Spice and Tea Exchange in Boca Raton Offers Everything From Coconut Salt to Beer Powder

By Bill Citara Fri., Dec. 4 2009 at 7:01 AM

Categories: Openings/Closings

Paulette and Gordon Callendar want to spice up your life. And they're not kidding. To prove it, they've just opened Spice and Tea Exchange in Boca Raton's oh-so-tony Mizner Park.

One of a dozen of the upscale boutiques in the country, the Boca Exchange features whole and ground spices, herbs and chilies, plus sugars and salts and teas. Also offered: more than 170 spices, 20 kinds of salt, 30 varieties of tea,

sugars flavored with everything from coconut to espresso, and rices ranging from Chinese "forbidden" to lemon-orzo. Most come in one- or four-ounce bags with prices starting under $5.

Among some of the really cool stuff: beer powder, dehydrated, nonalcoholic brewski for when snorting Bud from the can is just too much trouble; blue cheese powder, which should be pretty tasty sprinkled on popcorn or potato chips; ground habanero chilies, in case nitroglycerin just isn't hot enough for you; applewood-smoked sea salt, which gives foods that barbecue touch even if you're not barbecuing; and pale green bamboo rice, a short-grain rice infused with bamboo juice.

Spice, after all, is the variety of life.