Last month The Wall Street Journal predicted pie as the new cupcake for 2011 (it’s also the year of the vegetable, but would you have read a blog by that title?). This classic dessert is apparently poised to take over the comfort food market, from hand-held pies to pie shops. Since then, I’ve been wracking my brain for the last time I ate pie that wasn’t baked by one of the matriarchs of my family (you’d be hard-pressed to find a more perfectly caramelized pecan or fresh apple). I came up with plenty of tarts (Alma’s delicately sweet pecan with maple-glazed raisins) and panna cottas (Dakota’s Meyer lemon with pink peppercorn), plus the requisite and gargantuan key lime pies at Manny’s and Oceanaire, but nothing that resembled an all-American, lard-crusted, oven-fresh, ala mode piece of PIE. I know you can order them whole, from Turtle Bread and Lucia’s To-Go, but I’m curious whether you’ve been partaking in pie at any restaurants? What slices have I been missing out on? And who, pray tell, is going to open the Cities’ first pie shop? Consider the gauntlet thrown down.