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Pop Fizz Whiz: Carlos Alvarez brings natural paleta flavors to life
Editor’s note: Cocina Connection is a once-a-month feature that takes a behind-the-scenes look at a New Mexico-based chef, who, in turn, shares some recipes.
On any given day, Carlos Alvarez rolls out of bed and is tasked with dad duties.
It’s a time he enjoys and also gives him some relaxation before heading to the National Hispanic Cultural Center, where he gets into the kitchen at Pop Fizz to create delectable treats alongside his staff.
The idea for Pop Fizz began percolating more than a decade ago when Alvarez, his brother, Lorenzo had the idea for a soda shop.
It was a way to pay homage to their upbringing in El Paso, where simplicity reigns king.
“With a soda shop, we wanted to bring our Mexican roots to an American soda shop,” Alvarez says.
Their father, Rafael, often reminded them of the paletas — popsicles — they would eat growing up between El Paso and Juarez.
When he joined them in Albuquerque in 2012, it took a year for the Alvarez brothers to sign a lease for a space on Bridge and Isleta boulevards in the South Valley.
“La Michoacana was the only shop in town,” Alvarez says. “But we wanted to do something different. We wanted to focus on the more natural side of things. We wanted to make paletas with natural flavors. We sort of ripped the Band-Aid off and just went right into making them.”
Pop Fizz does have the brick and mortar shop located at the NHCC, but has yet to reopen to the public since the pandemic started.
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The current focus is selling at community and private events.
During peak season, Alvarez and his team make between 4,000 and 5,000 paletas a week.
Though prepandemic, the record was 70,000 paletas in a week due to the company selling wholesale.
Alvarez says imagination is key when creating flavors for the paletas.
Yet, the imagination can be curbed when reality sets in and sourcing the items becomes more difficult.
“The flavors are going to be classic fruit flavors,” he says. “Mango and mango chile and watermelon. Then there’s the more tropical flavors and they are hard to source, especially being here in Albuquerque.”
Alvarez was born in Santa Fe and then moved to Juarez to live at the compound his grandparents had owned.
The family sold the land to a hotel and the family moved to El Paso.
He moved from El Paso to Albuquerque when he enrolled at the University of New Mexico.
By being based in Albuquerque, Alvarez found a new avenue – thanks to the many growers’ markets around town.
“I began to look at the local crops for inspiration,” he says. “There are fruits that are seasonally grown. We’ve done sweet corn, and we’ve done peach and then some cherry paletas.”
Pop Fizz has expanded its menu beyond paletas with making ice cream tacos – and it all happened by accident.
Alvarez says the idea for the ice cream tacos came about when a freezer broke and couldn’t get it fixed in time to keep 12 tubs of ice cream from melting.
“We thought that we could store them in a bunch of different freezers because they are smaller than the tubs of ice cream,” he says. “We stayed all day working on them and that’s how the idea was born.”
Business was booming for the growing company.
They had multiple locations around town and were in demand.
Then March 2020 arrived, and the pandemic took ahold of the world, shutting down life as we knew it.
The NHCC was closed for more than two years.
Alvarez had to decide what was more profitable and closed a few locations.
“With the paletas, it’s something we still could control by doing private events,” he says. “With everything coming back, we began to take paletas to the movie sets and doing different corporate events. That was a really big thing the last couple of years. With the labor shortages that are out there, it is difficult, but we’ve been able to be pretty good.”
His day usually starts at 10 a.m. when he gets to the NHCC shop and turns on the machines to make the paletas.
He and the team prepare the cream or fruit for the paletas.
“We make one or two flavors in large batches, enough to last us a couple weeks,” he says. “It takes 20-30 minutes to freeze.”
The process is usually complete by 1 p.m. Then he has a few hours to get ready for the day’s events, which usually start after 3 p.m.
With 10 years of making paletas, Alvarez says the most popular flavors are mango and strawberry.
A close third and fourth are coconut and Mexican chocolate.
“In the next couple weeks, we’ll brainstorm about our plan for the next year,” he says. “There will be new flavors and more.”
