60 replies to this topic

[Pool Boy]

Mrs. TJ works in DC and, in the past, she has come home with wonderful goodies from Marvelous Market. Sometimes brownies. Sometimes gingerbread. Sometimes these fruit and nut crisps (think really crisp 'bread' slices of this stuff -- with salt!). Their stuff in general used to be like food-crack.

So she stops by there last night and is completely dismayed that they had posted a sign that they were now outsourcing their bread production, in part, to a 3rd party bakery. Apparently it is not just the bread.

Grrrrr.

[Heather]

I happened in June, because we had dinner at Corduroy on 6/18 and they had just switched to Breadline's breads as a result.

There was an article about this in the Washington Post food section, with quotes from Mark Furstenberg and everything. And it did mention that all of their offerings are now outsourced, not just bread. I'll see if it's still linkable.

Edited by Heather, 05 August 2005 - 07:55 AM.

[brr]

demand had outstripped their ability to supply their own bread to their stores

its now all baked by Uptown Bakers at a commercial facility - interestingly, about a week before MM switched to Uptown, the WaPo Food section had a big article on the accomplished young baker that had just been hired by Uptown bakers

MM now also carries Breadline baguettes, which, for anyone who knows the whole history of MM, has a nice bit of circularity/closure to it....

[JPW]

MM now also carries Breadline baguettes, which, for anyone who knows the whole history of MM, has a nice bit of circularity/closure to it....

Or better yet, go back and read the first ever DonRockwell chat with the man himself, Mark Furstenburg.

[cjsadler]

Has the recipe for Marvelous Market's brownies ever been published somewhere?

[clayrae]

I would pay for that brownie recipe.
Of course, I would then have to pay for a whole new, larger, wardrobe.
Those brownies are like crack...

[crackers]

There was an announcement in The Hill that Marvelous Market is planning to open shop at 303 7th (across C Street from the south façade of Eastern Market).

[Heather]

I have a soft spot for Marvelous Market. When they opened, lo those many years ago, decent bread was a rarity in Washington. So it pains me to hear of the slippage in quality over the years. There was a little shakeup recently, so I decided to stop in the upper Conn Ave store and check out a few items that a good bakery, or a marvelous bakery, should be able to turn out: a baguette, a croissant, a scone, a sandwich loaf, and a cookie. All were disappointing.

Baguette: tastless with a doughy interior and a chewy, not crisp, crust. Granted, a good baguette can be tough to achieve, but this was actually worse than Whole Foods version.

Croissant: blown out and doughy in the middle. This indicates that the dough and butter were too hot, and it was overproofed. Of course, summer is tough for pastry, but if it's too hot either turn up the damn air conditioning or don't sell a shoddy product.

Scone: Inedible, dry and crumbly. Scones should be creamy with some flaky layers.

Cookie: This was my once-favorite salty oat cookie, now a crumbly shell of it's formerly sweet and savory goodness. The salt on top had dissolved, the cookie was stale, and raisins had been substituted for currants.

Soft Pullman loaf: was anything but. This was ordinary, slightly coarse-textured white bread and not baked in a pullman pan.

Everything tasted like it had been baked the day before. Sadly, it seems that MM has jumped the shark. Their website is advertising for franchisees, so we may be seeing more Mediocre Markets around the area.

[ol_ironstomach]

I never quite forgave them for buying out rival A Baker's Place...MM's ciabattas simply aren't nearly as good as ABP's were. Which is kind of a commentary on their corporate growth, since it was Furstenberg who popularized the ciabatta here in the first place. When did he part ways with MM again?

[zoramargolis]

Before Mark Furstenberg opened the first MM, he did a months-long training-in-residence with Nancy Silverton at LaBrea Bakery in Los Angeles (and brought some of her sourdough starter home with him, if that story is not apocryphal). A few years earlier, LaBrea Bakery's bread had caused the sort of community palate altering revolution in Los Angeles that MM subsequently did for DC. Silverton eventually sold out for a lot of money, and the product bearing her brand name is now available frozen, in supermarkets around the country, a pathetic shadow of the pinnacle of artisanal bread it once was. So it is, ultimately, always about the money. Until a new young upstart with a passionate commitment to excellence crops up and provides us with the real goods until they have an offer too good to refuse. Or they are forced, for one reason or another to sell, like Furstenberg was.

[Waitman]

I never quite forgave them for buying out rival A Baker's Place...MM's ciabattas simply aren't nearly as good as ABP's were. Which is kind of a commentary on their corporate growth, since it was Furstenberg who popularized the ciabatta here in the first place. When did he part ways with MM again?

