The Ballston location of the Marvelous Market, a small regional chain of gourmet food stores/cafes, has closed permanently.
Located at 888 N. Quincy Street, the store closed its doors for good on Monday, a tipster said. The contents of the store — including tables, signs, sinks, appliances and electronics — were promptly put up for auction.
The Bluemont location of Castro’s Bakery is no more.
The family-owned bakery closed about a month ago, we’re told. Signs have been taken down from the storefront at 5515 Wilson Boulevard and all equipment has been removed from the interior.
Senor Pan opened its doors yesterday at 922 S. Walter Reed Drive. The South American bakery/cafe serves specialty baked goods and coffee, as well as a variety of other dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The menu includes breakfast sandwiches, empanadas, pupusas, and quesadillas. There are sides like fried yucca and fried plantain. And there’s a hot bar where you choose a meat and various toppings and place it either in an arepa, tostada, tortilla, pita, salad bowl or rice bowl.
It’s the first brick-and-mortar storefront for LeoNora and its Colombian-born, French-trained owner, Carolina Garcia. Garcia started LeoNora as a baked good delivery service out of her home. She started renting out the kitchen of a local restaurant after the business grew too big for her home — and now she has a place to call her own after outgrowing the shared kitchen.
With the shop open, Garcia says she’s now going to focus on growing in-store sales — though she’s still offering delivery service for baked good orders over $50.
A new Latin bakery and cafe is coming to the heart of Columbia Pike.
Signs in the window of the former La Cabaña Peruvian restaurant at 922 S. Walter Reed Drive that a new eatery called “Señor Pan Bakery and Cafe” is planning to open in the space. According to the signs, the bakery could be open as soon as mid-November.
The bakery is opening a store at 1108 N. Irving Street. Clarendon’s grungiest block — home to the Red Top Cab parking lot and to the no-frills Sam’s Corner deli — will soon be filled with the aroma of fresh-baked bread, as LeoNora plans to do all its baking in-house, in a bakery area behind the front counter.
Colombian-born bakery owner Carolina Garcia says that after a year and a half in the delivery business, LeoNora is ready to have a storefront to call its own.
The six-year-old restaurant has launched two new dining/food concepts inside the existing restaurant. The two eateries-inside-an-eatery– called Nosh… A Willowesque Bistro and Kate at Willow bakery — began serving customers last night.
Nosh introduces bistro-style dining as a half-way point between Willow’s white tablecloth main dining room and its less formal and less extensive bar menu. Nosh is located near the restaurant entrance, in a space that was previously “underutilized” as a lounge-y waiting area.
That’s the word from Neighborhood Restaurant Group, the company that runs Buzz and its next door neighbor on the 4000 block of Wilson Boulevard, Rustico. Buzz is expected to open its doors as early as 7:00 a.m. on Monday, with plenty of free samples of coffee and baked goods.
The 2,000 square foot shop will have many of the same features and menu items of the original Buzz location on Slaters Lane in Alexandria, but will add treats like breakfast pop tarts, made-to-order waffles, individual serving quiches, homemade ice cream, sorbets, popsicles and “take-and-bake” products.
Culinary consultant and cookbook creator David Guas is planning on bringing a Louisiana-inspired “community bakery cafe and coffee house” to the space at 1515 North Courthouse Road, and he has applied for a liquor license to boot.
We’re working on gathering the details about the forthcoming Bayou Bakery, but suffice to say the name alone sounds mouthwatering.
