As a kid, when the ice cream truck song rang through the neighborhood, it meant it was time to get down to business.
You’d anxiously run to your parents and beg for some extra change, promising an icy treat wouldn’t ruin dinner.
Your heart beat through your chest as you'd race down the sidewalk, running after the truck at supersonic speeds in order to catch it before it vanished from view.
You'd trade in your quarters for a misshapen SpongeBob SquarePants ice cream pop, complete with droopy gumball eyes and a funky smile.
The pure joy felt after devouring your sweet treat is hard to beat. Enjoying a scoop of soft ice cream on the sidewalk while taking in the sun's rays was the perfect summer day.
As we got older, though, running after ice cream trucks became a thing of the past. Those sickly-sweet popsicles just don’t have the same heartwarming effect they once had.
But that was before showed up on the corner of East 22nd Street and South Country Club Road.
One bite of their nieve de aguas and you’re instantly transported back to those perfect summer days, thinking you’d run after them for miles if it meant you’d get one of their treats at the end.
Reyna Juarez and her husband Jose Luis Rufino are the masterminds behind Nieve de Garrafa Rufino’s, a truck that specializes in nieve — a frosty ice dessert traditionally made in Mexico that is unlike anything you have tasted before.
Reyna Juarez, owner, prepares an order for a customer inside her Nieves De Garrafa Rufinos truck.
Before making their way to Tucson, Rufino spent 22 years selling nieve de garrafa in Mexico.
This icy delicacy isn’t like your typical ice cream; think of it more like a Mexican sorbet. To make nieve de garrafa, first, the flavor mixture is created, usually from fresh fruit, water and sugar.
Once that’s made, the mixture goes into a large tub, aka the garrafa, and placed inside a bigger barrel filled with ice and salt. As you spin the garrafa around, the mixture will transform into heaps of light, fluffy deliciousness. Scoop that up, add a little tajin and chamoy and you've got yourself nieve de garaffa.
The couple decided to bring this beloved Mexican treat to Tucson, opening Nieve de Garrafa Rufino’s, their first food truck together, in July.
Their truck is hard to miss. Parked at , it has a colorful trailer covered in pictures of fresh fruit and scoops of heavenly looking nieve.
Customers wait for their orders outside of the Nieves De Garrafa Rufinos truck in Tucson.
You can even see the rows and rows of garrafas lined up against the window, each holding the frozen concoctions. And of course, there’s a topping corner stocked with bottles of tajin, rainbow sprinkles and packages of Maria’s cookies, wait to be delicately placed atop scoops of strawberry and Mazapan flavored nieve. (Mazapan is a traditional Mexican candy made from ground peanuts and powdered sugar.)
Juarez said Rufino gets up early every day to start working on the nieve, spending hours creating all kinds of flavors and variations. Limon, strawberry, melon, mango, coconut and tamarindo are just a few of their flavor offerings.
If you want something on the creamier side, they also have their nieves de leche, which come in flavors like Mazapan, chocolate Qaxaqueño, leche quemada and tres leches.
They also have special items like a classic banana spilt or fruits like pineapples and oranges that are stuffed with ice cream.
After scouring the menu, trying to decide between flavors, I decided to go with the tres leches. Soon, Juarez handed me a cup with scoops of tres leche nieve, garnished with a Maria cookie on top.
The texture of the nieve was light and airy while still being creamy, and the tres leches flavor itself was divine. Notes of vanilla and cinnamon danced around in my mouth, perfectly capturing that rich, milky flavor unique to a tres leches cake.
When I made it to the bottom of my cup, I had that same giddy feeling I had as a kid after enjoying snow cones my sisters and had I bought from the ice cream truck. It’s perfectly sweet and refreshing: what more could you want?!
Jose Luis Rufino, owner, sprinkles a topping over a scoop of ice cream inside his Nieves De Garrafa Rufinos truck in Tucson, Ariz. on August 14, 2025.
Since opening, Juarez said business has been excellent, with many people raving about the icy treat. So far, the favorites seem to be mango, pica fresa and Mazapan.
“Siempre la gente dice, que bueno que viniste,” Juarez said.
Whether you’re looking for a cool treat to help beat the heat or trying to curb your sweet tooth cravings, once you’ve had Nieve de Garrafa, you’ll be chasing down their truck for another scoop.