My lunch with Norma, part III

Resuming where we left off: Leaving Huntington Hardware, Pomona Mayor Norma Torres and I journeyed to Raspado X-press, which is located in a strip mall on Indian Hill Boulevard just north of Holt Avenue. The business is next to a bottled-water place and a couple of storefronts up from Mariscos Ensenada No. 5, which some of you may remember as the former Xochimilco restaurant.

Raspados are Mexican snocones topped with your choice of fruit. I counted 30 flavors on the board, and those can be combined, seemingly for no extra cost. I got banana and pineapple and the mayor had (if memory serves) mango and pineapple. This time I paid the tab, $6 total.

The raspados come in tall cups with fat straws. The ice wasn't crushed finely, so the routine became to pound the straw up and down in the ice, like a piledriver, to get some ready to drink. Torres said she spent a fair amount of time here last summer and that the ice had been better crushed on previous visits. Still, as a snocone fan from way back, I liked my drink, and the fresh fruit is a neat touch.

Raspado X-press also sells fresh juice drinks, fruit with chili powder and lime, licuados and smoothies, among other items. There are colorful photo blowups on the walls of several menu items. Some are a bit mysterious -- even Torres couldn't identify them -- but most look promising, and some look delicious.

"You'd never think there would be so much flavor in a rundown strip mall," Torres observed before we parted.

That's Pomona: always full of surprises.