Pie floater pronounced a South Australian icon for its legendary status as late-night food stop in Adelaide/Norwood_
South Australia's iconic pie floater with tomato sauce option. Bottom left: The pie cart in 1919 in Ellen Street, Port Pirie, attributed as an original location for the pie floater. Bottom right: Late-night revellers at the pie cart next to the railway station, North Terrace, Adelaide city, in 1974.
Images courtesy The Recorder, Port Pirie, and The Australian Women's Weekly
The pie floater, a late-night Adelaide legendary culinary oddity, was recognised in 2003 as a South Australian heritage icon by the National Trust. The floater – a meat pie in thick pea sauce, with the tomato sauce option – had British Yorkshire roots, where “pea and pie supper” and “floaters” (dumplings in soup) were traditional.
South Australia’s first pie floaters have been attributed to Port Pirie baker Ern “Shorty” Bradley in the 1890s. The first printed record of this were his advertisements in The Recorder newspaper inviting patrons at the nearby Casino cinema to “slip across to the Coffee stall and have Good Supper”. He offered “Hot Pies and Pasties and a Specialty. Hot Saveloys, Rolls and Floaters".
The floaters became associated with horse- or hand-drawn pie carts that had been a fixture in Adelaide from the 1860s/70s. Another contender as floater originator was pastry cook James Gibbs, a Scottish emigrant who set his pie cart on the corner of King William and Rundle streets, Adelaide city, in the 1880s. He had worked at a brewery by day for six years to pay for his venture. The sudden popularity of his floaters meant he was able to expand quickly with new carts, prompting other new vendors and competing carts, with about 13 in the Adelaide city centre.
The 1880s were the pie carts peak. By 1915, only nine pie carts were operating. During the 1920s/30s economic depression, it was common for dozens of unemployed to converge on the pie carts at closing time, seeking pastry cooks willing to give away unsold pies.
But by 1938, the decline in cart numbers was lamented in Adelaide’s afternoon daily tabloid, The News: “Hungry citizens will no longer know the warm intimacy of these sheltered canvas retreats ... honest hearts and sturdy stomachs will mourn the passing of these of the floater — and institution apparently peculiar to Adelaide — a hot pie launched on a sea of peas.”
Pie carts became the only way to get a cheap meal late at night but Adelaide City Council refused to reissue licences and, by 1958, only three carts remained: Cowley’s besides the general post office in Victoria Square, Balfour’s at the railway station on North Terrace, Adelaide city, and on The Parade in the suburb of Norwood. The Norwood pie cart was once the only place to buy draft Hall’s Stonie ginger beer directly from the keg.
By 2011, all three pie carts had vanished from the streets, with the North Terrace railway station cart making way for the tram extension. While temporary pie carts operated outside Norwood Oval and Adelaide casino during football games, the permanent late-night pie cart disappeared. It continued to be available at locations such as Café de Vilis and some bakeries and hotels.
