There is no single menu in these Michigan restaurants

Before you think this is a story about restaurants switching to QR codes for their menus (ugh), that’s not what this is about. It’s possible that no self-respecting pie shop in Michigan has or needs a menu.

Pasties are a regional dish with Cornish origins that is extremely popular in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and extends well into Lower Michigan.

The thing is, the range in most pie shops is deliberately quite limited. If you’ve never had a pie before, the best way to think of it is as a dry stew in a dumpling dough. Inside the pie is meat (usually beef) and vegetables such as onions, carrots, turnips and potatoes.

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There is little customization or choice in the filling. Maybe beef or chicken. Maybe with or without swede. But that’s it. The choices are intentionally so limited that there is little need for a menu in a pie restaurant.

The concept became a jokey meme in a Facebook group dedicated to the Upper Michigan peninsula, depicting a conversation at a pie shop where a customer asks for a menu and responds with a simple, monosyllabic “NO.”

Commentators quickly chimed in and agreed:

The menu could include…
1. With
2. Without
Covers pretty much everything.

In Philly, “wit whiz” or “witout” means that you prefer a cheesesteak or Cheez Whiz, and for pies it means “with or without rutabaga.”

The other question to answer is: sauce or ketchup? There are two, and only two – never mayonnaise, condiments that can be used to garnish the pie. And it’s a fierce debate among sauce/ketchup fans.