Thursday, May 21, 2009

Neighborhood Comings, Neighborhood Goings

A couple of recent neighborhood business happenings to report on.

First, the race to open the neighborhood's first gelato spot has been won by Baltimore-based "Pitango Gelato", who also has plans to open up a store in Reston. The new gelato shop is located on the 1400 block of P Street, across the street from Complete Foods. What makes Pitango a unique place for gelato? According to their website, it's their use of something called "extreme ingredients" such as grass-fed organic milk. Now, whether that makes the gelato taste better than the sub-par gelato made with plain old non-organic cow's milk is anyone's guess. But for $4.85 for a small gelato, it'd better be.

On the flip-side of the coin, it seems that high-end fashion retailer Circle Boutique has closed its doors and emptied out their storefront. Can't say that the 14thandyous ever spent much time in Circle Boutique, but I will say that this does put a damper on our dreams of 14th Street becoming the next Madison Ave. Hey, maybe there's still hope for Room and Board to swoop in?

6 comments:

Justin from ReadysetDC said...

That is sad to hear about Circle... but don't give up hope, Listopad will be opening very soon at 14th + T!

Anonymous said...

Any idea what happened to Mar de Plata? Their sign is gone and the place looks empty. their website seems to be down too. I loved that place!

Chris in Eckington said...

I heard Mar de Plata closed because their lease expired and the landloard wanted to raise the rent substatially. They have another location in Dupont, on Jefferson Street in the old Bachus space.

Justin said...

Try the spicy chocolate at Pitango. Amazing.

The store is definitely not cheap, but that's the way it goes in current Logan/DuPont/DC/Metro. From what I've seen, it's been very popular so far. Now if the corner retail in the Metropole would open (I hear it's another bank :( but still better than empty), the block would be even better.

Anonymous said...

actually i'll be interested to see what goes in where the metropole sales office was. glad that broken window was fixed. too bad about circle, but i only ever went in once because the prices were so ridiculous. oh well....

Anonymous said...

I still don't understand how Circle stayed open for so long. They went for a younger demographic for sure and the prices? Fuggedaboutit.