Muralist Dan Levinson’s art can be enjoyed in one of the café’s dining areas.

Roasted green chile and avocado toast 

Muralist Dan Levinson’s art can be enjoyed in one of the café’s dining areas.

‘This place is cool as shit,” I say to an employee trimming fresh basil leaves from a raised herb garden planter box out front of Black Box Provisions. “Are the owners from Seattle or something?” I ask. 

“Actually, they are,” she replies, vindicating my sarcastic suspicion. But for the record, I almost guessed Oakland.

You see, by this point, we’d already toured the mini boutique retail market inside the converted gas station that greets patrons. It stands between a small indoor dining space (with its striking black-and-white text graffiti art by area muralist Dan Levinson) and an order counter for the business’ coffee shop/café arm. We perused [Thomas] Keller+Manni Chocolate bars, artisan meats, cocktail mixers, fine maple syrups and much more alongside house-label granola bags and spices like Pueblo green chile salt and Pueblo green chile powder-dusted, roasted cashews.

Then we ordered coffees, pastries and some lunch plates to take outside to the wide front patio with overhead heaters and pull-down side walls as needed for seasonal (and pandemic-minded) dining.

1437 Court St., Pueblo, 719-696-9587, blackboxprovisions.com

7 a.m. to 3 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday

After our meal, I actually do get to chat with co-owner Cordelia Smith, who I learn launched a vegan bath-and-body botanical company in Seattle 30 years ago, named Formulary 55. Its products are sold today in 17 countries and hundreds of U.S. retail stores. She and her husband Anthony Hill (a former Microsoft developer) decided to relocate the business to Pueblo seven years ago so they could expand, its real estate being a fraction of Seattle’s cost. Even if they do lament the loss of a big, trend-setting city’s access to more diverse and gourmet cuisine at all hours, Smith says they certainly don’t miss Seattle’s traffic. They do love the significantly sunnier weather here, and they’ve already grown accustomed to Pueblo’s “easier, relaxed pace of life.”

With Black Box Provisions, they opted to create a little slice of the culture they missed, to gift Pueblo something excessively chic and stylish, fit even for Denver’s most happening neighborhoods. If you pay attention to all the hyper-modern design touches, you’ll spy a sleek (and pricey) Modbar espresso rig behind the counter with its pretty wood- and chrome-handled group heads. Brilliantly and comically, there’s a framed, giant-sized Pantone color swatch in the bathroom displaying custom-created 574 C, Pueblo Green Chile — the hue of paint on the walls above shiny white tiles. (Smith says they’ve also created a tribute Steel City Gray and Union Street Brick.)

When it comes to the provisions element, Smith does much of the baking but supplements her pastry case with treats from Colorado Springs’ The French Kitchen, including baguettes for sandwiches and TFK’s wildly popular Queenets, which Smith fills with her own buttercream flavors. Anthony’s son Ryan Hill handles most everything else as the house chef. Aspects like fine-dining-quality silverware and plates are important to the team, for style, and to set a tone of something more special than just a coffee shop, she says. They want people to take it slow and enjoy the fare; soon, a liquor license will usher in not just Saturday brunch hooch, but lubrication for special one-off date nights (already underway) featuring charcuterie and special sweets.

For our main meal, we order a house-roasted Colorado roast beef and arugula sandwich dressed simply with pickled red onion slivers, Dijon and aioli on a baguette. The flavors are cleanly what they are, matter of fact, for a simple sandwich leading with the meat’s taste. I could go for a little more mustard (ours dressed sparingly) and perhaps a cheese addition, but it satisfies. We also order a daily special: Pueblo roasted green chile avocado toast (Pueblo’s home to millennials too, you know), presented beautifully on a thick wedge of local Hopscotch Bakery sourdough bread, only lightly toasted. It’s first buttered then topped with abundant slices of the avo fanned lengthwise.

Then comes both diced Pueblo green chiles and a pour of Denver-made Jojo’s green chile sriracha, watermelon radishes and a tall tangle of lemon- and olive-oil-dressed arugula leaves. We pay $2 over the $8 base price for a perfectly poached organic egg, set on the side with its albumen suspended in wavy stiff peaks, as if it were a dollop of whipped cream — its yolk a suggestion of gold barely visible behind a gossamer white veil.

Roasted green chile and avocado toast 

Next up: a dark crimson bowl of gluten-free Blackbox Chili, flecked with black beans, onion and poblano pepper bits and sizable chunks of ground beef. The chicken-stock and tomato broth bears a notable allspice and cinnamon hint above the expected chili seasonings like garlic, coriander and oregano. It’s highly spiced, but not spicy, and quite warming.

Moving to drinks and pastries, we sip a Peruvian blend Intelligentsia French roast on drip, surprisingly not dark-roast tasting. French roasts are generally the darkest, and when poorly done have a burnt taste, no nuances left to the beans. I should have known one of the leading names in the craft coffee world wouldn’t ’eff it up; by suggestion I do think I perceive the pipe tobacco in the aroma. For our cappuccino, Nederland’s Salto Coffee Works provides a Mexican-Brazilian-Sumatran blend that lands described molasses notes and we also feel a milk chocolate finish, steamed oat milk subbing in just fine for cream. Pairing particularly well is chef Ryan’s insanely delicious bourbon-espresso-black onyx cocoa mini bundt cake. Cake donut-like in appearance, it has a charcoal-dark crumb (the specialty cocoa powder being highly alkalized to achieve the color) and shiny ganache icing; behind the deep chocolate flavor you can detect a balanced hint of both Breckenridge bourbon and Salto coffee essences. It’s the sexiest sweet I’ve seen in a while.

Black Box tends to offer a couple each gluten-free and vegan options daily. We try a vegan pumpkin-oat scone made with coconut milk and vegan butter, the oats playing a binding role, but gifting a unique, cookie-like texture to it. It’s pleasantly not too sweet nor are the baking spices overpowering. Instead, it’s pleasant fall time in a bite, as is a pumpkin spice cupcake bearing a big swirly cream cheese buttercream frosting. There’s so much of the icing we fear it’s gonna be a sweet bomb, but it’s not, cream cheese rich and deceptively airy and light — a nice bite. We also grab a GF and vegan Bliss Bar for the road, basically a Rice Krispies treat spinoff made with rice syrup and salted dark chocolate.

Also with our samplings, we try a few of the specialty retail beverages from coolers inside. Salida-based Dram Apothecary makes a citrus and blossoms sparkling water that’s lightly carbonated and mildly flavored with natural botanical essences. Oakland-based Olipop alternative sodas are sparkling tonics that play up probiotic benefits, and their ginger-lemon flavor delights with a velvety texture.

The ginger isn’t biting and zingy, nor is the citrus, but smooth across the palate and subtle, stevia sweetened. And lastly, New York’s Curious Elixirs are non-alcoholic cocktails claiming a number of benefits, from mood enhancement to stress relief and digestion assistance. Our No. 1 elixir mimics a Negroni impressively, made with pomegranate and orange juices and herbs like gentian root and rhodiola that somehow all combine to create the ideal dryness, bitterness and tartness.

It’s a fun array of drinks, well curated, like all of the other cool retail goodies. Black Box Provisions certainly benefits from standing on the shoulders of other alluring brands, but it shows its own swagger too to earn its craft cred. It’s just a damn cool place, unlike anything else in Pueblo. Style and substance. 

Matthew Schniper is the Food and Drink Editor at the Colorado Springs Indy. He began freelancing with the Indy in mid-2004 and joined full-time in early 2006, contributing arts, food, environmental and feature writing.

Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.