The Ice Cream and Cake Store From Little Red Fox Is Open

A new sweets shop from the owners of the Little Red Fox coffee shop, bakery, and market has opened in Chevy Chase. Sugar Fox started selling ice cream, sheet cake, and cupcakes last night on a strip that includes the Politics and Prose bookstore and the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria.

The shop at 5035 Connecticut Avenue NW plugged in its neon sign last night, welcoming customers two days before an announced Saturday opening.

Rey Lopez/Eater D.C.

Lauren Parlato, a Tosca alum who opened Little Red Fox with owners Matt and Jena Carr in 2013, is making ice cream out of products from South Mountain Creamery in Middletown, Maryland.

The mastermind behind Little Red Fox’s popular pies is blending her own baked goods into the ice cream, creating flavors such as “milk and brownies” and a peach pie with crust, fruit filling, and cinnamon. Packaged pints are expected to come to the market in a few weeks.

Jena Carr is excited about the mint chocolate chip — made with fresh leaves, not extract — and milkshakes featuring espresso ice cream made with Coava coffee.

Sugar Fox will also sell cupcakes, personal-sized slices of sheet cake, and mini-cakes that feed four to six people. Cupcake flavors include carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and lemon with raspberry filling and buttercream frosting. A pre-order business offering custom cakes will start up soon.

Until the weather warms up, Sugar Fox will be open from noon to 9 p.m. on Thursday through Sunday.

Rey Lopez/Eater D.C.

Rey Lopez/Eater D.C.

The expansion was “really organic,” Matt Carr says. “It’s just something that needed to happen. Everyone’s bumping into each other in our little kitchen at Little Red Fox.”

The entire bakery operation, which has grown from just Parlato into a six- or seven-person enterprise, has moved to a production facility in the back of Sugar Fox.

The extra breathing room will let Little Red Fox chef Bobby Dodd expand his role, too. Matt Carr mentioned the possibility of serving sandwiches to order throughout the day. Dodd’s fried chicken might also turn into an everyday item instead of a a special.

In addition to making pastries for Little Red Fox, the kitchen at Sugar Fox will supply goods to the Den coffeeshop and wine bar inside Politics and Prose. The Carrs also own the Fox Loves Taco shop in Brookland.

While ice cream and cake is appealing, the best part about Sugar Fox for Matt Carr is that the space has an office.

“I’ve been working on a milk crate for the past five years,” he says. “Now I have a chair and a desk.”