Dubai, United Arab Emirates,12 June 2026: At piehaus, every pie starts with a conversation.
Sometimes it’s about food. Sometimes it’s about culture, memory, craft, or the people behind them. Counter Culture was created as a space for those conversations to happen – one phyllo pie at a time.
The ongoing series invites chefs, creatives, makers and curious minds to piehaus to exchange stories, perspectives and energy through the bakery’s shared obsession: handcrafted phyllo.
For Counter Culture Edition 002, piehaus welcomes Chef Hadrien Villedieu of Chez Wam.
Known for his playful approach to cooking, Chef Hadrien joins the piehaus team to explore what happens when French comfort food meets paper-thin, hand-stretched phyllo.
The result is two limited-edition pies inspired by French classics and filtered through the piehaus lens.
The Croque Monsieur Pie takes one of France’s most beloved bistro staples and wraps it in layers of handcrafted phyllo, filled with veal ham, comté cheese and béchamel.
Its sweet counterpart, the Pom Pom Pie, brings together apple and cinnamon compote, salted caramel, walnuts and vanilla cream – warm, nostalgic and unapologetically comforting.
“For me, food should always be fun,” says Chef Hadrien Villedieu. “This collaboration felt less like work and more like friends cooking together. We had a lot of fun creating these pies, and hopefully that sense of joy comes through in every bite.”
“For this edition, inviting Hadrien felt like a natural choice. Beyond being a talented chef, he’s one of those people who has a way of making serious work feel fun. We share a love for comfort food, craftsmanship, and not taking ourselves too seriously in the process. That’s exactly the spirit of Counter Culture. Every edition brings a different voice, perspective or craft into the conversation, but the goal remains the same: to exchange stories, cultures and ideas through the art of pie making,” says Stasha Toncev, founder of piehaus.
While their culinary accents may differ, piehaus and Chef Hadrien share the same obsession: comfort food made with care.
