We can all agree on one thing: pie is amazing, right?
Whether you’re eating it a la mode or a la . . . uh, not-mode, pie has a place in our collective consciousness as the ultimate comfort food. But what types of pie are best? It’s so hard to choose favorites when so many hit the spot, so we’ve compiled a list of 21 different pie flavors that everyone has to try at least once. From fruit fillings to flaky crusts to crunchy toppings, keep scrolling to get lost in the delicious world of pie (you’re welcome).
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Pecan Pie
Distinguishing Features: With pecans, corn syrup (or brown sugar, or both), it’s considered a southern dish, but you’ll find it anywhere you find pies. It’s especially popular as a dessert during Thanksgiving or Christmas. The pumpkin pie is its heated rival.
Great Place to Try It: The family at Tee-Eva’s Old-Fashioned Pies and Pralines in New Orleans have been making pecan pie for five generations.
Apple Pie
Distinguishing Features: Apples, sugar and cinnamon are often served with vanilla ice cream on the side. Known as the Great American Pie, it’s sometimes grouped with baseball and hot dogs as a purely American symbol (though the English and the Dutch have been making pies with apples for centuries).
Great Place to Try It: Apple Alley Bakery in Julian, Calif., makes an assortment of apple pies in the self-proclaimed apple pie capital of the world.
Pumpkin Pie
Distinguishing Features: Pumpkin-flavored custard, ginger and nutmeg — it’s a Thanksgiving classic because you can use your leftover Halloween jack-o-lantern for its stuffing. Its biggest rival? Pecan pie.
Great Place to Try It: Dessert Gallery Bakery & Cafe in Houston makes a mean old-fashioned pumpkin pie, but only three months out of the year.
Sweet Potato Pie
Distinguishing Features: Sweet potato filling, often with a dollop of whipped cream on top, sometimes topped with a layer of marshmallows instead. This pie is a staple of Southern soul food, especially during the holidays.
Great Place to Try It: Snag a homemade sweet potato pie in the Bay Area at Yvonne’s Southern Sweets. Then check out other San Francisco cafes & treats.
Key Lime Pie
Distinguishing Features: Lime juice (specifically one from a key lime), meringue topping and graham-cracker crust. Naturally, this type of pie is heavily associated with the Florida Keys, and Key West holds a festival for the pie every Fourth of July weekend.
Great Place to Try It: Key Lime Pie Co in Florida live up to their namesake, offering delicious and lauded key lime pies.
Cherry Pie
Distinguishing Features: Cherries, namely Montmorency cherries, which are tarter and sourer than your usual Bing cherry. This pie is a favorite during Fourth of July, and namesake of the 1990 chart-topping hit from glam-rockers Warrant.
Great Place to Try It: Fancy Cakes and Confections in Norman, Okla., offers a scrumptious cherry pie to nearby University of Oklahoma students.
Lemon Meringue Pie
Distinguishing Features: Lemon custard with a meringue topping; this pie has the puffy, enlarged top that looks so soft and inviting, you kinda want to use it as a pillow. It’s also one of grandma’s favorite types of pie, usually.
Great Place to Try It: Supreme Bakery in West Orange, N.J., offers a miniature version of a lemon meringue pie that will leave you thinking about eating another (and another).
Pot Pie
Distinguishing Features: The ultimate savory pie; gravy meets chicken, beef or lamb (plus veggies), tucked inside a pie crust and served steaming hot. It’s second only to chicken noodle soup for best dishes to enjoy on a cold winter’s day, ideally from inside a log cabin while seated next to a roaring fire.
Great Place to Try It: The pot pie at The Pie Hole in Venice Beach, Los Angeles, was named one of the city’s best by LA Weekly. See more deals at cafes and bakeries in Los Angeles.
Sugar Cream Pie
Distinguishing Features: Brown sugar, butter and cream; a simple treat, but one of the most addictive types of pie. Sugar cream pie is popular in French and Quebecois cuisines, as well as the Midwest U.S., where it’s also called “Hoosier Pie” due to its association with Indiana.
Great Place to Try It: Mrs. Wick’s Pie Shop in Winchester, Ind., might be the best place on earth to eat Hoosier Pie — the Wick family once sold them out of the back of a 1934 Buick.
Rhubarb Pie
Distinguishing Features: A whole lot of rhubarb, often paired with strawberries. This is one of the tartest types of pie, a tempting treat for anyone on the “rhubarb diet” (yes, this is real).
Great Place to Try It: San Diego Chicken Pie Shop is (unsurprisingly) more famous for its chicken pie meals, but it also whips up a fantastic rhubarb pie that you can eat afterwards.
