Pie Across Virginia: Virginia Diner

Yesterday I began the second mission of the pie odyssey – identifying and tasting quality pie across the state of Virginia. My friend Kim suggested the Virginia Diner in Wakefield, Virginia as a good starting place. It’s a bit of a drive (Wakefield is southeast of Richmond), but it wouldn’t have been bad if we hadn’t been completely stopped on 64 for 45 minutes on the way there. It was totally worth it though. It was a delightful dining experience.

I was really torn between apple pie and peanut pie. I feel like I should be trying a wide variety of apple pies as a learning experience, but I’d never had peanut pie before. Plus, the last 10 miles of the drive, we passed so many peanut stores and peanut billboards, that I really felt like if I was ever going to try peanut pie, Wakefield was the place to do it. The only solution was to get both. I ate the peanut pie on site, and saved the apple for later.

If you’ve never had peanut pie, it’s very similar to pecan pie, but slightly more orange in color. The peanuts make it a bit saltier too, which contrasts nicely with the sweet goo. Like pecan pie, you couldn’t eat it every day, but it’s a lovely treat. I totally approve that the Virginia Diner served it slightly warm with a bit of whipped cream. They offered me ice cream on top, but that seemed like too much sugar even for me. I found many recipes online that purport to be the Virginia Diner’s peanut pie. One of these recipes advocated breaking up your peanuts by putting them in a used ham sack so that as you hit them, they absorb the flavor of ham. So I guess there is a chance that their peanut pie is not strictly vegetarian, but I’m going to pretend that I don’t know that.

The apple pie that I took home was really tasty as well. Not the best I’ve ever had, but perfectly satisfying. I ate it sooner than I intended because it smelled so good. It was lightly seasoned, with thickly sliced apples and a pale, smooth crust. I was relieved to see that even at the Virginia Diner the apples cook down and leave a gap under the crust as you can see from the profile shot I took.

Virginia Diner stats:

Location: Wakefield, Virginia

Pies available: peanut, peanut butter silk, apple, chocolate chess, key lime. They also have non-pie desserts if you’re so inclined – Kim had what looked like a great brownie sundae.

How are pies displayed: on a great placemat with beauty shots of all the pies.

Other highlights: you get a packet of peanuts as soon as you sit down and the onion rings are fabulous.

Things to know: apparently the Diner gets really busy in tourist season, but you can only make reservations for groups of 8 or more, so probably a good idea to go in the off-season.

Highly recommended.