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By Kate Bradshaw
Sage Bakehouse offers a number of vegan pie varieties. Courtesy Sage Bakehouse.
Sage Bakehouse, a savory pie business that has operated out of farmers markets and food trucks for the past seven years, is on track to open a brick and mortar on the Coastside this summer.
The new pie shop will be located in the former space for Here Comes the Sun coffee shop in Montara. Owner Nicholas Lee says he purchased the space in April and is in the process of building out the pie shop, but has faced some delays.
“We were hoping to be open already,” he says.
He’s now aiming to open the eatery in mid-July. But in the meantime, he has been selling pies from a food truck at the same location on Fridays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Lee’s passion for pies began years ago with a trip to New Zealand. While traveling there for a month, he would start every morning with a breakfast pie – filled with egg, bacon and sausage – and a flat white. He’d later go to a pub, have a pie, then fill up at the gas station – and have another pie.
“They eat these pies like we eat hot dogs and hamburgers,” he says. “That was my first introduction – besides Marie Callender’s chicken pot pies.”
He had been living in San Francisco and working at Trulia, but when it was bought by Zillow and layoffs happened, he got a severance package that allowed him to try something new, he says.
Lee has been baking pies for sale at farmers markets for the last seven years and continues to sell them at the Clement Street and Stonestown Galleria farmers markets in San Francisco each week.
“We really found that people enjoyed the convenience of our pies,” he says. “Not only do we sell them hot, families like to take them cold (and) have them available for a quick easy meal in their freezer.”
Now a Pacifica resident, Lee works out of a production kitchen in Pillar Point Harbor and has continued to offer his pies at farmers markets while searching for a brick-and-mortar home for the concept.
Sage Bakehouse currently offers upwards of 25 pie variations, including pies filled with Oaxacan mole chicken and black beans; a Hungarian chicken paprikash option suggested by a Hungarian friend of Lee’s; and a beef and potato pie adapted from a taquito recipe.
The business also has vegan menu items, including a chickpea pot pie and a gumbo pie made with Impossible sausage, and they offer some gluten-free options as well.
The most popular type remains the chicken pot pie, which is prepared without peas.
“Lots of people don’t like peas,” Lee says.
The restaurant will offer espresso-based drinks in partnership with Craftsman Coffee, a Pacifica-based, woman-owned coffee roaster. Pies are also available for shipping.
Sage Bakehouse, 8455 Highway 1, Montara; 415-271-5590, Instagram: @ sagebakehousesf.