Top Chefs Pick Their Favorite Pies in America

America, we don’t get enough credit for dessert. France is rightly renowned for its exquisite pastries. Italy is a destination for gelato alone. But the U.S. outperforms in multiple categories, from colorful cakes to chocolate chip cookies to ice cream sundaes, not to mention pie—the most American treat of all, especially now, with the homey holidays ahead. Last year, we taste-tested the best mail-order pies; this year, we asked our expert friends for the perfect slice.

Debate over even what constitutes a pie can get fierce. In England, the question of whether one technically requires pastry on the bottom, sides and/or top has sparked pie-titions aimed at criminalizing offenders. On this side of the Atlantic, borekas (flaky, triangular hand pies found around Eastern Europe and the Middle East, also spelled “boureka”) have come into question. “Does this really count as a pie?” asked the team that produces sublime versions at K’Far in Philadelphia, when Bloomberg Pursuits let them know they’d made the list. (We say yes; bring on pie-titions!)