CONNECTICUT: Chicken Pie

As late as the mid-20th-century, when much of Connecticut was still farmland, the wives of chicken farmers continued a tradition of making chicken pies and selling them from their back porches. The chicken farms are gone, but Dottie's Diner, located along Rural Route 6—known to collectors as "antiques row" for the old homes that are now whatnot shops—still offers farm-worthy pies. There is no filler packed inside these pies' savory crusts, not even vegetables or gravy. Just a mass of pliant meat, white and dark, chopped and sliced. Crack through the crust, inhale the oven-roasted perfume, then pour on some of the gravy that comes on the side along with fine mashed potatoes, carrots, and peas. (Regular chicken pot pies, with everything packed inside the crust, also are available.) One other note: Dottie's cinnamon donuts may be the best cake donuts in history.

Dottie's Diner
740 S. Main Street
Woodbury, Connecticut
Tel: 203 263 2516