A Chic Boutique

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Photograph by Marvin Shaouni

Insiders know there’s more to Detroit’s Eastern Market than fruit, flowers, and farm-fresh eggs. Around the fringes and on the backstreets, shopkeepers and restaurateurs cater to a clientele that knows its way around the produce paradise.

Even in the relatively quiet off-season, market mainstay businesses, including R. Hirt, Rafal Spice, and Rocky Peanut, are abuzz with regulars who frequent the core of Eastern Market.

Then there’s Joey’s Meatcutters Inn, where burger and chili-fry loyalists park their cars along Orleans on the Market’s eastern edge and duck inside a nondescript façade for hearty eats in the wholesale-food district.

At 2712 Riopelle, in the shadow of a parking structure, Savvy Chic has been doing business for five years.

Owner Karen Brown stocks her tiny boutique with what she calls a “very, very eclectic” inventory. Visitors may find anything from a mid-century kitchen table to framed photographs, Voluspa candles, Caldrea laundry products, vintage purses, antique tableware, and cookbooks.

It’s a little something to consider while we await the return of Flower Day and locally grown greens