November isn’t so much pie season — open your mind and it’s pie season all year — as it is Pie All Day season. Spring and summer offer their stone fruits and berries, baked and fresh, as you’ll see if you peruse Slice of Humboldt’s monthly menus. But November is where it gets serious. Thanksgiving is the Olympics of pie with the crust-minded racing through the turkey to cram plates with wedges of sweet potato, pumpkin, pecan and apple. And the following day, if you’re not having pie and coffee for breakfast for any reason but a medical issue, you don’t want to be happy.
Amber Saba, who co-owns Arcata’s Slice of Humboldt Pie with wife P-Nut Thompson, knows pie. On any given day, she’s rolling crust and pouring filling for some 160 dessert pies, not to mention the scores of quiches and empanadas in the case at the 660 K St. spot. (As the holidays approach, that number will ratchet up to about 200 a day.)
The homemade feel and flavor of everything at Slice of Humboldt Pie is hard earned. For the apple pies, “We cut, core and peel the apples, simmer the apples, boiling down the cider for the apple cider cream,” says Saba with a laugh. “We’re fools.” The staff of six, at whose work Saba marvels, hand crimps the crusts, including for the empanadas, though they have started using a machine to press the dough into the pans.
Slice of Humboldt Pie has been a from-scratch operation since its opening at Redwood Acres in 2013, though Saba’s pie pedigree goes back to her grandparents’ pie shop in Oklahomaº. (The popular Pie Cookies at the counter — flower cut-outs sprinkled with sugar — are what Saba’s grandmother gave the kids to get them out from underfoot while she baked.) “We were pie people,” she says, serving pies for birthdays instead of cake.
She comes by her quiche skills honestly, too, her dad being from Quebec, and goes through all the steps of scalding the milk and a few other techniques she keeps to herself. The result is a luxurious, savory, custard-like filling.
The savory pie of the moment, however, is the modestly named Leftover Pie ($9.75 for 5-inch, $38 for 9-inch), a take on the best part of Thanksgiving: eating the next day. It’s a crust-bottomed turkey pot pie with the sweet-savory gravy and cranberry flavors, capped with stuffing that makes the case for taking it easy this year and settling into The Wizard of Oz with your own little dinner pie. Not that you have to wait for Nov. 27.
The team is already turning out the turkey pot pies, roasting birds, boiling bones for stock to make gravy, simmering cranberry sauce and mixing up Saba’s grandmother’s recipe for stuffing. “She would never tell me how to do it, but I watched her for so long,” says Saba, who eventually got it down and added the step of drenching the hand-cut bread in browned butter for extra richness. “We don’t skimp,” she says. And if the people stopping her at the grocery store to make sure it’s on the menu this year are any indication, it pays off.
This month’s dessert offerings also include a pumpkin streusel, buttermilk, black-bottom pecan and traditional pumpkin, apple and pecan pies (prices vary). (Fear not, the lemon-raspberry, peanut butter fudge and French silk are still around, as is the pulled pork empanada with green chiles.) The standout quesabirria empanada with Oaxaca cheese and a side of dipping consommé is on deck, too ($5).
Vegan and gluten-free options of many of the desserts are available, too. Pro-tip: Omnivore hosts, do not relegate your vegan and vegetarian Thanksgiving guests to sides alone. The pumpkin curry pot pie is right there, sold frozen so you can bake it at home and bring it to the table piping hot, to the envy of all ($8 for 5-inch pie). And if you’re ready to make your first holiday pie, foolproof frozen crusts might be just the training wheels you need to roll up to the dessert table with confidence no judgy relative can shake.
Saba, who prefers savory pies and milder sweetness, always goes for buttermilk, though if we’re talking pumpkin, it’s the streusel for her. Her advice for choosing pie for the holidays? “One fruit and one not, or get the weird one, step out of your comfort zone,” she advises. Maybe this is the year you go black bottom pecan. “Surprise yourself,” she says, “and order early.”
Slice of Humboldt Pie
660 K St., Arcata
(707) 630-5236
sliceofhumboldtpie.com
SliceofHumboldtPie
SliceofHumboldtPie
This article appears in My Humboldt Life November 2025.
