Icing on the city's cake

For years now, I've been looking for the signal that Raleigh has arrived.

There was the Bikram's hot yoga, the hair salon that serves alcohol, the churrascaria. There was the Polish restaurant known for its homemade pierogi.

Earlier this year, I noticed people walking their dogs. Downtown. Meaning that people actually live downtown.

Could it be?

Then one day, on Glenwood Avenue, between an art gallery and a former bead shop, I saw the surest sign yet in an elegant storefront painted pale pink, gray and black.

It's called The Cupcake Shoppe.

A bakery?!?! you say.

Let me explain. This is not the sort of place where you run in for a bag of elephant ears, crullers and cheese danish -- what back in Milwaukee we called schnecken.

No, no. No schnecken here. No cupcakes of the sort baked in my kitchen (and banned from Wake County schools).

No. This place sells elegant, elaborate works of art posing as cupcakes. (About $2.50 apiece.)

Scoff if you like. But I'm not exaggerating when I say this is one of the hottest culinary trends to sweep the nation. It got its start -- where else? -- in New York City. There, patrons form a line out the door of the cupcake shop Magnolia's (featured on an episode of "Sex and the City").

Shops have sprung up in Los Angeles and other cities.

Of course, this Cupcake Shoppe is not the first cupcateur in the Triangle; Durham's Artisan Cupcake, using 100 percent Madagascar bourbon vanilla and no hydrogenated oils or artificial flavorings, has been around for year and a half.

Durham has always been ahead of Raleigh on the hipness curve. Chapel Hill, too. Not that Raleigh has ever given them much competition. Until lately.

The Cupcake Shoppe's owner, Sara Coleman, not yet 30, said she had no intention of joining some crazy frosted fad.

"I have always been fascinated with the cupcake," she told me recently. "It is the perfect portion. It is something so familiar, yet so different."

A Hillsborough girl, she got her graduate degree in business from N.C. State University in 2001 and spent several years with Johnson & Johnson in Georgia, Florida and New Jersey. She tired of the corporate world, though.

She landed back in Raleigh with a sharp knowledge of business plans, a bit of catering training from a favorite aunt, and a killer cake recipe.

Word has slowly gotten out since the shop's "soft opening" in July. It formally opened this month.

There are no lines out the door. But business has been steady during the startup.

If this thing survives, Coleman acknowledges, it'll be because of foot traffic.

In a town known for cul-de-sacs, that's a big gamble.

But Coleman points to the four or five luxury condominium buildings built or going up within a mile of her shop.

"The population in this part of downtown is supposed to double in the next five years," she said.

In its way, the shop is a (pink) canary in Raleigh's mine shaft.

We've long had cigar bars, martini bars and tapas bars.

Our marathon is making a comeback. So is Jaume Plensa.

Now the Capital City can claim its own cupcake shop.

Ain't it sweet?