When Carlos Nuñez opened the doors of his brick-and-mortar, Las Delicias Paletería, off Highway 183 more than a decade ago, he didn’t know of any other paleterías – ice cream shops (las neverías) that specifically sell paletas, or ice pop bars – in Austin.
“Mexican ones, you understand,” Nuñez told me in Spanish. “There’s a lot of people who like flavors that are traditional in Mexico – [fruits like] nanches, mamey, guayaba – so I thought it would be a good idea.”
Nuñez took me back into his small kitchen, where he makes the paletas himself. “Our paletas are always made in-house,” he said proudly, continuing to list flavors inspired by his family’s roots in Guerrero, Mexico – like camote morado, a species of potato that has very sweet, violet-purple flesh.
As I walked back across the scorching parking lot in mid-June, as a camote enthusiast myself, I took my first bite of the paleta version. It was just like eating one: boiled, peeled, and dunked into a bowl of milk and sugar. Even the texture of the potato came through.
It also immediately started dripping purple onto my hand, which is kind of the beauty of a paleta. Once you’ve taken it out of the freezer, it’s a race against the Texas heat – lest you lose half of it on your shirt. You can walk in and out of a paletería with a frozen treat in about 60 seconds, and it will likely be eaten in another 60.
I spoke to the owners of three family-run Mexican paleterías around Austin. They all echoed what makes a paletería distinct from American ice cream shops: Paletas are often made by hand, with actual fruit, rice, vegetables, nuts, potatoes, or whatever the flavor calls for.
“We use less sugar and a lot more fruit. We really value the quality of the fruit because that’s what gives them flavor, that’s what gives them a creamy texture,” Claudia García, owner of Las Mangonadas on Airport in East Austin, told me in Spanish. “For instance, the pecan flavor is really popular – the pecan needs to be very good quality, very fresh.”
Paleterías also offer flavors otherwise hard to find in the U.S., ingredients that García says her loyal customers seek out. García and her family have crafted over 60 paleta flavors – including guanábana (soursop) and maracuyá (passion fruit) – with both milk and water bases. Their mango flavor tastes exactly like perfectly ripe mango.
“We’ve spent many years learning this style of business from Mexico. My father makes the ice cream himself,” García continued. “I believe it’s a noble kind of business … las neverías are part of our culture, it’s something familiar.”
At Los Mangos Ice Cream, which has two locations on South Congress and East Riverside, Elizabeth Luviano and her family follow recipes from Mexico. “We were able to learn from them,” Luviano said. “Nanche is a bestseller, mango con chile, aguachile, agua de melón, strawberry with coconut, Gansito, Ferrero.”
The Los Mangos mamey paleta is super thick and creamy – just like the red-orange fruit it’s made out of – while the mango con chile is mostly sweet chunks of mango smothered in chamoy. “Everything is homemade [in Mexico], and we do the same here,” Luviano said.
Whenever Luviano visits Mexico, she told us, she is always looking for paletas – hoping to bring even more flavors back to her Austin kitchens.
“To bring a piece of Mexico to Texas – I want to bring those flavors here,” Luviano said fondly. “I want to have a bit of something from home.”
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This article appears in July 17 • 2026.
