We went to Trenary Toast Cafe for lunch. We are telling you that up front because once you see the cinnamon roll, you will assume dessert was the plan all along. It was not. But when a Scandinavian inspired brunch spot in Marquette, Michigan puts a cinnamon roll the size of a dinner plate in the case by the register, lunch develops a second act.
First, what Trenary toast is
The cafe takes its name from Trenary toast, a twice-baked cinnamon sugar toast that came to Michigan's Upper Peninsula with Finnish immigrants. Around here it is a staple: hard, dry, made for dunking in coffee, and sold in paper bags like contraband. Trenary Toast Cafe builds on that heritage, so the menu leans Scandinavian and the coffee culture is taken seriously. Dunking is not optional, it is the whole point.
The lunch we actually ordered
The brunch menu holds its own beyond the baked goods. We had a proper lunch, the kind of simple, homemade-tasting food that fits the cafe's whole personality, and good coffee with it. The space is cozy without trying too hard, and on a spring afternoon in Marquette it was full of locals, which is always the endorsement that matters more than any review we could write.
The cinnamon roll situation
Then the cinnamon roll. We have eaten cinnamon rolls across a lot of states and this was the biggest either of us has seen: a plate-filling spiral that could pass for a birthday cake if you put candles on it. We split one and it still defeated us. It was also legitimately good, soft in the middle where giant rolls usually go dry, and not so sweet that you surrender three bites in. Whether one person could finish one alone remains an open research question. We were not brave enough to run the experiment.
Walking off the damage in downtown Marquette
After lunch we did the only responsible thing and walked. Downtown Marquette is an easy place to wander: a compact stretch of shops and old sandstone buildings that rolls downhill toward Lake Superior, with the water showing up at the end of the cross streets. It is the kind of downtown where a walk with no destination still works out, and after that cinnamon roll, the hill on the way back up felt like fair punishment.
Marquette keeps turning out to be one of our favorite corners of the Upper Peninsula, and Trenary Toast Cafe just gave us one more reason to keep coming back. Next visit, we are buying a bag of actual Trenary toast to go, and we are still splitting the cinnamon roll.
The whole stop, roll reveal included, is in the vlog. Watch it on YouTube. We also send a short weekly newsletter about where we are and what broke this week. The signup form is on our newsletter page.