Fry Momma

Simple Simon would have loved The Pie Palace.

The new shop in San Rafael, from owner and baker Leslie Burnside, offers savory and sweet half-moon pies ($3.75 each) to munch at the five-seat counter or to take away.

The hearty 8-ounce pastries include three or four savory and two or three sweet versions each day, made mostly with locally sourced, often organic ingredients.

Burnside's deep-fried fruit pies are the real draw though.

An apple-and-raisin variety was a recent favorite. It mirrored the best of pioneer cooking, all rustic ingredients blasted with the satisfying luxury of roiling oil. Redolent with cinnamon, the juicy fruit filling was cradled in a blistered crust with the cratered, crunchy allure of handmade donuts.

Another sublime example was Burnside's pine-nut pie, with a ¾-inch layer of pineapple and coconut cocooned in that same deliriously bronzed casing.

Call ahead to check availability, as The Pie Palace does not offer fried fruit pies every day.

But when it does, the exemplary pies are even better than Simple Simon could have imagined.

The Pie Palace, 811 4th St., San Rafael; 415-454-8692 or thepiepalace.com; Sun. through Thu., 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Fri. and Sat., also 11 a.m. until 9 p.m.--or until they run out of pies