Fine Sweet Shoppe

How is it that we buy bread from these people every weekend and they are still so incredibly rude?!
For example, today I picked up some French bread and was considering a desert for my kids. As I took a 20 second look at the case (after looking behind me to be sure more people weren’t waiting, there was only 1 person), I was about to ask for a half pound of chocolate chip cookies and the cashier passed me off to her coworker to deal with me. Well, her coworker was already helping another couple so I just handed her my cash and left, instead of buying the cookies. These women are more concerned with pushing everyone through instead of any sort of customer service. One can get better baked goods at Costco, these taste more like Entenmann’s.
I need to start planning ahead and buying my bread from Costco or even Harris Teeter instead of making a last minute purchase here out of convenience.

I love Eastern Market but was so disappointed by the «bakery» section.
I bought a «Farm» bread. $ 4.75 is not cheap for a loaf however it looked good.
I was so upset when I got home and took a bite, the bread was at least 2 days old and there was yeast spots in it!!! As a French I know when a bread is fresh or a couple of days old and this one was definitely old. For $ 4.75 a loaf, what a shame!!!

This is my go-​to place in Eastern Market. Yes they have amazing cookies. Yes they have amazing croissants but really I enjoy their lemonade the best.
I haven’t tried much of their other selections but from the few items I get I only expect a great product for the price.

Love the sweet shoppe especially the cupcakes which are around a buck compared to the 5 buck competitors in the area. I like the cannoli’s and have been to the north end (mikes/​modern) and sure those are better but I like these as well.
Try the sandwiches, especially the panini’s. Friendly staff!

I love Italian desserts, so I’ve been on a hunt for cannolis in DC. Talk about an exercise in futility. Found this bakery in Eastern Market. They had a basic cannoli. Traveling to Boston’s North Side has definitely spoiled me and what this place calls a cannoli is a joke. Their cupcakes are… ehhhhh. I had better. This place isn’t bad; I just had better. Truthfully, I’m just bitter about the friggin cannolis. Overall, I would definitely try these guys again for their other desserts.

Still on a mission to become a cupcakeologist, haha. I came to eastern market and had to try their cupcakes. I picked the peanut butter and chocolate (yummy frosting, moist cake, chocolate shavings an added bonus), the red velvet (also great frosting and the cake was not as moist as I would have liked) and the carrot cake (delish). The price is reasonable (about $ 1.50) and, although I wouldn’t make a trip for just them, whenever I’m in Eastern Market I shall partake!

The best spot to satisfy a sweet tooth craving at Eastern Market and not have to come out of pocket! A wide selection of pastries, cakes, pies, and even ice cream. A little something for everyone! I recommend the Sweet Potato Cake. It tastes better than it sounds. CASH ONLY!

I was extremely disappointed with the baklava. It was very enticing looking, given the size of it. However, there did not seem to be ONE DROP OF HONEY in it. I just can’t endorse a bakery that sells honey-​less baklava. Maybe there’s a place for it. Maybe some people are sensitive to honey. Maybe it’s not always traditionally made with honey. In my decades of eating baklava, this is the first I’ve tasted that contained no honey.

Love a bakery, love the Market.
Recommend the carrot cake and German chocolate cupcakes. Both are consistently good. The Red Velvet and others, less so.
Pick up some fresh bread here, too. The challah can be great, but not always. The farmbread and rosemary bread are awesome. And, I love a bakery. Oh, I already said that!

I love the Sweet Shoppe and not just because of the extra «e» (-: The store is located inside Eastern Market. Super friendly staff despite the always long lines on the weekend. They have a peach pie — with sugar crystals on the crust — that is to DIE for and in my humble opinion the best Rugelach in town! They also have great bread (it used to be from the Uptown Bakery but I don’t know if that is still true) — I can recommend the olive/​rosemary. Mmmmmh. They also have cold drinks, sandwiches and ice cream but I have never tried those!
PS: There are other reviews for this place under «Eastern Market».

Another DC institution! Wonderful little local place on the southern end of Eastern Market’s South Hall. Fine Sweet Shop (last name of founder was actually Fine) has everything you need in a sweet shop:
Fresh bread? check. Cupcakes (red velvet!), cookies (Hamantashen! black & white cookies!), and cakes in single servings, check. Pastries? Ice cream? Check. fresh lemonade and other assorted drinks?
There’s a whole range of smaller cakes (as low as $ 12) that you can pick up if you need one for a special occasion/​present.
In case it hasn’t been expounded upon enough, love this little spot for how much variety they offer. I can vouch for the black and white cookies, although the cupcakes I’ve had have been a little dry. They also run out of their fresh bread rather quickly (nothing better than picking up ciabatte or a baguette after work for dinner, neh?) But the bread has always solidly delivered. And customer service has always been prompt and professional.
More reasonably priced than a lot of the market, so 3.75 stars!

The black & white cookies are sublime. Will make you think of NYC. And the gingersnaps are pretty darn good too. Especially like the red velvet cakes. Yummy,

Since my first cupcake from Fine Sweete Shoppe a few years ago I’ve had the opportunity to sample additional sweets in hopes that my one cupcake experience was a fluke. I wish I could claim the contrary, but even supermarket cupcakes would do better in a pinch.
Fine Sweet Shoppe has expanded their cupcake offerings from one to many, and I tried my luck again with the red velvet. A bland (albeit moist!) red cupcake topped with frosting that tasted suspiciously canned and overly sweet. The piped rose that topped the cupcake was DEFINITELY from a national brand tube or the Fine Sweet Shoppe bakers have amazing reproduction skills (and in that case I’d have to swing my stars in the opposite direction). Thumbs down.
For my birthday my co-​workers graciously bought me a cake from the FSS (apologies for looking a gift horse in the mouth, co-​workers!). A yellow cake frosted with chocolate that mimicked my original cupcake experience — dry, bland cake with chocolate frosting that tasted… off? Like sub-​par chocolate (I can’t even compare it to, say, a Hershey’s bar, because I happily eat those). The top of the cake was decorated with some quaint yellow roses, but the non-​frosting flower area had a strange sheen, as if the top had been painted with a sugar syrup, the bakers perhaps thinking: «we’ll lock in the moisture once we’ve frosted the cake!»
I want so badly to have a cupcake source in the greater Capitol Hill area but I wouldn’t wish these cupcakes (and cakes) on anyone, even in a pinch. You are, once again, better off elsewhere.

At first, The Sweet Shoppe seemed to be a delightful little corner of the Eastern Market. Offering everything from coffee to pastries to Ring Pops, it seems like an ideal place to get a morning fix before the start of the workday. On one occasion, I saw one of the cashiers raise her voice to a customer over some sort of monetary dispute. It seems the customer had received change for a $ 10 bill, although she had given the attendant a $ 20 bill. That was the last time I went to The Sweet Shoppe. No matter who was in the wrong, the argument was loud and caused a scene. I was uncomfortable and so was everyone in the growing line of potential Sweet Shoppe customers.