Easy As Pie: Mark Huetsch & Liang Wang of Pie House

Pie-obsessed entrepreneurs Mark Huetsch and Liang Wang are determined to bring America’s favorite dessert to Beijing sweet-tooths. With painstaking attention to detail and a willingness to customize desserts for both Chinese and foreign taste palates, Mark and Liang made time between their busy deliveries to speak with Agenda.

Why pie? M: Well, I’ve been making pie since I was very young. I grew up in a farm town in southern Illinois – my grandma was a farmer. I would frequently go out to my grandma’s farm and just loved cooking and baking as a kid, and one of the things we would frequently make is pie. So, we were like a pie family, we ate a ton of pie, often made by my grandma, so she taught me. I’ve just been making pies since I was 6 years old.

L: We thought about doing something together. So, Mark baked some pies for my friends – I’m from Beijing – I traveled to the States many times when I was a student and for my previous work. And pie is quite alien to China – every one of my friends loves the pies that Mark bakes. So, we thought it was a good idea to sell this; nobody has ever sold pie – good pies. I’ve tasted many pies with my friends from other restaurants, and we sell the best pies.

How did your pie partnership evolve? L: We got to know each other, before, when he was studying at Beida and I was studying at Tsinghua.

M: Yeah, Stanford has an exchange program with Beida.

Was there a specific moment when you guys knew you had to start this business? L: We had many different ideas, but I think [Mark] brought a pie to our mutual friend’s party and everyone loved it. Some friends of mine encouraged us to sell pie. I remember I brought them our French Silk pie and my friends, mostly Chinese friends, had never had such a high-cocoa percentage and they really liked the piecrust – they found it really special.

What was the first pie you ever made, if you remember? M: Well, I started when I was 6, so I don’t know how much you remember from when you were 6 …

L: Girls can usually remember things better.

M: But what I can tell is that, it’s kind of strange, the little town I grew up in, we have this kind of unique pie culture where we have like, when you hear of a peach pie you think of a pie that’s full of peaches, right? And then like, peaches and syrup, and crust on top. When I was raised, I was taught that a peach pie was peaches and crust, but then covered in custard. So it was a custard pie of some sort. All of our pies were custard pies – aside from apple, which would be a little weird. So, I would bet it was a custard pie of some sort, or a lemon meringue.

Have you noticed any interesting similarities between Chinese pastries and American pastries? M: What Chinese pastries?

L: Well, actually, a customer told us that the piecrust reminded her of niusebing. It’s a very traditional Chinese pastry. But I don’t find any similarity between the two of them, but it’s just, it’s interesting because pie is so new to China, so they always try to relate it to something. We try our best to customize to the Chinese and foreign demographics, like the level of sweetness would be very different. So we have, like, American-style sweetness, and more like, Chinese- or average-type sweetness. And also, we can make like, Splenda or sugar-free.

M: We found that was the big difference and we’ve paid a lot of attention to customizing and letting people choose ideal amounts of sugar. So, we spent a lot of time customizing and catering to Chinese customers.

Have you had to alter your desserts to Chinese taste palates in any other way, other than sweetness level? L: Yeah, Chinese people like the pies with more layers. So our new seasonal Chocolate Cherry Cheese pie, so we have quite complicated pie crust, and then dark chocolate ganache, and then cream cheese, and then cherry, and cherry syrup. Because Chinese people love more complicated …

M: … textural difference. I think your typical American, you give them a really tasty, moist brownie, make it thick or big, and I could just keep eating it, right? Whereas a Chinese person would prefer that dessert to be layered with different types, right? It’s something that we’ve discovered. For example, our Strawberry Cheese pie, our Chocolate Cherry Cheese pie, we try to emphasize different textures.

What do foreigners think of your pies? M: An apple pie is an apple pie, so as long as the sweetness is the same. I’ve had people say, “This is better than my grandma’s apple pie.” That’s a great compliment – I need to put it on our website. So, especially for the traditional pies, like apple, pumpkin …

L: … banana cream.

So for a first-timer at Pie House, which desserts do you recommend trying? M: I would recommend a pie. Our bestselling are French Silk and Banana Cream. So, those are things you can get year round and do very well. For a first-timer, I would go for something seasonal, because that’s something made with fresh fruit and something available only for a short amount of time. Like our Cherry pie, it’s very fresh.

What are your favorite types of pies? M: I really like our banana cream pie.

L: And I really like our French Silk. I spent a lot of time sourcing the chocolate. I remember the first case of 25 kilograms of dark chocolate. I dragged it back from the warehouse near the airport, and I contacted a French supplier, so they shipped the chocolate over and said, “We don’t take care of shipping stuff to your kitchen, because your order is way too small.” Because I mean, I wasn’t really sure if the chocolate is good enough, so I only got 25 kilograms. When I went there, there was this small cart, and the guard said, “Where’s your car?” And I replied, “This is my car.” So, I took the chocolate back, and it was really good, so we’ve been using it since then.

Speaking of which, where do you source your ingredients? L: All over. The cream cheese, butter, and whipped cream are from a supplier, an import-export company, and they deal with Australian companies. For different fruits, we have different vendors. We want to make sure that for each type of fruit, we get the ones with the best taste. The quality of the pie relies on the quality of the fruit, so oftentimes, even our wholesale price, would be higher than our retail price for a certain type of fruit. So, they really taste good. Some Chinese customer called me, and asked if they can buy fruit from us.

Do you have any new products or promotions in the near future? M: Yeah, we intend to keep up with the seasons. So, strawberry season lasted a month, a month and a half? So now it’s apricot and cherry season. More fruits will be coming in the next coming months. So we’ll cater to those. In the winter, we’ll do some warmer flavors and richer stuff. We want to keep innovating on pies.

If you were a pie or tartlet, what would you be and why? L: What? Well, maybe I want to be a tartlet, because for Chinese people, small things look prettier. There are many people who say, “Oh, the pie is too big. Do you have smaller things?” I like the coconut cream tartlet. Again, it’s about texture.

M: I’m just going to have to go with banana cream pie because I find it most tasty.
What do you say to people who claim to not like pie? M: Have you met anyone who doesn’t like pie? I have to say, this is an alien creature to me.

Aside from pie, what are some of your Beijing favorites? L: Dadong, the Beijing duck restaurant. And, well, I used to be the mobile map for Beijing’s dining. So, I constantly went to all the new openings for restaurants. But now, I think I’m getting old and I only go to a few. I love The Vineyard – I go there a lot and I go to The Bookworm a lot. I really like Yotsuba – it’s a Japanese sushi place. It’s very difficult to book a seat there. There’s a sushi chef standing there, and you get to see how he makes sushi. If you’re able to speak Japanese, they’ll be wonderful, because you can have custom-made dishes.

M: Yeah, you ask the owners of a food business what are their favorite things to do – surprisingly, it’s to eat, right?

Contact Pie House at 5166 4464 or online at www.piehouse.com.cn