It’s pronounced pass-tee — not paste-y — and it’s a popular British fast food that can now be found on the streets of Chicago. Three years ago, while vacationing in London, Jay Sebastian and his wife, Carrie Clark, experienced the warm, flaky, “hand-held potpies” known as pasties for the first time.

“We both looked at each other and said, ‘Why doesn’t Chicago have something like this?’ It seemed like a good, working-class, Windy City type of hand-held food,” Sebastian said. “Every culture has some version of this. Calzones are similar, empanadas are similar … but this is uniquely British, and it uses a pie crust, which is different than a pizza-dough crust.”

Once they returned home to Bridgeport, both Sebastian and Clark proved to be talented pasty chefs. The couple noticed that, with the exception of some pubs that sell them from time to time, pasties were not available to the lunchtime crowd in Chicago, so they began exploring their options to start a pasty business.

“It has been, and continues to be, a one-step-at-a-time process,” Clark said. “We are faced with external and internal challenges daily. These can range from getting the pastry just right [which took about six months] to the slow and intricate process of negotiating the city’s licensing requirements.”

Among those requirements was operating an approved vehicle. Both avid cyclists, the couple originally drafted a plan to sell pasties from bikes. Sebastian even purchased a three-wheeled ice cream cart, but the city was quick to shun the idea of propane tanks on bicycles in the financial district. Still, Sebastian and Clark didn’t give up on their food-on-the-street idea.

“In my past, I always had an attraction to selling things out on the streets,” Sebastian said. “When I was a kid I always used to have Kool-Aid stands and run carnivals and circuses in my back yard, and just really liked the idea of direct sales in that kind of way.”

Eventually, Sebastian stumbled upon a small, electric vehicle that was perfect for his needs. The Global Electric Motor car, or GEM, was originally manufactured by Chrysler and costs about a third of the price of an average gas-powered vehicle, according to GEM’s current parent company, Polaris Industries.

“This little electric car had coincidentally become legal on the streets of Illinois as of Jan. 1 of this year,” he said. “This is a low-speed vehicle with special plates. It doesn’t go faster than 26 miles per hour, and you can’t drive on streets that are posted over 35 … which is fine for us at lunch time in the Loop.”

The zero-emissions vehicle has the added benefit of being eco-friendly—which was a main reason the couple didn’t want to use a regular food truck.

After getting all of the necessary clearances from the city, Sebastian and Clark finally hit the road in August, joining a close-knit, growing community of Chicago food trucks. Bridgeport Pasty was born.

As winter draws near, Sebastian and Clark expect business to slow. From this point on, their main goal is building pasty name recognition.

“The biggest thing is explaining to people what a pasty is … but it kind of makes for a nice interchange with people,” Sebastian said. “It’s very easy to keep a pulse on what people are thinking about it because you can watch what they say on Facebook and Twitter and everything.”

Those human interchanges were the motivation behind Bridgeport Pasty all along.

“Our real dream is to be able to sell pasties to commuters in the morning and evening through kiosks in train stations,” Clark said. “How great to come home with a bag of pasties for the family!”

Sebastian and Clark hope to expand their dream with another food truck and, if ever possible, a bicycle. The couple will be adding more flavors to their menu and are looking forward to bringing pasties to food festivals during the spring and summer.

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By Fats from West Loop
Posted: 12/23/2011 9:38 AM

The pasty is very popular in Michigan\'s Upper Peninsula. Meat pies of also sorts were a part of mining culture all over the world, from Cornwall and Wales to the Iron Range of Michigan and Minnesota. They can be eated easily down in a dark mine, without seeing much. Before automated lifts, miners didn\'t go topside for lunch. Done properly, a pasty is a gloriously delicious thing. I\'ll look for the truck.