‘People came to blows’: The race to buy a pie for Thanksgiving in New York

For her first Thanksgiving in New York, Holly Baxter finds herself struggling to secure a pie to bring to a holiday feast

No Thanksgiving feast is complete without a traditional pumpkin pie (iStock)

Last week, Donald Trump pardoned a turkey, JFK airport queues snaked out the terminal doors, and bomb squads lined the Macy’s Parade route round Central Park.

It was my first Thanksgiving in America – and I had the best invitation of all time. Having made friends in (literal) high places, I was due to attend an all-day celebration (from pumpkin spice liqueur coffees and bagels at 8am all the way through to turkey and cranberries in the evening) at one of the most exclusive addresses in New York City, directly overlooking the parade of gigantic balloons and waving celebrities on pilgrim-themed floats that snakes through Manhattan first thing in the morning on the last Thursday of November.

Halfway through the day, we were scheduled to do a traditional “turkey trot” (read: slow walk) round Central Park to shore up our appetite for dinner and dessert. My fiancé and I couldn’t have been more excited. There was just one thing we were tasked with doing: bringing the pie.