Coqui Snacks

Dorimar Mercado remembers being a child in Puerto Rico and asking her grandmother to make her a limber, a homemade ice pop. “She would go out to her yard, to her garden, and she would start throwing rocks at the palm trees, so the coconuts would fall, and she would process it” into a frozen dessert, Mercado says.

Mercado has long since left Puerto Rico, but she has brought limbers, and many other comfort foods, to her Kissimmee, Florida takeout restaurant, Coqui Snacks.

The ice pops that Mercado has become known for are usually made by Puerto Rican women, and sold right out of their home freezers. They’re made by filling a plastic cup with a sweet mixture, often of fruit or cream, and freezing it.

They’re named for the American aviator Charles Lindbergh, whose surname is pronounced like “limber” in Spanish. In 1928, Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis to Puerto Rico as an act of diplomatic goodwill to the island that the U.S. had invaded and occupied in 1898. The sunnier version of the story says that when Lindbergh arrived on the tropical island, people (depending on the story, either Puerto Ricans or American dignitaries) served him frozen fruit juice, and he loved it so much that the treat was named after him. The other story says that, to amicable Puerto Ricans, Lindbergh was remarkably unfriendly, leading people to adopt the expression, “You’re colder than limber.”

Coqui Snacks’ limbers are indeed cold, but the restaurant’s service is warm. “I want customers to feel like they’re coming to a friend’s house, a family house,” Mercado says. Her goal in opening Coqui Snacks was to cater to homesick Puerto Ricans in the area. When you leave your homeland, she says, “​​You miss your food, you miss your flavors, you miss what your towns look like.”

The small wooden bungalow that houses the restaurant is painted yellow, with a green porch and white rocking chairs. It’s meant to look like a wooden mountain house from mid-century Puerto Rico. The half-acre around the house includes a seating area where a hidden speaker plays the chirp of the Coquí frog, a creature whose call is ubiquitous on the island.

Mercado opened her small, charming brick-and-mortar as a sweet shop in 2009, and quickly gathered a following for limbers and a style of fresh mini-donut enjoyed in Puerto Rico.

Through a long process of trial and error that included a combination of family recipes, YouTube videos, and lots of taste-testing with her workers and family members, she also created a menu of savory frituras, or Puerto Rican fritters, that have become local favorites.

Her alcapurria, a fritter of mashed green banana, green plantain, and malanga root stuffed with crab or ground beef, is a best-seller. The shop also offers fried cornmeal sticks called sorritos, and queso frito, battered and fried rectangles of cheese, which come with a guava dipping sauce. 

Mercado’s business isn’t all nostalgia, though: She’s also invented a couple of fritters of her own. She combined empanadas with piononos, sweet plantain cups filled with beef and cheese, to make an empanadilla pionono, and with tripletas, sandwiches of pork, steak, ham, and cheese, to make an empanadilla tripleta. Each tells the story of the creativity that diaspora necessitates: something new and beautiful, but rooted in tradition.