Scott Mitchell
New Lower Greenville Paleta Shop Steel City Pops Is Here To Cool Down Your Summer.
Since Mother Nature has been working its balls off to make sure that you have no idea what the weather will be like on a given day, you might not be fully prepared for what's soon to come. But make no mistake: Dallas is fixing to get hot.
After this brief spring — if you really call jumping from 60-degree weather to 90-degree weather spring — our hemisphere will swing with unshakable force into summer. And woe unto all of us who must suffer through it.
Fortunately, there now exists a new oasis to help provide us with breaks from the bleak doom we suffer through with each revolution around the sun.
Its name? Steel City Pops.
Steel City originated in Birmingham, Alabama, as the brainchild of the Watkins family, who saw an opportunity to bring a new kind of frozen treat into the American mainstream after experiencing Mexican paletas on a vacation. Turns out their whim was right, too: Since opening its first location in 2012, Steel City has opened three more locations in Alabama and, just this week, its very first in Dallas. The company's next planned store will open in Fort Worth soon.
The idea of paletas is similar to that of the mainstream popsicle. It's a frozen treat harnessing the refreshing goodness of fruity flavors. But, whereas the mass-produced popsicles you see in the frozen isle of your grocery store often use artificial flavoring, paletas are made from fresh fruit.
Oh, yes: I said fresh. Which, of course, means Dallasites should be enamored by it. With the fresh, GMO-free, local-sourced, never-feel-bad-about-eating-anything-ever-again trend in full swing around the metroplex, it's no surprise that Steel City would bring its first out-of-state venture to our climes, taking over the space on Greenville Avenue formerly occupied by the nightclub Zubar.
And though the price may seem steep to some — rounding out to about $3 with tax per popsicle — these suckers are worth it. The fresh ingredients really do make these frozen treats something both soothing and tasty. While eating the pop, you'll even catch little bits and pieces of fruit — as if your pineapple popsicle were assuring you that, yes, it was very much made from a real pineapple.
The menu hosts some pretty unique flavors on it, too. There's blueberry basil, pineapple jalapeno and the already-very-popular blood orange. Not into fruity frozen treats? No worries; there's a second, “creamy” half to the menu sporting such flavors as buttermilk, vanilla bean and coffee.
The space itself is quite bare bones at the moment — the storefront only takes up about 20 percent of the whole space, leaving the rest to the kitchen, where the pops are handmade each day. Outside, there is bench seating around the perimeter of the patio. The space seems meant to force patrons out the door and into walking along the Lower Greenville drag. It's not like that's such a bad thing, though.
Lower Greenville's got plenty to see. Walking around the area, Steel City pop in tow sounds like fun, right? Well, as long as you don't mind checking it all out with your sticky, drip-covered hands, I suppose.
