NoFo Pot Pies opens in Mattituck

NoFo Pot Pies in Mattituck seems tailor-made for fall. Located smack-dab in the middle of Long Island’s pumpkin trail, this shipshape shop is seasonally landscaped with gourds, corn stalks and rusting hydrangeas. Inside, the focus is on that most autumnal of dishes: pot pies.

Owner Jonathan Perkins has a potpie history that goes back decades. In 1999 he bought the three-year-old Cooperage Inn in Baiting Hollow and immediately introduced a chicken pot pie that he had already perfected at a previous job. In 2000, Newsday’s Joan Reminick raved about the "dome of puff pastry capping a meld of poultry, vegetables, and herb-flecked cream sauce."

Flash-forward to the pandemic. The restaurant was closed, but Perkins, chef Jeff Russell and general manager Scott Hopkins came up with the idea of selling frozen pot pies to reheat at home. The idea caught fire, prompting the Cooperage team to expand the varieties, build an extension onto the kitchen (complete with "pie window"), perfect the freezing and packaging operation and start a wholesale business. NoFo pies are now available at nearly 20 locations, as far west as Sweetie Pies on Main in Cold Spring Harbor and Deer Run Farms in Brookhaven, as far east as Seps Farm Stand in East Marion, One Stop Market in East Hampton.

Perkins believes the to-go pies caught on for the same reason they were popular at the restaurant: "From the beginning, the Cooperage Inn was about comfort food. And I always wanted to build on that."

The main challenge the team faced was ramping up production while maintaining small-scale quality but, in fact, the pies are still made the same way. Chickens are still roasted, hunks of light and dark meat pulled by hand — the same goes for the turkeys. Instead of traditional "stew meat," beef pies contain braised short ribs.

Perkins said that his original model was to focus on wholesale but, "I felt like the brand needed an identity on the North Fork." A vacant jewelry store fit the bill for a retail operation, once it was gutted to accommodate freezers for the pies; fridges for soups, desserts, salads and prepared meals from Cooperage Inn; shelves for fancy cookies, crackers and preserves and pasta. Crumb cake from Front Street Bakery in Rockville Centre is new addition to the lineup.

But back to pot pies. The shop sells up to 10 varieties (depending on the season) of small 6-inch pies ($20 to $34), from traditional chicken, beef and shepherd’s pie to more out-there lobster-shrimp-scallop, jambalaya and chicken Marsala; large 10-inch pies ($50 to $66) come in chicken, beef and turkey.

NoFo Pot Pies, 11160 Main Rd., Mattituck, 631-548-7437, nofopotpies.com. Open 7 days a week from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.