I opened Marvelous Market in 1990 at Connecticut and Nebraska Avenues and if I had been smarter, it would be there still.  But I wasn’t and I lost the company to people who didn’t understand it.

All the stores but one are now closed; the Dupont Circle location closed just yesterday.

It’s sad for me that Marvelous Market soon will be altogether gone, but I am pleased that there is again a food store in the original location and it’s just half a mile from what will be Bread Furst.

The new shop is Little Red Fox, not the most felicitous name for a food store perhaps, but a charming addition to the neighborhood.

Its owners are Washingtonians who went astray to New York and Oregon, Colorado Springs and New Orleans; but they have returned to their neighborhood of birth to create Little Red Fox.

I wrote an article last summer for the Washington Post Magazine in which I bemoaned the dearth of neighborhood food stores.  Little Red Fox is pretty close to  what I had in mind, the kind of shop that ought to be in every neighborhood.

Pastry in the morning, breakfast sandwiches, coffee and lunch, salads and dinners to take home.

“Healthy comfort food,” says co-owner Ann Alfano, “something for everyone.”

In a case there are beautiful meats, fresh and cured, including sausages Ms. Alfano makes herself.  She told me that she and her partner Matt Carr are imagining that they will, when they can, add a café section and offer beer and wine by the glass.

It’s a bit uncertain and experimental as a new business should be.  Whatever it turns out to be, I think it will be an adornment to the neighborhood.