Shauna Eats Sunnyside

Ode to Cholado

Oh, cholado… how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

On second thought, fuck all that eloquence. God DAMN that cholado is bangin’.

Absence has only made my heart grow fonder… it had been a minute since I’d last gorged on the decadent fruit, ice, and sweetness sculpture, so post-breakfast this morning, B and I skipped over to the Pecas Y Mas (on Greenpoint Ave b/w 44th and 45th Sts.) to say hello to our favorite little Colombian couple and partake in some oh-so-heavenly brain freeze.

Summertime in Pecas is like walking into a tropical cabana… high ceilings, the hum of an overhead fan, glossy parrot mobiles, and fresh fruit as far as the eye can see. Señor Pecas was laboring solo when we arrived, chopping fresh strawberries with the quickness while holding jovial conversation through the front window with a friend at the sidewalk counter.

We ordered a SUPER cholado, but soon realized that the mister was zealously preparing two side-by-side wonders… and damned if we could argue with that kinda enthusiasm. We watched in awe, as if for the first time, as he shaved the ice to order, scooping it into cups and then dousing each cup with a healthy portion of orange and raspberry syrups. The fruit commando then mounted chopped fruit upon fruit upon fruit - cantaloupe, passion fruit, pineapple, papaya, guava, strawberries, green apple slices, and banana - before topping with a handful of shaved coconut and a maraschino cherry, then drizzling sexy doses of mango sauce and sweetened condensed milk on top. Brilliance, sheer brilliance.

(By the way, today, guest eater Paul Scholes came along for the ride - for those who don’t know, he’s the greatest ginger to ever play the game. And we Attend the Church of Scholes^TM).

Now back to the cholados. We housed those fuckers like it was our last meal. Served with both a straw and a spoon, we slurped and “mmmm…”ed and “ahhhhhh”ed until every last delectably icy melted scoop was inhaled. It was our quadrillianth time indulging in Pecas Y Mas’s cholados, and it still sends shivers up my spine to recall how fucking ungodly delicious that concoction is.

By the time we’d wrapped up our sweets session, Mrs. Pecas was behind the counter tag-teaming with the mister on another batch of cholados. In fact, over the course of our 20 minutes in-house, six cholados and two raspados were lovingly assembled and handed off to salivating customers. We stopped to chat before the trek home, and Mrs. P told us that cholados, in fact, account for 50% of the store’s overall sales. For all you general studies majors out there, that means they’re the big sell. The grand poomba. The holy spirit of fruit and shaved ice bits.

The owners are originally from Cali, Colombia, and commute in every day from Flushing. They opened the Sunnyside juice/smoothies/desserts/tapas counter five years ago. After informing us that cholados are specific to the Cali area and are actually unknown in some other regions of her country, Mrs. Pecas smiled sweetly and said, “here, I like to teach people of all nationalities to eat cholados.” PREACH ON, SISTER.

Before we bounced, she asked us quietly if we enjoy her store. We assured her that, after several years patronage, we are obsessed with her fucking store. Of course, we weren’t so blunt about it. But Pecas has done us no wrong, and stands tall in this neighborhood as a solid, family-run business with consistently superior quality and fuckin knee-weakingly spectacular cholados.

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Pecas Y Mas Corp.
44-20 Greenpoint Avenue (b/w 44th and 45th sts)
Sunnyside, NY 11104
718-389-4443