Australia’s best pie has a Malaysian prawn curry filling – and its bakers have even bolder flavours in mind

The brief

When Ryan Khun first arrived in Australia from Cambodia in 2012, aged 27, he had never tasted a pie. That is, until his older brother Chan took him to a servo for a meat pie: flaky pastry on the outside, a molten mince slurry in the middle. His first meal in Australia, unfamiliar tastes in a new land. Remembering how he felt after those first few bites, Khun says: “There is something I don’t really like.” Pies were not something he grew up eating in Phnom Penh, but today a metal trophy sits in his office at Country Cob bakery in Springvale in south-east Melbourne. It reads “2026 Australian Best…