Michelin chef appeals to Christmas spirit of thieves who stole 2,500 pies

A British chef is appealing to the Christmas spirit of thieves who stole a van filled with pies bound for a seasonal market, asking for them to be donated to charity, no questions asked.

Tommy Banks, who owns two Michelin-starred restaurants in North Yorkshire, England, said that 2,500 pies – in boxes with his name on top – were in the back of a refrigerated van that was stolen from a storage unit overnight Dec. 1.

“Nearly a ton of pies with my name written all over them are somewhere in the north of England,” he said in a video posted on Instagram.

It is not the first time in recent months that thieves have made off with high-end British produce.

Neal’s Yard Dairy in London reported the theft of more than $389,000 worth of artisanal cheese as part of a “sophisticated fraud” in October that earned a local nickname: the “grate cheese robbery.”

In the latest case, Banks surmised that the thieves were probably after the van, not his pastries.

“These guys probably stole the van, right? Because that’s what they do.”

The chef acknowledged he was unlikely to see the van again. But he urged the perpetrators to drop the pies at a community center where they could be distributed to people who would eat them, rather than see 25,000 British pounds, or around $31,600, worth of meat, flour and eggs go to waste.

“I know you’re a criminal, but maybe just do something nice because it’s Christmas and maybe we can feed a few thousand people with these pies that you’ve stolen, do the right thing,” Banks said.

North Yorkshire police did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the case.

The pies, with fillings including steak and ale, turkey and cranberry and butternut squash, were enough to stock a pop-up pie stall at a Christmas market in York for a week, the chef told the BBC.

“You can’t do anything with these pies because they’ve got my name written all over them,” Banks said in his video appeal to the thieves.

“If you’re out there and someone offers you some pies and it’s not me, they’re stolen. Tell the police,” he added.