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PHOTO: Adrian Cabreja
“¡Piragua!”
No sooner have you decided to leave behind cherry, your childhood choice, and settle definitively on sesame seed (ajonjolí o cocol) as your new favorite than your daily fix starts to dry up. After conducting an exhaustive series of tastings all summer long, squaring off with the pig-tailed, gap-toothed gangs on street corners, braving the sharp elbows of stroller-pushing moms, and not a few stained white shirts, it all goes away.
As the molten humidity of summer gives way to the crisp snap of early fall, our shirt sleeves and pant hems get longer – and so do our sidewalks, it seems.
The deeper we burrow into September, the longer and wider become our streets. Bit by bit, the vendors that once packed onto the sidewalks hawking fresh strawberries, avocadoes, and mangoes vanish. Gone is the morning’s freshly squeezed morir soñando (the orange juice and milk drink) whipped together at the corner shopping cart; disappeared is your lip-staining coquito pick-me-up doled out by the Dixie cup.
And your piraguas – the shaved ice concoction prepared with liquid candy syrups in flavors such as cherry, watermelon, coconut and pineapple that is manned (and they are virtually always men and their carts) by a typically quiet soul with strong arms?
Adios.
This last gasp of summer just before and as school starts, when children don pleated uniforms and sport colorful book bags, offers a small window of opportunity for the piragua connoisseur.
During the summer, most piragüeros work long days from noon until sunset, parking themselves by busy pedestrian walkways and parks. They’ll work 6 – 7 days a week, charging a dollar for piraguas in flavors that have become ever more eclectic.
Their carts are lined with glass bottles filled to brimming with deeply hued, jewel-toned liquids whose colors rival a Tiffany display case: tawny amber for tamarind, stunning violet-red for watermelon, an opaque, blue-tinged white for leche [milk]. They dazzle in the bright sunlight in which they are often stationed, an edible urban palette.
The piragüero is the original fusion chef, the first mixologist and barmeister. They’ve added to their taste arsenal over the years: diversifying their syrup portfolio, adjusting to new palates.
Many of the flavors are as sweet as you would expect, although there is the satisfying soft, sour tang of pineapple, and a buttery finish to the sesame seed.
And you can experiment: flavor your scoop of fresh slivers of ice with generous pours of tamarind and coconut together for an uber-tropical treat to savor in your new fall boots. Or try strawberry and leche – a crushed ice strawberry shortcake to slurp while you check on school supply lists.
The word piragua, a take on “pyramid,” a nod to the triangular block of ice and “agua,” will soon to cease be called aloud on our street corners.
There’ll be apples and pumpkins to savor soon enough.
In the meantime, grab a sweater, head down to the corner cart, dollar bill in hand, and have one last icy sip.
Hurry.
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