It's got the anti-inflammatory!

In Ybor, there’s this guy named Cephas with a food and juice stand that was once a full restaurant. The main part burned down years ago, apparently due to a coffee maker. So now, there’s just this hut you walk up to and this Jamaican man who will make you one of the more disgusting drinks in human history: the Aloe Shake. For about 6 or 7 bucks, you can attempt to ingest this frothy mixture of water, aloe and ice all while getting insulted and hearing an endless list of the miraculous curative properties of aloe.

Carrie took me to Cephas Hot Shop for the first time maybe a year or two years ago. I couldn’t even make it through one cup. He told everyone we were with how fat they were, how aloe cures cancer and everything else, and taught us to do this weird dance, which was essentially skanking, to mix it up in our stomachs. “It’s like soap for the inside! You have 23 feet of small intestine!”

This time, Cephas was less distracted by the BMI of my companions and paid close attention to calling me out on my poor chugging abilities.

“This ain’t no whiskey! Just lean your head back girl and say, ‘this is for my health!’”

I made it through one and a half cups, dry heaving intermittently.

The aloe shake escorts me to the suburbs of vomit village. My body has a pitiful, substanceless rebellion — a puking pantomime. Carrie and Ari are aloe shake champions, vera victors, drinking down their cups with ease while I sip, suffer and gag.

The amazing part is, the drink makes me feel really great. I’m not sure if it’s aloe itself or an adrenaline rush from the challenge of drinking something so truly unpleasant. People line up at the stand and many locals make it a daily ritual, so there must be something to it…whether it be the substance or it’s charismatic salesman.

After he's done extracting the crucial goo, Cephas gives you the remaining stalks and directs you to rub them into your skin. "It gets rid of the bumps!"

http://www.cephashotshop.com/

Random photo. The Minnow!