For Hairy Biker Si King, the secret ingredients will always be hard work and community

Simon ‘Si’ King turned 59 the day before we met. He spent his birthday ‘running from pillar to post’, working, among other things, as a panelist at an event celebrating the food of Northumberland and the north-east. He had an ‘excellent’ Thai-style gnocchi with the other panelists for his supper, then went home for two stiff drams of 15-year-old Redbreast whisky, whereupon he went to bed (‘with slightly warmer toes’ than he’d had before).

Much of what I go on to learn about him is epitomised here: his dedication to community generally, and the north-east specifically, a passion for foods from all over a planet that he and Dave Myers covered on their motorbikes for 650,000 miles. He’s caring and open, concerned not by the authenticity of food, but by its integrity. He loves a dram of whisky at the end of a long day.

Si opened his Sunderland pie shop, PROPA!, in 2024, and the business has as much integrity as the pies themselves. Profits are shared with his staff, recipes are developed across the team, and everything that can be is sourced from within 50-miles of the shop.

He cares about the welfare of his staff and the quality of the produce he uses, but this doesn’t come without challenges.

‘In the UK,’ he tells me, ‘when we talk about quality, it comes with a commercial mindset. Our government is very poor at subsidising small growers and artisan producers. There are numerous schemes in Italy and France where Artisan producers are supported in meaningful ways. We don’t have that here — “quality” comes with a certain price tag.’

At PROPA!, though, he has found a way around this. The tight radius in which they source their goods has developed into a micro-economy of hyper-seasonal produce.

‘We’ve got great growers around here. Lads will show up with their surplus, you know, say, 10kg of leeks, and just drop them at our back door.’

‘Then you build the menu around what you’ve got?’ I ask.

‘Exactly.’

When I asked Owen, one of the chefs at PROPA!, he said the same thing. ‘If someone’s got loads of leeks it probably means they’re ready, and if they’re ready, it probably means they’re good.’ It also means that they’re the best price.

For Si, it always goes back to community. He sources from the community, he employs from the community, he gives back to the community. He’s just collaborated with Cask Trade to create Cask & Crust: a bottling of three whiskies (with labels illustrated by Sunderland-based, PROPA!-collaborator, Georgia Woodhall), and pie recipes using each. Profits go straight back to the community — supporting Sunderland and Newcastle food banks.

It’s fun talking to Si King about most things, but it’s very fun talking to him about whisky. He loves the stuff — and that love has almost been lifelong.

‘I remember the joyous, joyous lyricism at dad’s wake,’ he smiles. ‘I was only eight when he died, and we had a house filled with Irishmen with fiddles and bodhráns and all sorts. Whenever someone says whisky, to me, it’s a special occasion. You know, tonight my sons are taking me out for dinner, and the first thing we’ll do is have a stout and a whisky, you know, to toast their dad’s birthday.’

It was 41 years ago, on his 18th birthday, that Si was given his first two bottles of whisky. One was a Glenfarclas, bottled from his father’s death cask, the other was a carrot whisky, made by his Auntie Hilda and Uncle George. ‘Those were two very, very different beasts,’ he laughs. It’s evident that for him, whisky and family are closely tied. Bringing it to his work seems like a natural next step. I had to wait two, torturous days between meeting Si and tasting the pies that he and his team had developed.

The steak and peppercorn pie was delicious, every bit as crisp and comforting as I’d hoped it would be. The chicken, haggis, and whisky-cured bacon pie even more so. I wasn’t going to try the mushroom, blue cheese and whisky gravy (I’d eaten two pies already), but then I did, and suddenly I’d finished that one, too. If you thought perhaps Si wasn’t as dedicated to quality as he claimed, you’d be wrong; totally and utterly wrong. To paraphrase the old adage: the proof was in the pie.

He’s a busy man. There’s more work to do before his sons take him out for his birthday. I only have one more question, and it’s perhaps the most important: ‘Does it need a base to be a pie?’

He doesn’t take a breath. He barely blinks. ‘Absolutely. 100%. Without a base? What’s that? It’s a halfway house.’

‘What about a cottage pie?’

‘Oh, those don’t count. We’re talking about pastry pies, and a pastry pie without a base? That’s just lazy. It’s not a pie, it’s a stew with a lid.’

I laugh, I’d got the definitive answer I wanted, but he continues. ‘We do roughly 3,500 pies a week, and they’re all handmade. Trust me, if we could — if we didn’t have to make 3,500 bases for our 3,500 tops, we’d do it. But then it wouldn’t be a pie.’ This is what Si King’s work is about: great produce, his community and, above all, integrity.