I don't think Furstenberg has been with MM for at least a decade.

[hillvalley]

When MM opened it was like manna from heaven. It was a special treat to drive out to MM for bread.
Now, not so much.

Unfortunately I think the same thing is happening with Breadline.

[Waitman]

When MM opened it was like manna from heaven. It was a special treat to drive out to MM for bread.
Now, not so much.

Unfortunately I think the same thing is happening with Breadline.

Agreed.

[Heather]

I don't think Furstenberg has been with MM for at least a decade.

That's right. 96-97 was when he left and they "recapitalized".

[Heather]

Someone on eGullet made the same point much more eloquently than I did.

[JLK]

Blueberry muffins from the McLean location are my fallback for breakfast when I don't have time to make oatmeal at home. Lately they are flat and, um, un-muffin-like and they might contain 5 or 6 blueberries per total. Sad. I have a friend who works in marketing for MM and I've been trying to find a way to say something tactfully.

[mdt]

Blueberry muffins from the McLean location are my fallback for breakfast when I don't have time to make oatmeal at home. Lately they are flat and, um, un-muffin-like and they might contain 5 or 6 blueberries per total. Sad. I have a friend who works in marketing for MM and I've been trying to find a way to say something tactfully.

Give us your friend's email address and we will let them know.

[Heather]

Give us your friend's email address and we will let them know.

Or just send a link to this thread...

[giant shrimp]

but they won the washingtonian's chocolate chip cookie contest, although there was a proviso about the inconsistency of the dupont circle outlet. i don't understand exactly why the cookies would be inconsistently good or bad throughout the chain.

i am running out of ideas about where to find bread as good as it used to be here or at breadline, although the last loaf i had from the latter, purchased at cowgirl, wasn't bad. bonaparte is okay, as well (although the croissants i have picked up from them fall into the too much of a good thing category, loaded up with butter and sugar, and soggy; they are crowd pleasers.) the other baker at the dupont farmers market (is it atwater bakery?) delivers a different kind of bread-making, which is okay in an on-the-farm sort of way, but not entirely ideal. at least the loaves don't dry out into cracker material by the following day, the way they used to.

i have found some fairly decent bread at dean and deluca, but their business seems to have been falling off, and most of the offerings in their bakery department, a couple of weeks ago, had definitely stopped wagging their tails long before i arrived, and i assume that much of it was eventually put to sleep.

people like the bread at citronelle because it comes to the table steamy (at least the one time i could last afford to eat there in the late spring).

i have stopped going to marvelous market. so the question is, these days where can you find the level of bread making that received all the fanfare when it arrived in washington a couple of decades ago -- without having to ford many streams to get there?

[qwertyy]

i have stopped going to marvelous market. so the question is, these days where can you find the level of bread making that received all the fanfare when it arrived in washington a couple of decades ago -- without having to ford many streams to get there?

If you're looking in the city...

I have no idea how it compares to when it first opened, but I'm utterly addicted to Firehook's rosemary bread.

I've also found fabulous breads at the Dupont Circle and the Penn Quarter farmers' markets (I got a loaf of yu-hu-hu-hummy onion rye bread at the latter last week).

[Heather]

If you're looking in the city...

I have no idea how it compares to when it first opened, but I'm utterly addicted to Firehook's rosemary bread.

I've also found fabulous breads at the Dupont Circle and the Penn Quarter farmers' markets (I got a loaf of yu-hu-hu-hummy onion rye bread at the latter last week).

Not sure about Penn Quarter but the bread vendors at Dupont are Bonaparte and Atwater. Lots of people really like Atwater.

[DonRocks]

i am running out of ideas about where to find bread as good as it used to be here or at breadline

I haven't formed a final opinion on Breadline yet, but the best baguettes around are at Café 2941.

[Capital Icebox]

The question I have yet to see answered is why Chef Furstenberg has now twice moved on from what were initially very promising enterprises. Was it for financial reasons? Did he just get tired of competing against large chains serving inferior products? Does he get restless and need to try something new every once in a while?

Breadline is not as good as it was when he owned it (though I think it is good, bread-wise, but not as consistent or impressive as before), and from what I read in this thread and elsewhere MM is a pale shadow of what it once was. But when they were under his direction and ownership, these were the places to go for amazing bread. So can someone tell us why Chef Furstenberg is so... fleeting?

[Heather]

Great question, and one I'd like to know the answer to.

