Arts & Entertainment

Baking in Bloomingdale

Sweets made to order at new family-owned business

Published

14 years ago

December 13, 2012

Jonathan Howard

A sampling of the array of baked goodies available at Grassroots Gourmet (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Tis the season for sweets, baked goods and holiday treats. If you’re letting your diet slide for a few weeks, then you might as well have some of the best tasting calories you can find.

The new bakery, Grassroots Gourmet (104 Rhode Island Ave NW) is here to help you with all your sweet cravings, creating the perfect dessert for your holiday party. It’s also the perfect place to grab a quick bite to help power you through a long day of holiday shopping.

Gay baker and co-owner Sara Fatell and her cousin Jamilyah Smith-Kanze opened Grassroots Gourmet Nov. 21, but have been operating a made-to-order business since 2009. When they started to outgrow that arrangement they began looking for a kitchen in the area that they could call their own. Both Smith-Kanze and Fatell say that “baking leads to sharing, it is comforting, delicious and helps build community by fostering communication,” and that’s why they chose their Bloomingdale neighborhood to open their storefront.

Most things at the bakery are a team effort although Fatell is the “baking expert” and Smith-Kanze is the “business expert.” Fatell is hoping Smith-Kanze takes on the roll of “dish washing expert as well.” Fatell started baking when she was a child with her mother and grandmother, and started experimenting with different ingredients and flavors as a stress reliever when she was working as a political organizer in college. Both love experimenting with flavors, which is evident when you look at the bakery case and see decadent creations like the Cardamom Chai cupcakes (which I recently served to guests at a dinner party to rave reviews). Other specialties include assorted whoopee pies, chocolate mint cookies and a pumpkin muffin with cream cheese filling and streusel top. When I stopped in to interview the owners, they were working on their newest holiday creation, Cranberry Ginger Rugelach.

The cranberry ginger rugelach was an idea that came to Smith-Kanze one day when she was washing dishes in the back of the store, so she yelled it over the nine foot dividing wall to Fatell and a new recipe was born. Being able to create new flavors and items is one of their favorite things to do and with the storefront their customers can come in and “try one of our creations that may have just premiered that morning.”

Fatell loves making pies for the holidays as well as perfect red velvet cakes, which look so festive. Smith-Kanze’s favorite holiday treat on the menu is the mini chocolate bourbon pecan pie, which she calls “cozy.” Other seasonal flavors you’ll find on the menu this holiday season include mint, cranberry, ginger and cinnamon. I particularly enjoyed the snicker doodle cupcake with delightfully smooth frosting and warm cinnamon flavors. I took huge bites of this cupcake between asking the bakers questions. Both Fatell and Smith-Kanze also love Kathy’s Cookies, which were recently renamed for their Aunt Kathy who lost her battle to cancer in October.

While the storefront creates new opportunities for these business partners, they’re still focused on the made to order aspect of baking. All cakes and pies are custom made. They’ll work with each client and create the desired flavor profile. I ordered my husband’s birthday cake with chocolate ganache filling and salted caramel frosting from Grassroots Gourmet and it was superb. Sometimes these personalized creations make their way onto the menu at the store, like the Ginger cupcake with three types of ginger (fresh, ground and candied) that Smith-Kanze created for a former boss’ engagement part.

Whether you want to stop in and grab an assortment of baked goods for your office holiday party or have a cake made especially to fit your themed Christmas Eve event, Grassroots Gourmet can help out. Both Fatell and Smith-Kanze are almost always in the store. My list of recommendations is far too long to include in this column, but every sweet morsel I have put in my mouth from this bakery has been divine.

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Theater

‘Feeling Afraid’ explores life of a neurotic stand-up comic

Navigating sex, work, and possibly love in London

Published

1 day ago

June 20, 2026

Patrick Folliard

Steven Webb in ‘Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen’ (Photo by DJ Corey)

‘Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen’
Through July 12
Studio Theatre
1501 14th St., N.W.
$55-$102
Studiotheatre.org

Wordily yet rightly titled, solo show “Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen” dives deeply into the world of a neurotic stand-up comic as he navigates sex, work, and possibly love in London.

Busy arranging hookups and dates on “The App,” the 36-year-old gay funnyman juggles a full dance card; still he’s never been in a romantic relationship. While he’s willing to give love a shot, he’s not pressed about it. As he says, he harbors no fear of dying alone.

Currently making its American premiere at Studio Theatre, this darkly humorous Edinburgh Fringe import features terrific out English actor Steven Webb as The Comedian who’s about to explore what it means to spend all his time with one man.

At Studio’s intimate Mead Theatre, Kat Heath’s minimal set says standard comedy club (fluorescent tube lighting, the mic with a long cord, a single stool backed by a rose-colored curtain), but gay playwright Marcelo Dos Santos has conjured something much more than a live comedy set.

Yes, The Comedian bounces onstage in his red Converse high tops, jeans, and pink shirt with a huge mouth emblazoned on the back, but he delivers more than jokes. At times hilariously self-deprecating, then dark, and occasionally a lesson on what makes standup work, this is a layered, well-acted piece.

With Webb (a keen caricaturist of types and voices) playing all the parts while conducting The Comedian’s hilariously frenetic interior monologue, “Feeling Afraid” takes us through a summer of love. It seems after six chaste dates with The American, our nervous hero has found Mr. Right. The American is earnest, smart, hesitant to initiate sex. He’s also well built with a beautiful smile. And strangely, he’s been medically advised not to laugh aloud.

The Comedian delights in the joys of new love: dates, first kisses, sex, and then suddenly spending all of his time with the adored. Visits to art galleries become fun. Eating home cooked meals followed by grim documentaries is a thing. The Comedian is beguiled as his own boyish figure fills out, but something isn’t right. He can’t entirely relax.

Along the way we meet the Aussie doctor, our protagonist’s longtime hookup; a young runner with some exceptional body parts; the random third in a failed threesome; grumpy working comics, male and female; and an ineffectual counselor.

Webb gives a lightning-fast performance that boggles the mind (in terms velocity and virtuosity). He can be impish, very impish. He’s nervous energy incarnate, flashing jazz hands, grimacing but handsome when still. He’s likeable, a necessity when delivering a hilariously rude joke just feet away from two stone-faced audience members. (Perhaps they were laughing on the inside? At any rate, they stayed through the end the show.)

Produced by the team behind Fringe hits “Fleabag” and “Baby Reindeer,” small stage works that were developed into major TV screen successes, “Feeling Afraid” is funny for sure, and it’s also highly confessional, sexually explicit, and raw.

Written by Dos Santos during COVID lockdown, the piece was a smash hit in the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe before finding further success in London. Its depiction of a youngish queer guy navigating the big city rings entirely true. Like so much Fringe stuff, the one-man show is delightfully lewd and standup inspired.

One little moan: the show closes cleverly but too abruptly with its star dashing offstage without sufficiently basking in the admiration and applause of his thoroughly chuffed audience.

They say third time’s a charm, and regarding “Feeling Afraid,” I’d agree. After two performance cancellations (first for laryngitis and the second involving faulty air conditioning on an especially muggy June evening), I made my third trek to Studio where I found both the actor and AC in very fine fettle. And truly, Webb’s work was more than worth the wait.