All summer long, Fidel Cortés Jr. and his family have been hard at work selling nieves—a traditional Mexican dessert that tastes like a sorbet and translates directly to ‘snow’ — to small crowds gathered in Bushwick, around the intersection of Knickerbocker Avenue and Suydam Street. Online, on TikTok feeds, Nieves Cortés has become something of a Bushwick sensation.
The Cortés family starts their day at 8:00 am, preparing and blending fresh, ripe fruit for two to three hours. The main Cortés entourage include his wife, Tania Hernandez, his father, Fidel Sr., their son Kevin, his nephew Bryan and his brother Laurencio “Shaggy” Cortés. It’s a family affair. In the morning, the group lug the barrels and equipment to their street corner, where they swirl chartreuse, coral, and crimson-colored fruit juice in big wooden barrels that are packed with ice and salt for around two hours. The salt drops the temperature and turns the fruit juice into a slushy consistency. By two, the Cortés’ are out there selling the nieves.
“People like [us] because we’re doing it from scratch,” Cortez Jr. tells me. “They like to see us make it, so I think that’s why we went viral.”
The Cortés first caught the eye of local food blogger Rob Martinez, who has some hundred-fifty thousand followers as eatingwithrobert on TikTok. He started making videos documenting Cortés’ story in the beginning of the summer, racking up almost two hundred and fifty thousand views on TikTok and some eighty thousand likes on Instagram. Another TikTok food content creator, called letsfamilystyle, followed suit, joining the Cortés family throughout their day making and selling nieves for a video that also drew some consider thousands on TikTok. Cortés Jr. also has a considerable social media presence on his own, racking up some 76 thousand followers to his own content showing his family’s nieves output.
Staple flavors the Cortés sell are cantaloupe and lime, itself made from fresh lime zest; you can often also find watermelon, mango, pineapple, cactus fruit, or tamarind, on the right days. Cortés Jr. likes to emphasize that his nieves are made from real fruit.
“We always use the natural fruit as well to give you some flavor. We don’t use any artificial flavor,” he says. He also will, on occasion, add milk to strawberry, vanilla, or coconut-flavored nieves, which he says makes them taste like ice cream. His favorite flavor is mamey, a fruit native to Mexico and Central America that’s likened to a sweet potato or papaya. At the stand, he also sells the kinds of Mexican cookies that are traditionally paired with nieves.
Cortés Jr. had moved to Bushwick, from Puebla, Mexico, in 2001 and developed a following sellinf the ices among other immigrants in the neighborhood, who came with their own memories of nieves in the home country.
“They like it because they say that it’s the same from Mexico,” said Cortés Jr. “It reminds us of Mexico, how it was when we were kids.”
Before moving here, his family had traveled to towns in Mexico selling nieves, tamales and other foods while Cortés Jr was growing up. His mother, Blanquita Pilar, now lives in New Jersey where she built a wood stove and, to this day, continues to make tamales and corn tortillas from ingredients in her garden that they sell, along with other goods.
“It’s our original [from] Mexico,” Cortés Jr said. “Everything’s fresh, and with the fire, it tastes different.”
Cortés Sr. sold tamales and raspados before transporting the barrels and equipment from Mexico to make traditional nieves around Bushwick. His son was managing prepared food at a Manhattan supermarket, while helping his father with the stand and making deliveries around Bushwick.
After Cortés Sr. retired from the nieves operation, he encouraged his son to take up the business, but Cortés Jr was hesitant. The supermarket relied on his years of expertise, and making homemade nieves is quite strenuous on the body, he said.
When Junior’s hours were cut back during the beginning of the pandemic, he decided to take a leap of faith and follow in his father’s footsteps. He started selling the nieves on the side and eventually went full time. He says he hopes to open a local brick and mortar one day where he would sell a variety of traditional Mexican snacks along with the nieves.
“That’s my dream and my father’s dream. I want to make him proud of me [to show] that we made it, but we’re going little by little,” he says. He feels “blessed” for now. Nieves season started this year in April and Junior says he plans to take a break this month as the colder weather sets in. He’ll still be around to cater private parties, he says, and can be expected to show up next year too.
All photos taken by Greta Solsaa for Bushwick Daily.
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