Buttered Tin's Minneapolis location now open

There's no mistaking the location of the Buttered Tin's second restaurant and bakery, which opened Oct. 27.

The northeast Minneapolis address (2445 NE. Marshall St., Mpls., thebutteredtin.com) is underscored by a menu that nods to the neighborhood. Take the breakfast platter — with seared Kramarczuk's sausage and pierogies oozing with cheese — which is one of several new dishes that pastry chef/owner Alicia Hinze's and chef de cuisine Phil Dvorak crafted specifically for the sunny new daytime cafe. Others include a walleye benedict and Hinze's favorite, a muffuletta sandwich.

There is also a small grab-and-go case for soups, spreads, cake frosting and breakfast groceries, and an expanded lunch menu for capturing midday customers.

At the new 90-seat store, customers will find an airy, window-lined space looking out toward the Mississippi River, yellow booths and black-and-white tile floors and a mosaic wall created by another northeast Minneapolis business, Mercury Mosaics.

Hinze is using the expansion as an opportunity to retool her 8 1/2-year-old business, which launched in 2013 in Lowertown St. Paul (237 E. 7th St.). She plans to bring some of the new dishes to St. Paul within the next couple of months.

"It needs a refresh in so many ways," Hinze said this week at the soft opening of the Minneapolis location. "There's a lot of things that we're doing here that we're like, duh, why aren't we doing it over there?"

Many Buttered Tin classics are available in both places: smashed avocado toast, huevos rancheros, loaded hash browns and, of course, Hinze's two signature items: Hope butter-enriched cinnamon rolls and ultra-flaky hand pies.

"As a business owner, you never know what's going to be popular, what's going to be your thing," Hinze said. "I've done the hand pies and the cinnamon rolls from day one, and after about three years, they just about exploded."

(The pastries are so popular, in fact, that they are about to be available to an even wider audience. Frozen take-and-bake kits of apple hand pies, buttermilk biscuits, blueberry crumble pies, cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting and pumpkin spice cinnamon rolls will be available at Kowalski's Markets by this weekend.)

The opening is a long time coming for Hinze, and not just because of monthslong construction delays.

"It's been a dream of mine since we opened up the first one to have a Minneapolis shop," she said. "I'm so happy we did it."

The Buttered Tin's new restaurant and bakery, in the Gateway Northeast Building, is open daily from 7 a.m.-3 p.m.