards next Friday. The couple behind the venture, Robert Wilson and his wife Julie, thought of the idea during a trip to Bath.

Robert, a former slaughterman who needed a different job after injuring his arm, spotted Bath's Ye Olde Sausage Shop. Julie, a chartered financial planner, saw that Bath had a similar demographic to York and thought the idea would catch on back home. They opened last November in the Shambles, the original street of the butchers and slaughterers – all of whom have long since gone. It's from tourists that the shopkeepers down here make their money now. But this is a customer base which exposes the Wilsons to one of the deepest and longest-running taste conflicts in this country. It's the great pork pie divide. Yorkshire pies typically have crusty pastry, pink meat (opinion is divided on jelly) and are best consumed within hours of being baked. Below a line drawn somewhere near the north Notts border, the demand is for a different sort of pork pie that will keep longer, made from soft, fatty pastry and grey meat.

Julie says setting up has been an interesting learning curve in the sense that they are now so busy they have no life. For reason's they don't understand, sausages were not enough in York to provide a living. So they diversified into pies brought in from Huntington – Robert's brother is a butcher and pie maker there.

Making their own pies presented a problem – no-one would share their trade secrets. The man who saved the day was Sid from Warrington, who sold a machine called a blocker to Julie on eBay. It forms the pie case and Sid was also willing to pass on his personal A-Z of pie-making with Julie. The Wilsons had a run-in with trading standards who objected to their Yorkshire Farmhouse Sausage on the grounds that it was actually made in the back of the cramped shop. So they switched the name to Shambles Sausage and doubled demand. Their pork is sourced from Anna's Happy Trotters at Howden.

The Wilsons cure their own bacon and hope that York ham soon will make its way back to the city for the first time since the demise of Scott's of Petergate. Everything is sourced locally, including apples from Ampleforth and beer from York Brewery. The Wilsons' daughter, Kayleigh, moved from working at the Royal Mail to be the shop manager. The plan was for Robert to do early mornings till lunchtimes. But they still have only one oven in the shop and as soon as Robert leaves for home, supplies run out. The advantage is that the pies going across the counter are mostly warm. Locals, who are likely to be more reliable in what they order, tend not to use the Shambles much. "They have been coming in and saying, 'Oh, we never knew you were here," says Julie. "Some tourists ask, 'What colour is your meat?'. I tell them it's pink. "Oh, we only like it grey."

The shop is one of the 18 finalists for the Yorkshire Post Taste Yorkshire Awards whose winners will be announced at the Friday Guildhall dinner. And like all the entrants for the awards who made it onto the judges' 50-strong shortlist, they are also eligible for the Readers Award. The Wilsons will have their products available to the public for tasting in the demonstration area in St Sampson's Square on Monday. Entry is free. The results of the voting for the Readers Award will also be announced at the Guildhall dinner. To see the shortlist visit www.yorkfoodfestival. com/festival.php?day=4

The Westfield Primary school's performance workshop will be next Saturday at 5pm in the Fountain Caf, a large marquee at the fountain in Parliament Street.

www.yorkfoodfestival.com.

CW 18/9/10