[Waitman]

The question I have yet to see answered is why Chef Furstenberg has now twice moved on from what were initially very promising enterprises. Was it for financial reasons? Did he just get tired of competing against large chains serving inferior products? Does he get restless and need to try something new every once in a while?

Why indeed?

I believe that the departure from MM, btw, was not entirely his choice.

Note also that he's only had two gigs in 20 years. How many have you/we had?

[Heather]

I believe that the departure from MM, btw, was not entirely his choice.

He mentions in that article that he "lost" MM so that's right. That's the "recapitalization" mentioned upthread.

Note also that he's only had two gigs in 20 years. How many have you/we had?

Sixteen years, but who's counting. I didn't get the sense that CI was being hostile or critical. Just curious.

[Capital Icebox]

Curious, not critical, indeed. I'm not saying his decision to move on from either of these enterprises is a bad one (well, it's certainly not good news for people like us that are addicted to his baguettes), but it intrigues me as to why Chef Furstenberg seems to become dissatisfied or bored with his projects. Maybe it is none of my business, but as a devoted admirer of Breadline, I am curious to see if anyone knows the answer.

[Waitman]

Curious, not critical, indeed. I'm not saying his decision to move on from either of these enterprises is a bad one (well, it's certainly not good news for people like us that are addicted to his baguettes), but it intrigues me as to why Chef Furstenberg seems to become dissatisfied or bored with his projects. Maybe it is none of my business, but as a devoted admirer of Breadline, I am curious to see if anyone knows the answer.

I didn't mean to imply that you were being critical, but I think the idea that he has some kind of glutenous ADD that causes him to become "dissatisfied or bored with his projects" is perhaps inaccurate.

He was, I believe, forced out of MM (he refers to having "lost" it) and now he's 68 years old, able to look back on two successful (in different ways) and important contributions to this area's food scene, and probably doesn't feel like getting up at 4AM to haul 50 pound flour sacks around the kitchen and deal with cranky customers, labor costs and the management tasks that he feels he does poorly.

[Heather]

He's 68? The man can do whatever the hell he wants then.

(Glutenous ADD?)

[Waitman]

He's 68? The man can do whatever the hell he wants then.

(Glutenous ADD?)

Read my links: they will be on the exam.

[Capital Icebox]

I didn't mean to imply that you were being critical, but I think the idea that he has some kind of glutenous ADD that causes him to become "dissatisfied or bored with his projects" is perhaps inaccurate.

"Dissatisfied or bored" is a poor choice of words, I admit, and apologize. (I have glutenous OCD, btw.) The answer I am after is "Does anyone know why he sold Breadline, suppositions aside?"

[Waitman]

"Dissatisfied or bored" is a poor choice of words, I admit, and apologize. (I have glutenous OCD, btw.) The answer I am after is "Does anyone know why he sold Breadline, suppositions aside?"

I can't help but think this is a clue:

"My reasoning was: I had created Marvelous Market, a successful bakery in Washington, lost it, and opened a restaurant. The BreadLine gets a lot of acclaim and appears to please hundreds of customers each day. That we don't make much money is my fault, but I knew, at the age of 64, I wouldn't learn how to do that.

I was tired of trying to be a manager when it's something I don't do well. I was tired of nighttime telephone calls and worrying about equipment failures and truck accidents, and I was tired of getting up at 4:30 a.m....At the age of 64, I am supposed to be winding down. I want to write a book. I want to stop carrying 50-pound sacks of flour and instead be a consultant to young people who carry the flour..."

Not a precise reference to the sale that finally went down, but a fairly direct statement nonetheless.

He's also able to still keeping his hand in the levain, consulting with Keller on the growing Laundry/Bouchon brand, so he can now have his brioche, and eat it, too.

ETA:

Apparently he tried to sell in 2003, as well.

A little background on the loss of MM and the creation of BL.

[qwertyy]

Theory: Mark Furstenberg and Peter "Szechuan Boy" Chang are actually THE SAME GUY.

Think about it...

[Capital Icebox]

Apparently he tried to sell in 2003, as well.

A little background on the loss of MM and the creation of BL.

These two links are very helpful. Anyone know if he is still thinking about opening a wholesale bakery, as reported in the first article? I would like to know the location so I can do an old-school hold-up on one of the delivery trucks.

[Pat]

The Marvelous Market location across from Eastern Market is now open. I got coffee there a bit ago, and they couldn't get the cash register open . Still working out the kinks, I guess. They've got a few tables set up outside. Today would be a nice day for picking up some food inside and sitting out there.

[alan7147]

The Marvelous Market on 18 & K is in the running for the most incompetent retail staff in the district

[cjsadler]

I still love those Marvelous Market brownies. Has the recipe ever shown up anywhere?

