DETROIT — I’m a glutton, always will be, so you’ll have to forgive me for beginning with food — and for tasting hope, or something like it, in a peanut butter cookie.

I bought the cookie at Sister Pie, a bakeshop that opened earlier this year in a resurgent neighborhood here. Sister Pie is unusual, and not just because it makes scones with cauliflower and puts rosemary in its shortbread.

Even more noteworthy is its location: a stone’s throw from dozens of the deserted houses and decrepit lots for which Detroit is notorious. Sister Pie shouldn’t be here. That was my first thought when I walked through the door last week to find the kind of hipster crowd and funky scene that I’m accustomed to in Brooklyn, where the shop’s owner, Lisa Ludwinski, lived for six years.

My second thought was that Sister Pie is exactly where it belongs, in a city whose future hinges on a new generation of entrepreneurs, the risks they take and the ingenuity they muster. The top of my cookie glittered darkly with paprika. I beamed. And what coursed through me as I ate it and then another wasn’t just pleasure but gratitude and elation.