Right off the Palmetto Expressway, in fact, in a West Hialeah shopping strip dubbed Plaza Felicidad, Happiness Plaza.

Polo Norte #2 -- ice cream shop, pizzeria and Cuban restaurant all in one -- is one of those only-in-South Florida establishments that simply captivates the imagination.

Put together in a splash of red and white diner-style tables and booths, Polo Norte shares its perimeter road location with mom-and-pop shops like Chiny's Fashions and García Dollar Store, which blares salsa music into the parking lot and bills its goods as bueno, bonito y barato.

Good, pretty and cheap, like the fare at Polo Norte.

The eatery's name comes not from the coldest place on earth, but from an heladería, an old ice cream shop in Sagua la Grande, the Cuban hometown of the original Polo Norte owner. The restaurant's first location on West 29th Street in Hialeah remains, but was sold by Raúl and Vivian Busquet after the Cuban couple opened Polo Norte #2 in 1996, drawing a steady clientele from the nearby booming communities of Hialeah Gardens, Miami Lakes and Palm Springs North.

Now they come from as far as Pembroke Pines, lured by the reputation of the specialty of the house -- Cuban pizza.

A nontraditional dish popularized in Havana after the first food shortages of the '60s, Polo Norte's version is a pan-style pizza stuffed with some of the traditional dishes of Cuban cuisine like picadillo (ground beef, $4.75 personal, $12 family), Spanish sausage and even maduros (sweet fried plantains, $4.75, $13). The cheese topping is rich and plentiful, a thick mix of mozzarella and the Dutch cheese El Gallo Azúl.

Best of all is the shrimp supreme ($8.95 and $22) pizza, stuffed with jumbo shrimp cooked in the creole sauce of a typical enchilado de camarones. The seafood is so flavorful it tastes like lobster.

Not to be ignored is the Cuban-style pasta, especially the spaghetti with picadillo ($4.75), made even richer by the cheese mix added to the ground beef.

The rest of the menu is staple Cuban restaurant fare -- a crispy, onion-topped palomilla steak ($6.25) or bistec uruguayo ($8.25), a thin, breaded steak stuffed with ham and Swiss cheese. The meals come with two sides from a selection of traditional accompaniments. Try the homemade puré de papa, Cuban-style mashed potatoes.

Dessert is more than just an ending here. Sometimes that's all people come for -- to reminisce over a silver bowl of mamey, mango, coco, fruta bomba and pineapple tropical fruit-flavored ice cream.

Some of us don't remember Copelia, the famous Havana ice cream shop, most recently immortalized in the 1993 Oscar-nominated movie Strawberry & Chocolate. It is alleged that the best ice cream in the world (hyperbole is a necessary component of nostalgia) used to be served at Copelia.

Polo Norte tries to evoke the legend with its 32 Copelia-like flavors -- how long has it been since you heard French vanilla called mantecado? -- and creatively named ice cream dishes like Canoa India (Indian Canoe, $3.95), three scoops of your choice topped with tropical fruits.

Pico Turquino ($2.75), named for Cuba's tallest peak, is not as tall as the five-scoop Ensalada (Salad, $4.95), but it's more than one body can handle -- two scoops of ice cream (your choice of flavors) served with a panetela borracha, which literally translates to ``drunken cake'' and is actually rum cake. Topped with whipped cream, nuts and cherry (if you wish, or if the waitress doesn't understand English and says ``OK'' when she has no clue that you said ``without''), you will be drunk with sugar if you finish this by yourself.

But let's be practical here. Never mind the nostalgia. In the middle of a South Florida summer, who can resist an enticing lineup of ice cream?

And Polo Norte's has an added only-in-Miami kind of charm: Some flavors listed are spelled phonetically: run raisin, vainilla, havenly hash.

Here's to a cool, humorous chuckle in our very own North Pole.