Also, I've recently discovered that it's the best place to buy olives in DC. You can fill up a medium sized container for $5.99, which ends up weighing about 1.25 lbs. Compare with Whole Wallet, which charges $8.99/lb for olives now.

[giant shrimp]

I still love those Marvelous Market brownies. Has the recipe ever shown up anywhere?

Also, I've recently discovered that it's the best place to buy olives in DC. You can fill up a medium sized container for $5.99, which ends up weighing about 1.25 lbs. Compare with Whole Wallet, which charges $8.99/lb for olives now.

thanks for the good advice. now that they have put a price on their olives, and i know it wasn't easy for them, i have started obsessing about how much i am paying for pits at whole foods. now, maybe just a glass of warm milk will be enough to get me sleeping soundly through the night (although probably not).

[zoramargolis]

i have started obsessing about how much i am paying for pits at whole foods.

They charge the same price for pitted olives as for the ones with pits. 'Why pay for pits?', is what I say...

[cheezepowder]

I've had a problem with pitted olives growing mold on the inside where they're pitted. Does anyone else have this problem? Do I just need to eat my olives faster? Should I be adding enough brine with my pitted olives to cover them (in which case I'd be paying for brine)?

[dag556]

I still love those Marvelous Market brownies. Has the recipe ever shown up anywhere?

Also, I've recently discovered that it's the best place to buy olives in DC. You can fill up a medium sized container for $5.99, which ends up weighing about 1.25 lbs. Compare with Whole Wallet, which charges $8.99/lb for olives now.

I still love those brownies too. About two years ago I requested the recipe, to no avail... Anyone else have better luck?

[wdcbrucefan]

Marvelous Market is committed to opening a location at Senate Square, the Abdo development at the former Children's Museum (H St. NE, between 3rd & 4th). This is apparently the only ground-level retail that will be in the development.

Since MM's sandwiches have gone downhill in recent years -- while the prices have gone steeply uphill -- I'm disappointed in the selection.

[Al Dente]

I don't understand the MM in Capitol Hill. It ain't so marvelous. I guess the bread is decent, but the rest of the store is just a selection of beer, soft drinks, various chips, and a handful of other stuff. If they sold cigarettes, it wouldn't be much different than a freakin' 7-11.

[Pat]

I don't understand the MM in Capitol Hill. It ain't so marvelous. I guess the bread is decent, but the rest of the store is just a selection of beer, soft drinks, various chips, and a handful of other stuff. If they sold cigarettes, it wouldn't be much different than a freakin' 7-11.

I'm not so sure how I feel about the layout of the store. There are some items I like but have to look around to find. They also seem to keep moving the displays. It reminds me of a small town "gourmet" store.

The gingerbread is wonderful, and I like some of the cookies and the breads. As Chris mentioned, the olives are a good deal. They sell creme fraiche, which I've bought on a number of occasions. That tends to be something I can't find when I need it, and they always seem to have it.

I stop there for coffee now and then. I really like their iced tea. I wish they sold it in larger cups, though.

[jdl]

This is old news, I'm sure, but it's new to me, as I just noticed this weekend: The Marvelous Market in Gallery Place has closed.

[Pat]

I hadn't gotten a MM sandwich in quite a long time, as the last few were pretty bad. The last one (from the Connecticut Ave. location uptown) I had was so soggy and gross that I could only eat a little of it. There was a line and an indifferent staff so I just tossed it and left rather than complaining and asking for my money back.

Today, though, I got a jambon-beurre with cornichons from the Capitol Hill store that was excellent. The baguette could have been a little crustier but, given that it was wrapped in plastic in the refrigerator case, that was not a big surprise. The butter was lovely. There were probably as many crunchy pickles as there was ham. It was just right, with a modest amount of good ingredients, rather than being an overstuffed American sandwich.

[Saycheese]

Marvelous Market on 18th Street was shut down today and notices from the DC government stating that Marvelous Market has been "seized" are stuck to the door and windows. What happened?

[Sthitch]

I always found that to be the least Marvelous of all of the Unmarvelous Markets left.

[alan7147]

Marvelous Market on 18th Street was shut down today and notices from the DC government stating that Marvelous Market has been "seized" are stuck to the door and windows. What happened?

That scrawny little manager there always gave me the creeps. I am sorry, but those had to be the stupidest people in DC behind the counter there. Maybe the idiot police shut them down.

[wdcbrucefan]

While bad, I don't believe the food could actually cause a seizure.