First things first: a New Orleans sno-ball is not a snow cone, a pre-frozen, rock-hard concoction like those sold from ice cream trucks and concession stands elsewhere. As each of our New Orleans Sno-Balls oral history subjects attests, New Orleans sno is a product of locally made, carefully stored, and expertly shaved-to-order ice. The sugary syrups that color and flavor a New Orleans sno-ball are equally important to the final product, and each sno-ball maker protects his own syrup recipes. In fact, a majority of the recipes at Hansen’s Sno-Bliz in Uptown, Williams Plum Street Snowballs near Riverbend, and Sal’s Sno-Balls in Old Metairie have survived several generations of stand ownership.
As you might expect to find in a subtropical city, New Orleans’ flavored ice tradition dates back to a time when vendors shaved the ice by hand and carried just a small selection of flavorings. “Tee Eva” Perry remembers choosing between just strawberry, spearmint, and pineapple syrups to flavor the coarse scraped ice at her neighborhood stand. Then, in the 1930s, two sno-ball pioneers—George Ortolano and Ernest Hansen—independently built the city’s first electric ice-shaving machines. While George’s descendants still produce and sell a version of the Ortolano machine at the company SnoWizard, Ernest Hansen built his machines primarily for personal use. His legacy is in the family sno-ball stand, still run today by his granddaughter, Ashley Hansen.
Ortolano, Hansen, Eisenmann, Dennery—tied to New Orleans’ first sno-ball machines and extracts, these names are spoken again and again in our interviews. They are the people who helped turn New Orleans into what Bubby Wendling at Southern Snow Manufacturing calls the world’s sno-ball Mecca.
In spite of the sno-ball’s nostalgic appeal, flavor innovation is rampant. You’ll hear Claude and Donna Black talking about concocting Plum Street’s new king cake flavor. Steven Bel’s customers at Sal’s are stuffing orange dreamsicle sno-balls (a recent addition) with soft-serve ice cream. Bubby Wendling makes a novelty buttered popcorn extract. And Dylan Williams goes entirely new-school by flavoring his sno with minimally sweetened fresh-fruit juices.
These interviews only scratch the surface of New Orleans’ sno-ball culture, which is as varied and deep as the city’s neighborhoods. But one sentiment, one word, arose during nearly every one, at least where the sno-balls themselves were concerned: “Fun.”
