Pie Making

A new cafe is opening at the former Butter location at 3544 Grand Ave. S. Pie is the specialty here, where award-winning cook Dave Hulett hand-rolls feta cheese crust. “As long as the oven’s on, I know how to bake,” he said. His pies include chocolate hazelnut cream with fresh raspberry, pecan sweet potato pumpkin, and the streusel apple, which won first place in the 2012 American Pie Council national championships.

Hulett is currently developing a “black bottom baklava pie” with a walnut crust and chocolate layer. “These pies come to me like music comes to some musicians,” he said. Sunday morning at the neighborhood pie place: There are hash browns on the flat top, a couple of teenage boys waiting for enormous plates of eggs, a woman at the counter with a question about the Chicken Sammy (“Can you make it a half?” “Not usually. But, sure. I can make you a half.”), coffees that could use a warm-up, and a platoon of French silk pies waiting for a crown of whipped cream.

And there’s just one guy, Dave Hulett, the eponymous Pie Guy, making it all happen. He’s not just the name on the door, he’s the chief pie-maker and short-order cook.While the home-style breakfast and lunch are filling the hole in the neighborhood’s heart left when Butter decamped for Nicollet, we were there for pies. Because, really, “neighborhood pie place” isn’t actually a thing. And it should be.