Today I went to Jackson Heights/Elmhurst, hoping to pick up a couple of books at Barco de Papel. It was closed when I got there, so I wandered a bit, killing time. Lunch, perhaps? There was no shortage of options, with Colombian and Ecuadorian bakeries duking it out on every block, taquerias and cantinas aplenty, and sidewalk vendors squeezing oranges and frying empanadas. Somehow, though I got it into my head that I wanted Mexican mariscos, as they’re scarce in my part of Brooklyn.

It turned out they were scarce in that part of Queens this afternoon, too. Esquina del Camaron Mexicano, right next door to the bookstore? Temporarily closed for renovations. Mariscos El Submarino? Also undergoing renovations, and the guy working outside was vague on whether they’d open for lunch a bit late, a lot late, or not at all.

Determined to salvage something from my trip on the 7 train, I stopped at the juice stand attached to a Colombian bakery – “La Gata Golosa” – for the most ridiculous thing I could think of, which was a raspado. (That’s not quite true – a cholado would have been even more ridiculous, being essentially a raspado with the addition of chopped fresh fruit and a literal cherry on top, but I know my limits.)

For some reason, I’ve never found raspados in Brooklyn, so they’re a very occasional summer treat. Getting one takes patience, leaving ample time to study the menu of detoxifying green juices you could have ordered, including the medical conditions and internal organs their particular combinations of kale, celery, parsley, etc. would benefit.
A raspado is the opposite of these drinks. It carries the colors of an especially spectacular sunset. It doesn’t promise to cure anything. And it can’t be whipped up quickly in a blender. Instead, it’s hand-assembled: first, the sides of a large plastic cup are thickly streaked with sweetened condensed milk and blackberry puree from a pair of squirt bottles. A heap of crushed ice comes next. The ice is squirted some more, and then passion fruit pulp, crunchy with seeds, is ladled on top. More ice follows, mounded high – the face of the woman behind the counter showed intense concentration during this step – to leave room around the sides for more ministrations from the squirt bottles. At last a bulbous lid, open at the center to allow for access, is placed over the cup before it’s handed to you, along with a straw, a spoon and an inadequate supply of napkins.

Inadequate, at least, if you’re as bad at raspados as I am. I probed with my straw, but only managed to bend and flatten it against the unyielding ice. Attacking it with the spoon through the central access hole wasn’t any more successful. I unbent and unflattened the mangled straw as best I could, and tried to seek out small reservoirs of liquid. This was somewhat successful until the reservoirs ran dry. Perhaps, I thought, if I removed the lid, I could gain a better purchase with the spoon.

This was a very bad idea. If I were better at physics, or at least spatial relationships, I would have understood that the lid was the only thing containing the mound of ice and syrup that towered over the rim of the cup. Remove the lid, and you unleash a sticky avalanche.

I got that lid back on quickly, if not quite quickly enough.

Sticky-fingered, splattered, and sheepish, I switched up my tactics and pursued a campaign of attrition. The ice, I knew, would eventually melt. All I had to do was wait and sip, sip and wait.

After ten minutes, the cup was still mostly full, but I’d made enough progress to remove the top – safely, this time – and deploy my spoon.

The long process of consuming my raspado – and then scarfing down a taco, which was not only delicious, but provided additional napkins and the solvent power of lime juice – meant that by the time I made one last pass by Barco de Papel, they were open. I managed to pick up Guillermo Arriaga’s massive Salvar el fuego, along with a slim volume of stories by Clarice Lispector, and leafed through them on the way home with only slightly raspado-sticky fingers.

Places visited in this post:
La Gata Golosa, 81-20 Roosevelt Ave
Taco Veloz, 86-10 Roosevelt Ave
Libreria Barco de Papel Comunitaria, 4003 80th St