Eagle-eye Carrie spotted this monstrosity at our local Shoppers Food Warehouse, where the bakery department either has a good sense of humor or is bored out of its skull. Yes, it’s my first ever St. Paddy’s Day bagel.

Erin go bupkis!

What about you, Y&H Nation? I’m curious about what kind of green-tinted tummy rumblers you’ve found as we approach St. Patrick’s Day 2010. I’ll buy a green beer for the first reader to send a photo of a foodstuff that’s a brighter shade of green than the interior of my bagel. Check it out:

Note: In preparation for Young & Hungry’s baguette column next week (not this week, as previously reported here), we stopped at Marvelous Market, originally founded in 1990 by Mark Furstenberg, to see how the local institution is faring so many years after Furstenberg was essentially forced to sell his much-beloved bakeries.

The heavy wooden beams and exposed red brick at the Marvelous Market on Dupont Circle give the place the kind of warm, rustic vibe that you want from your neighborhood bakery. The spell, however, is broken the moment you open your mouth and ask one basic question: Do you bake your own breads?

Marvelous doesn’t. It gets daily deliveries from Baguette Republic, which is co-owned by Dahmane Benabane, who worked as executive chef for Marvelous Market for 15 years. The Republic plies this shop — and every other in the Marvelous chain — with all manner of product, from pastries to muffins to loaves of various shape and size. Many of them, despite their transit from Northern Virginia, are fresh and delicious.

Tops among them is the chocolate croissant, a bronzed buttery purse of puff pastry filled with a thin strip of rich chocolate and lots of air, which helps to create a false impression of lightness. The baguette is decent example of the breadmaker’s art — crusty and airy and far superior to that bread wad over at Firehook. The sourdough boule gives you a blast of sour all right — somewhere just south of old wine — but its crust has an off-putting texture that I’d place somewhere between plastic and old cardboard.

The truth is, Marvelous Market has strayed far beyond the European breadmaking traditions of its founder, Mark Furstenberg. It has, by its own admission, morphed into something that blends “Panera, Starbucks, Potbelly, Dean & Deluca, and Seven 11 (sic)” under one roof. As such, it can get pretty crowded in the narrow aisle inside the Dupont store, as customers elbow for fruit-juice blends, pre-made sandwiches, pates, cheeses, coffee, hell even pre-cut flowers. The sandwiches, particularly the fresh-as-a-Mediterranean-breeze caprese, are a fine option for those who want a quick lunch without sacrificing their soul (and their arteries) to the practitioners of fast-food sorcery.

But can you ever expect to wrap your mouth around something as deliriously tasty as the sandwiches that Breadline turned out during its Furstenberg heyday? Get real. Marvelous Market figured out long ago that artisan ambitions don’t pay the bills.

The best thing about getting my taxes finished this week — well, aside from getting my taxes finished this week — is that I got to visit my CPA’s offices in Gaithersburg, home of Hot Breads & Cakes, the area’s only outlet of the large Indo-French fusion chain that began more than 10 years ago in Chennai, India.

Hot Breads occupies a small, unassuming storefront in that corporate community known as Kentlands. Not The Kentlands. Just Kentlands. On the face of it — and by the name of it — Hot Breads doesn’t seem to hold out much promise beyond the traditional breads, pastries, and holiday cakes found at any local bakeries. But then you scan the bottom of the display case and see all these fusion snacks. They look like breakfast foods — croissants and puff pastries, the standard big buttery explosions of dough, stuffed or otherwise — but they’re not. These pastries come stuffed with chicken tikka and alu chili masala, the kinds of fillings most Americans would eat for breakfast only under duress.

But don’t be intimated by the apparent disconnect — a bakery that opens early but whose display case features few traditional morning snacks and absolutely no fruit juices — and go ahead and order these savory-oriented pastries. Then save ‘em and reheat them for lunch.

The chicken tikka croissant is fusion snacking at its finest. The buttery pastry conceals a florescent-red filling of chicken-and-tomato masala, which provides just enough heat and umami to counteract and enhance the richness of the dough. The alu chili puff (pictured above) may even be better. Its thin layer of filling is a cooked-down combination of potatoes, bell peppers, jalapenos, spices, and tomato gravy, which plays off the puff pastry in two terrific ways: It serves as a foil to the butter-heavy pastry, yes, but it also gives your taste buds a soft, sensual reward after busting through the crackly exterior.

How good were these two surprising sammies? They impressed me even though I heated them up in a microwave, which compromised their pristine textures, turning the croissant somewhat rubbery and taking the hard edge off the puff pastry. Frankly, I didn’t care.

Hot Breads & Cakes, 70 Market St., Gaithersburg, (301) 977-1919.