Peach Pie
Distinguishing Features: Peaches, plus a sprinkling of nutmeg or cinnamon. Peach pie is especially popular in peach-producing regions, like Georgia. Some take their love of peach pie to the next level and create “peace pie moonshine” out of peach schnapps and grain alcohol.
Great Place to Try It: You gotta try one in Georgia, right? Panbury’s Double-Crust Pies in Atlanta landed on Eater’s “Nine Must-Visit Pie Destinations in Atlanta” list. See more bakery deals in Georgia.
Cheesecake
Distinguishing Features: First off — yes, this is a pie, since it uses a graham-cracker crust that’s synonymous with pies (you can’t change my mind). The other main ingredient is cream cheese or ricotta, which can be combined with a myriad of other flavors (mocha, Oreos, peanut butter, etc.).
Great Place to Try It: Check out the options at For the Love of Cheesecakes in the Detroit suburbs — they range from strawberry to banana varieties.
Blackberry Pie
Distinguishing Features: Either fresh blackberries or a blackberry jam, a small mountain of sugar, and sometimes some lemon zest or lemon juice.
Great Place to Try It: You could visit Minnesota’s North Shore and Betty’s Pies — one of America’s great pie shops for all sorts of flavors, but we’ll take its blackberry-peach pie.
Coconut Cream Pie
Distinguishing Features: The king of cream pies. It’s a messy conglomeration of coconut custard, whipped cream and toasted coconut flakes. Eat this and imagine you’re on some deserted tropical island with rows of coconut trees (and somehow you have access to pie-making supplies).
Great Place to Try It: Don’t miss Brooklyn’s Miss American Pies, home to dozens of pie flavors, including a to-die-for coconut cream. See Brooklyn deals on cafes and treats.
Strawberry Pie
Distinguishing Features: Strawberries. Lots and lots and lots of strawberries (ideally fresh strawberries), often mixed with a strawberry gelatin. We recommend some whipped cream on top to cut some of the sweetness.
Great Place to Try It: Every year in May, Jim’s Steak & Spaghetti in Huntington, W. Va., has a Strawberry Pie Week, where they sell more than 10,000 pies.
Steak Pie
Distinguishing Features: As far as savory pies go, the steak pie is a humble winner. Chunks of meat drenched in gravy, all sealed up inside a flaky pie crust. There’s no embellishments needed, but if you want, it goes great with cheese, bacon and even jalapeño. It’s a versatile classic.
Great Place to Try It: Aunty Devi’s Meat Pies, which has locations across California, makes a hearty New Zealand type of steak pie.
Blueberry Pie
Distinguishing Features: The best blueberries you can find, plus cinnamon. This is the official state dessert of Maine, but don’t sleep on blueberry pies from Michigan, Washington, Maryland and Oregon — all high blueberry-producing states.
Great Place to Try It: San Antonio’s Baklovah Bakery offers way more than its signature baklava, including a delectable blueberry pie. See more bakery deals in San Antonio.
French Silk Pie
Distinguishing Features: It’s the chocolate pie: chocolate mousse, whipped cream and bittersweet chocolate shavings; usually the favorite type of pie for children at family reunions everywhere. And despite its name, French Silk is a purely American invention, the winner of a 1951 Pillsbury competition.
Great Place to Try It: You might visit The Pie Factory in the Tampa area for its key lime pie, but don’t sleep on its French Silk either.
Mixed Berry Pie
Distinguishing Features: A little bit of this, a little bit of that! These types of pie usually include two or three of the following: blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries. If you’re in the upper Atlantic Canadian provinces, this might be called a “bumbleberry pie,” which is just delightful, isn’t it?
Great Place to Try It: Achatz Handmade Pie Co. in suburban Detroit offers a mixed-berry pie that uses local Michigan berries.
Banoffee
Distinguishing Features: An almost exclusively English pie, Banoffee is one of the best-known versions of the banana cream pie; bananas and toffee are its two must-have ingredients (the name Banoffee is a combo of the two), but you might also find a good heaping of dulce de leche.
Great Place to Try It: When in New York, stop by Bubby’s in Tribeca for a diner meal finished with a slice of Banoffee that’s lined with a graham-cracker crust. See more bakery deals in NYC.
Mississippi Mud Pie
Distinguishing Features: Chocolate filling, chocolate sauce drizzled on top, and — in case that wasn’t enough chocolate — a chocolate graham-cracker crust. It’s usually infused with other flavors (think coffee liqueur or butterscotch), and as you might imagine, it’s a favorite in Mississippi.
Great Place to Try It: In Mississippi, of course! We recommend Mary Mahoney’s Old French House in Biloxi.
