Mr. Pastie is a brand name pasty

Pasty

A pasty , sometimes known as a pastie or British pasty in the United States, is a filled pastry case, associated in particular with Cornwall in Great Britain. It is made by placing the uncooked filling on a flat pastry circle, and folding it to wrap the filling, crimping the edge at the side or top...

, a meat-and-potato turnover product. It is marketed by entrepreneur Garnet T. Sleep, Jr., owner of Real English Foods, Inc., based in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

. Mr. Pastie is based on a traditional Welsh/Cornish recipe and has been called "the original fast food." It has been sold in US military commissaries, High's Dairy Stores, Weis Markets

Weis Markets

Weis Markets, Inc. is a chain of supermarkets based in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, with a presence in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, West Virginia, and Maryland. In 2011, it operates 162 stores in five states.-History:...

 Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...

, and 7-Eleven

7-Eleven

7-Eleven is part of an international chain of convenience stores, operating under Seven-Eleven Japan Co. Ltd, which in turn is owned by Seven & I Holdings Co...

 convenience stores.

Description

The Mr. Pastie is an oven-baked pie. It consists of a handmade dough shell, folded into a half-circle around a filling traditionally consisting of "ground beef, diced potatoes, and minced onion." Fillings may incorporate additional vegetables, such as carrots and peas, and Real English Foods has made pasties containing chicken, pork, ham, and sausage.

With its doughy crust, the pasty can be eaten without utensils. This feature and the turnover's long history in the British Isles have earned it the title "the original fast food."

History

The name Mr. Pastie derives from "pastie" or "pasty," a Welsh or Cornish appellation for a meat pie commonly taken by miners to work in the slate

Slate

Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering...

 mines of Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 and the neighboring English county of Cornwall

Cornwall

Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

. Some of these miners emigrated to the United States and settled in the eastern part of Pennsylvania, where slate was also mined (the "Slate Belt"), bringing their traditional recipes with them. Many such recipes exist, perhaps at least one for each village in Wales and Cornwall.

Garnet Sleep, raised in the town of Pen Argyl

Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania

Pen Argyl is a borough in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, north of Easton, in the Lehigh Valley region of the state. It is part of Pennsylvania's Slate Belt.-Population:In 1900, 2,784 people lived in Pen Argyl, and in 1910, 3,967 people lived here...

 in Pennsylvania's Slate Belt, founded Real English Foods, Inc. in 1981 with the goal of bringing this traditional product to a wider marketplace as a pre-packaged meal. Sleep had earlier run an advertising agency in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

. Sleep's grandfather had immigrated into the region in the 1880s from Cornwall, England, bringing a "special family recipe" for pasties that had been passed down through generations, and Sleep states that selling pasties is the fulfillment of a boyhood dream.