Table at Third & Fairfax is a weekly dining column in 2023 where Food and Drink editor Patricia Kelly Yeo will eat her way through the Original Farmers Market. Each column will drop on Thursday for a week-by-week recap of her journey through the classic L.A. tourist attraction. Last week, Kelly visited the Marmalade Cafe.
As a small child, I’d beg my parents to take me to Marie Callender’s, a chain we visited a grand total of once or twice, hoping to get a taste of their chicken pot pie. Growing up in an Asian immigrant household, the concept of any kind of savory pie was foreign, let alone one that involved canned cream of chicken soup. Back then, the only pies I was familiar with were the middling grocery store versions we picked up during Thanksgiving season, which were made with sad-tasting canned pumpkin and pale cinnamon-tinged apple slices. (I’m still not a fan of pumpkin pie to this day.) I fantasized about creamy, fall-off-the-bone chicken and previously frozen peas and carrots parked under a perfectly flaky pie crust, likely after watching a TV commercial or the Food Network.
While it failed to live up to my sky-high childhood expectations, the chicken pot pie ($16.95) I ate for lunch this week at Du-par’s (est. 1938) accomplishes what the fancy variety of the dish I recently had at Chi Spacca in Hancock Park failed to do: It scratches my faux-nostalgic itch for a hearty meat pie. Even the summer weather couldn’t take away from the dish’s cozy appeal. Admittedly, the version they offer at Dupars’ runs on the saltier side, and there seem to be more potatoes than bits of chicken, but the boat-shaped dish demonstrates that the diner’s lunch-leaning fare is just as tasty as their more famous breakfast offerings. I’ve yet to find a better traditional chicken pot pie in L.A., though I hear that there’s a great one at Bon Vivant Market & Cafe in Los Feliz.
It’s been a solid eight months since I first visited Du-par’s at the very start of this column. Aside from the chains and El Granjero Cantina, which I’ll hit up next week, I’ve visited every single prepared food vendor the Original Farmers Market has to offer, plus a few of them twice. In the next few months, I plan to visit Thicc Burger, the winner of the market’s New Originals Competition, which is slated to open later this month. I’ll also be reviewing the best options for baked goods, of which there are many: T&Y Bakery, Michelina and Du-par’s Pie Shop, a separate bakery counter run by the diner.
Along with a plain iced tea and the chicken pot pie, I decide to lean fully into the theme this week with a slice of apple pie ($5) topped with ice cream ($1.75) for dessert, after heavily considering the mango cheesecake, the restaurant’s current flavor of the month. All in all, it takes a good 15 minutes to get my second pie; as I mentioned in my very first column, Du-par’s is not great for those who find themselves in a rush. The crumbly crust is buttery, and the apple slices are piled high, but overall the slice falls short of the extra-saucy apple pie offered at the Apple Pan in West L.A. or the thick slices at Pie ’N Burger in Pasadena. Still, it’s a better-than-average slice, though not my all-time favorite one in L.A.—that award likely still goes to the apple pie made by the Pie Room by Gwen, Curtis Stone’s former casual takeaway pie concept that’s slated to reopen at Westfield’s Topanga Social in the Valley sometime this fall.
Meals from Table at Third & Fairfax fall into three categories: Skip It, Worth Trying and Must Have.
Vendor: Du-par’s
Order: Chicken pot pie, apple pie à la mode
Verdict: Worth Trying. While not perfect, both savory and sweet pies are solid options if you’re in the area.