Azurelise Chocolate Shop

November 2004 - February 2010

Azurelise Chocolate Shop occupies the entire lower flat of a two story historic (built in 1912) Victorian style house in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. People call it "Harrington House" because it is located on a street named "Harrington". It is the only house in the neighborhood of houses to which it belonged that survived a sixties urban renewal project  The Preservation Society also has designated "Capitol Tree" an extraordinarily beautiful old elm that stands between Harrington House and a moderately busy Greyhound bus station to the north. Some of the tree's branches drape the House as if protecting or consoling it. 

I have been making Azurelise gourmet chocolate truffles since 2002 and in Harrington House since 2004. The lower flat of Harrington House has a kitchen, dining room, living room, foyer and spacious, high-ceilinged stairwell.  I spend almost all my time in the kitchen making, trimming and traying chocolate truffles or in the stairwell boxing them. I deliver the boxed chocolate truffles to A Southern Season or Studio 91 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina usually right after I box them unless I make them for an online or phone order. 

Harrington House was built to catch the eastern sun in the kitchen and the western sun in the living room. At first I shuttered the kitchen windows because I made chocolate truffles for the whole time the sun would shine through them. However, doing that blocked my view of a massive old pecan tree in the back yard. So I took down the shutters and adjusted my chocolate truffle making schedule so that I am done by the time the kitchen starts heating up.

About an hundred yards to the north of Harrington House are highly trafficked railroad tracks that lead to Raleigh's nearby railroad station on Cabarrus Street.  Demolition of the entire block of office buildings directly across the street from Harrington House was completed this spring. The demolition is supposed to be preparatory to construction of a luxury hotel. 

The leveling of the block almost affords me a westward view on Raleigh's festive Glenwood South bar and lounge scene which is two blocks away, I settle for the sounds. On weekend nights I sit on the front porch of Harrington House to listen to House music DJ'ed by Keith Ward pulsing eclectically from Samad Hachby's world famous Mosaic Wine et Lounge which is a part of that scene.  

Reginald O. Savage