Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

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A West Tampa Institution Closes [Snack City Serves Its Last Milkshake And Cones]

Posted Nov 17, 2009 by Jeff Houck

Updated Nov 17, 2009 at 04:31 PM

Here’s a bit of sad news for milkshake and ice cream lovers in Tampa: Snack City, an institution on Columbus Drive, is out of business.

Of the five decades the West Tampa institution had been around, Alfredo Naranjo , 77, owned it for three. He catered to a diverse clientele with tropical fruit creams for his Hispanic customers, saffron-laced Kesar Pista ice cream for Indian visitors and Lychee Nut ice cream for Asian treat-seekers.

Last year when Miami celebrity chef Michelle Bernstein came through town, I took her to Snack City to try the decadently creamy Dulce de Leche.

Me? I couldn’t resist a scoop of wonderfully fresh Guayaba. They also served what I thought were the best milkshakes in Tampa.

I spoke by phone this afternoon with Silvia, Alfredo’s wife of 54 years. She told me the shop closed two weeks ago.

She told me that the business hadn’t made a profit for three or four years. Recently, the store hadn’t made enough to pay the electricity bill. Rumors circulated online for years that the store was on the ropes.

“Alfredo is 77 years old,” she said in broken English. “We can’t work for nothing no more. It’s a shame. He makes the best ice cream.”

To put this in context, consider that when Snack City opened, it was during the Golden Age of the ice cream parlor. It survived the commercialization of ice cream, the franchising of ice cream shops and changes in the national diet.

As historian Gary R. Mormino wrote in the Tampa Tribune July last year:

Tampa entered the modern age with the arrival of Henry Plant‘s railroad in the 1880s. The transportation revolution made it possible for red snapper caught in Tampa Bay to be sped to New York’s City’s Fulton Fish Market in 24 hours.

Vast amounts of ice were necessary to refrigerate fish, vegetables, and beer. Tampa’s first ice factory opened at the Government Spring in 1884, in today’s Ybor City.

With abundant supplies to make ice cream, soda fountains and ice cream parlors followed, some palatial and ornate, others simple and unadorned. By 1893, Tampa boasted seven ice cream parlors.

Cuban immigrants brought a rich tradition of blending tropical fruits with cream and sugar. Heladarias (ice cream parlors) competed to see which prepared the finest sapodilla, alligator pear, and mango helados. In 1896, The Tampa Tribune praised the “Famous” ice cream served at “El Original,” a parlor on 14th Street in Ybor City.

Tampa Bay area dairies supplied tankers of milk and cream, but many produced their own specialties. Poinsettia Dairy, begun by William Barritt, manufactured ice cream. In 1915 it became the Tampa Dairy Company, and in 1943 it was acquired by Borden’s. Southern Dairies also made ice cream. Many Latin families also operated dairies.

By the 1920s, national brands arrived in the Tampa Bay area. Good Humor trucks and carts, manned by employees in their distinctive white uniforms, circulated widely.

The post-war decades introduced still more competition as national companies, such as Dairy Queen, Baskin-Robbins and Carvel, entered the Tampa Bay market. A few local favorites, such as Snack City in West Tampa and Bo’s in Seminole Heights, have managed to survive.

Following World War II, however, affluence meant owning a refrigerator with a freezer compartment. People could enjoy ice cream at home, anytime.

By the 1960s, as national chains started opening shops in malls, the old-fashioned Mom and Pop parlors, along with drug store soda fountains, were becoming sweet memories of a less hurried time.

Former Tribune reporter Phil Morgan wrote the definitive profile of Alfredo and Snack City in 1998. (Times reporter Jeff Klinkenberg wrote a great profile last year, too.)

Included in Phil’s story was this excerpt:

Ice cream smoothed the path to self-reliance after Naranjo came to this country. He and his family were able to leave Cuba in 1962, three years after Castro took over. His first job in the United States was as a janitor in a factory in Elizabeth City, N.J. It took him a year to learn English. He then rented an ice cream truck and saved to buy it. He saved to buy a second, then an ice cream shop and a coin-operated laundry.

He started taking annual vacations to Florida and decided to move here. He loved the weather. It was close to Cuba’s weather.

Havana was heaven to him, Naranjo says, smiling at the memory. He lived in El Vedado section, in a tall building overlooking El Morro fortress and El Maleco’n, the broad boulevard that stretches along the beach. He and a friend used to say that “the best part of the world is Cuba. The best part of Cuba is Havana, and the best part of Havana is El Vedado. And the best part of Vedado is here, where we live.”

He would love to see it again, but he would never go back for a visit, even if he could, as long as Castro is in power.

“I’m an extremist,” Naranjo says. “I’m political ... in every detail of my mind.”

His 21-year-old granddaughter, Stephanie Llona, stopping by on this Friday night, sums him up:

“He is a perfectionist, an idealist. He likes things done his way or no way. Very stubborn. Big, big heart,” she says, kissing him on his forehead on the way out the door.

His wife of 43 years, Silvia, says he “looks tough, but he’s not.”