Spice House Makes Scents

August 11, 2004 - Susan Froyd - Westword Article

On vacation in Vancouver, Denverites Cal Smith and David Citizen wandered into a fragrant Chinese spice shop and fell in love with the place. More important, they noted that Denver had nothing like it, and in an entrepreneurial moment, decided to try their hand in the spice business when they returned. Now open four months in the relic of a row house at 11th Avenue and Cherokee Street, the Rocky Mountain Spice House is lined floor to ceiling with shelves of jars, envelopes and tins, all giving off an olfactory profusion of sense-tickling scents. Citizen, a sweet, optimistic guy whose enthusiasm for the spices seemingly never flags, mans the herbal haven most days, fine-tuning the packaging, experimenting with infusions and obsessing over lavender, his current favorite herb and one of the hardest to explain. But for Citizen, it's kismet. First came the lavender-infused sugars, then the lavender lemonade mix and the lavender baking cocoa; currently, he and Smith are packaging up mixes for lavender sugar cookies and lavender chocolate cakes. His open ebullience is infectious, and if you visit, you're bound to leave the shop with a packet of lavender in your hand. And you don't even have to use the stuff on food, if you don't want to: "You can encase it in a cloth bag and put it in the dryer with your sheets," he'll tell you. Ah. Mostly it's about edible flavoring, though, and the myriad choices available are invigorating: Citizen and Smith create their own aromatic blends, including Cajun, fajita, garlic pepper, seafood and Herb de Provence (with red pepper instead of sage, "for Colorado," Citizen notes), as well as chai and sun teas, a tasty Ontario maple sugar/pepper blend and the multi-purpose 5280 Blend, originally created for use with oil as a bread dip. Purchased in small batches, everything is excruciatingly fresh and pungent. "When you open the box," Citizen says, "you know it's fresh." But it's that recipe-topping pinch of bend-over-backwards customer service that convinces shoppers to come back again and again: the reasonable prices, the free recipe cards paired with each purchase. And, of course, the sheer adventure of the place. As Citizen recalls, one woman told her friend on a cell phone: "I know I'm late, but I'm having way too much fun." You will, too.