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Is London’s best pie found inside Holborn Dining Room?

Chef Calum Franklin is indulging his love of pastry with a dedicated Pie Room inside one of London's top brasseries.

Chef Calum Franklin's pie room.

John Carey

When Calum Franklin was growing up, his mother was his pie-making mentor. “I remember seeing her ruffle the potato on top of a shepherd’s pie with a fork, and thinking how cool that was,” he says. The executive chef at Holborn Dining Room in London has taken his lifelong obsession with pastry to the next level – opening Victorian-style The Pie Room at his restaurant.

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Chicken, pork and curry pies

The menu includes both classic British and modern examples (“my favourite at the moment is a curried mutton pie”) and the pastrywork is exquisite. Sometimes he’ll use a scalpel for ultra-detailed flourishes. “There are times we stand in a huge freezer cutting the smallest, most intricate lattice to cover the top of a pie,” he says.

The kitchen makes 200 pies a day and there’s a takeaway window for customers in a hurry. The best response to his creations? One family made a video of themselves unboxing a personalised pâté en croûte and uploaded it to YouTube.

“That was pretty special, seeing it directly making people happy, which is really what it’s all about,” says Franklin.

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The Pie Room at Holborn Dining Room, 252 High Holborn, London, WC1V 7EN, holborndiningroom.com

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