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Personally, no, but the few places that I've seen them served, there was a top crust only -- a sort of rustic floppy thing over the sides of a ramekin in one case, and a disk of pastry set inside the ramekin, on top of the chicken and whatever in the other case..

In the first case, it was pretty obviously baked that way. In the second, I suspect they scooped the stuff into the ramekins and topped with a prebaked circle of pastry right before serving.

And both times I noticed the lack of bottom crust, but never really thought about it.

I suppose you could go the other way and have prebaked bottoms and put the stuff in and maybe pipe some potatoes around the top edge and brown that a bit before serving.

if it was a special, we'd keep the filling in a bain marie and then have the crust ready to get plopped on and popped into the oven. it worked out pretty well because the filling was already hot and the crust could brown up nicely on 450 without it taking forever to heat up. no bottom crust...i don't think most people are expecting a bottom crust these days. but i could be wrong.

i once did a curried chix pot pie with a sweet potato crust.... try it out, people will order it.

I learned all kinds of techniques and tricks at a truck stop (yes, a truck stop) I worked at twice (in the business office in the early 80s and in the restaurant for a year in the early 90s). In the 80s, everything in the kitchen was either from scratch or really close to it. By the 90s, the two grandmotherly prep cooks were gone and the new restaurant manager, sadly, standardized everything with Sysco products.

The 80s pot pies were made by first roasting a couple of whole chickens; taking the meat off the bones; making stock from the carcass with whole unpeeled carrots, an unpeeled yellow onion and a few ribs of celery; straining the stock and cooking diced potatoes, diced carrots and frozen peas in it; thickening it with cornstarch, adding cream and throwing in the chunks of roasted chicken. The mixture was ladled into heavy institutional soup bowls, covered with plastic wrap and frozen on cookie sheets. Every day, five bowls (10 if the weather was blustery) were pulled out of the walk-in freezer and put into the reach-in cooler on the cook's line. Waitresses (there were no "servers" in the 80s) would tell customers who ordered pot pies that there would be a 20-minute wait, and when an order came in, a line cook would throw a bowl into the microwave for three minutes, cover it with a square of thawed frozen puff pastry that was bigger than the bowl, brush it with egg wash then throw it in the oven. A cloth napkin would be draped around the bowl for serving and customers would be warned that the bowl was hot.

If an order came in and the bowls of pot pie were frozen solid, it would get nuked forever.

When I was cooking at my daughter-in-law's cafe, pot pies weren't on the menu because of space considerations--we just didn't have a big enough kitchen with a big enough freezer and refrigerator. It was a winter-only special, and we did the puff pastry top crust because it's easier, quicker, and customers see puff pastry and immediately swoon because they think it's ultra gourmet. You can charge more for puff pastry than regular pie crust, too.

Personally, I like a bottom crust. At home, I use the truck stop's filling method and Julia Child's pate brisee fine for the top and bottom crusts. I've also made them like giant hand pies--if the filling is cold and thick, it's easy to do.

Best way is to put cooked filling in a parbaked crust and then top and refreeze. This will cut your fire time down. Also do it in pie tin.

I like to make pies with a thin layer of sliced onion at the bottom of the pan, then the filling, then the mashed potatoes and cheese, then lattice strips of pastry across the top. They keep very well in the fridge.

Haven't done this, but I think I would make the bottom crust, partially bake, and freeze. Then follow pooch's first comment - fill with warm filling, top, and bake. Partially baking the bottom will keep it from being behind the top in the baking process (considering that it's frozen.) You might be able to remove the frozen bottom crusts and stack, if you don't have enough individual pans. Not having to deal with the bottom crust will cut way down on time when you're ready to cook. It would even be interesting to top the pie with puff pastry even though the bottom was standard crust.

I wonder if a chicken pot pie turnover would work for you. You could go light on the gravy for the filling and serve it with additional gravy on the side for dunking. My husband's a gravy hound and would dunk away. You could wrap them in heavy paper and they could be eaten with out a fork and knife.

Hand pies, turnovers, pasties, calzones. . .whatever you call them, I really like @dhorst's idea of wrapping them in paper, especially with your set-up, @sailordave.

@pooch, thanks! Food service today ain't what it used to be, like the mom-and-pop cafe around the corner that uses canned sausage gravy doctored up with dried sage for its biscuits and gravy. The truckstop now uses a just-add-water mix and adds frozen sausage crumbles that look like dog kibble for its B&G. I'm glad I worked at the truckstop back in the day instead of now--geez, I'd be cooking like Sandra Lee all the time and thinking it was gourmet! And pot pies are no longer on the menu.

Simple... Blind bake the bottoms, the day of service. Hold the filling in the steam table, then fill and cover with puffed pastry a la minute. brush egg wash on the pastry to ensure deeper coloring.

The downside to this, it will never be as good as a homemade version but it will still be pretty tasty and will be a good seller. You may consider doing something that doesn't require the crust such as a Cassoulet de Toulouse then serve with a nice crusty bread. These can be cooked ahead of time and reheated to order.

@betterirene - i know what you mean.... it saddens me to think that opening a pouch of mix of some sort has replaced the unique, loving touch of a person..... i don't think we're any better for that. whole generations are growing up on that kind of junk.... it's so sad.

Before service, have blind baked bottom crusts, chilled filling, and raw dough circles for the tops ready.

On order, heat the right amount of filling in a skillet/saucepot, throw the bottom crust in a hot oven to take the chill off, then xfer the filling to the bottom crust, put a circle of dough on top, press the edges down, and fire in a hot oven until top is done. It'll probably take at least 25 minutes, but it's the best you can do for a good, fresh-baked pie. Just mark it on the menu.

Otherwise, bake off as many as you think you'll need before service, keep them in a low oven covered in foil through service, and x-fer them to a hot oven to get really hot when they get fired. 86 them when you run out of pre-baked pies.

Personally, I actually like when the bottom crust of a good game pie gets a little moist and chewy on the second day.

There was a great article on making homemade, individual, frozen chicken pot pies in Cook's Illustrated. It was in the last couple of years so is not yet on the website, but I can check at home tonight if you don't get that magazine and let you know the issue.