By Domenica Marchetti
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, February 6, 2003

Before heading to the drugstore to fetch that Whitman's Sampler for your valentine, detour into Kingsbury Chocolates in Old Town.

Located above a children's clothing store on a bustling block of King Street, this small, second-story sweet shop offers handmade truffles, caramels, fudge, gooey popcorn balls and other decadent candies.

Walking into the shop is like stepping inside a vintage Valentine's Day card. Visitors are greeted with the rich scent of chocolate, honey, caramel or perhaps some other luscious aroma, depending on what's cooking that day. The walls are painted in warm tones of red, custard and dark toffee and decorated with large brush-stroke illustrations of sweetheart scenes, painted in the French toile style.

The artist is Robert Kingsbury. He and Damion Jackson, co-owner and fellow chocolatier, opened the shop in December after renovating the space and installing a kitchen in the rear.

Other touches adding to the charm include the antique scale atop a display case and the collection of vintage candy tins, which once belonged to Kingsbury's grandparents, arranged on another case. Among them are an old Tootsie Roll box and a container for the dreamy-sounding Minter's Cocoanut Tulips. Four cafe tables arranged along a row of windows provide a view of the street scene below.

But the real artistic touches at Kingsbury Chocolates can be found inside the display cases, where neat stacks of citrus twist and hazelnut toffee crunch truffles vie for attention with lavender cremes, triple nut turtles and coconut almond haystacks.

The candies are gorgeously trimmed -- each pistachio truffle, for example, is topped with a single, perfect nut, while honey truffles are adorned with a little morsel of chocolate-covered honeycomb.

As good as the treats are to look at, they're even better to eat.

Lavender and rose-scented truffles and cremes are subtly but distinctly flavored with their flowery perfumes. Rose water is used to flavor the rose candies, while the lavender ones get their essence from a finely ground powder of lavender buds.

The shop's version of an apricot bar -- a layer of tart apricot puree sandwiched between two layers of dark, bittersweet chocolate -- is irresistible. Bags of chocolate-dipped bourbon cherries beg to be gobbled up.

More sweet-tart delights are to come soon, said Jackson, who is working on a bittersweet, chocolate-dipped tart cherry ganache and a confection of chopped mixed dried fruit, also dipped in bittersweet chocolate.

Kingsbury, who grew up in Vermont, is a third-generation confectioner. His great-grandfather owned a 150-acre maple sugar farm, and as a child, Kingsbury did his share of boiling sap and making maple sugar candies.

His grandmother was a restaurateur and candy maker who earned a measure of fame with her Vermont maple popcorn balls. Kingsbury makes and sells them at the shop for $2.75. The softball-size sweets are bound with maple syrup and drizzled with white and dark chocolate.

Kingsbury and Jackson started their business while living in Atlanta, selling their candy out of gift shops. They moved to Washington on the recommendation of friends and on their own hunch that the business might do better here.

"Chocolate shops are much more prevalent in the North," Kingsbury said. "In Vermont, you can drive down any back road and pull up to almost any shop, and they'll be making chocolate in the back."

Although the two live in Southeast D.C., they said they chose to locate the shop in Old Town because it seemed a good fit. Like Kingsbury Chocolates, many of the businesses along King Street are independently owned specialty stores.

"We wanted a place where if people walked in, they'd feel like they found something special," Jackson said. Moreover, he said, rent in Old Town was cheaper than in Georgetown, and the process for obtaining a business license seemed easier.

In addition to chocolates and candies, Kingsbury Chocolates sells breakfast pastries made by a Baltimore baker, as well as coffee, tea and hot chocolate that surpasses anything likely to be found in most area coffeehouses.

Kingsbury's version is made from freshly shaved, imported bittersweet Belgian chocolate, mixed with whole milk and a splash of heavy cream for added richness.

You can purchase the hot chocolate mix in bags, at $13 for 13 ounces, including a little wire whisk for frothing. Or, for $2, you can enjoy a cup at one of the cafe tables while listening to vintage jazz and gazing out the window at the scene below.