The Crescent City’s subtropical climate and long, brutal summers necessitate taking cold treats seriously. While plenty of incredible old-school Italian gelaterias, ice cream parlors, and frozen daiquiri shops dot the city’s landscape, it’s sno-balls that put the joy in the city’s most punishing season.
These brightly colored, icy clouds of sweet syrup are uniquely able to coax people from beneath the comforting blasts of AC to stand in a line outside under the assault of temperatures in the high 90s at 76-percent humidity.
The New Orleans sno-ball isn’t the same as the more widely known snow cone. I’m not trying to put down the snow cone, but texturally a New Orleans sno-ball is to a snow cone what freshly fallen snow is to the ice scraped off car windshields in colder climates. One is ethereal, while the latter is often coarse, granular, and crunchy, giving the syrup no chance to penetrate it.
The sno-ball took root during the dark days of the Depression when two men, grocer George Ortolano and machinist Ernest Hansen, independently invented shaved ice machines, revolutionizing the cool confection and making it accessible — and much lighter and fluffier.
Before that, roving street vendors had peddled icy treats, shaving large blocks of ice by hand and carrying a small selection of syrups with them.
With the introduction of the sno-ball machine, sno-balls moved to corner stores and then, eventually, to sno-ball stands. There, sno-ball purveyors perfected recipes for their own syrups and started offering toppings. The most beloved stands still make their own syrups — customizing your sno-ball by combining flavors and adding toppings like condensed milk, or stuffing sno-balls with vanilla ice cream is part of the fun. The Riverbend’s Sno-La even stuffs its sno-balls with cheesecake. A handful of restaurants add boozy sno-balls to their line-ups once summer rolls around.
Overall Best: Hansen’s Sno-Bliz
The joy-filled, cinderblock grande dame of sno-ball shops is New Orleans’s oldest and probably best-known sno-ball stand, with a 2-014 well-deserved James Beard Classics Award and almost a century of operations behind it.
Founded in 1935 by Hansenand at the corner of Tchoupitoulas and Bourdeaux, the line almost always stretches far out the screen doors. People smile and chat as they wait along a yellow-painted line along the sidewalk, often called the “yellow brick road.” (An extra layer of sunscreen comes in handy for the wait.)
The flavor list is long, with traditional flavors like wild cherry, bubblegum, and grape in addition to the tart Sno-Bliz, which tastes a little like a Sweetarts; cream flavors like cream of nectar; and “fancy” options like sweet tea, cardamon, and honey lavender. Toppings are plentiful (marshmallow fluff, ice cream, and more). I like to order my sno-ball with condensed milk served “lasagna-style,” meaning the condensed milk is layered between the ice and syrup.
The difference between a good sno-ball stand and a great sno-ball stand goes beyond flavors, toppings, and ice. Today the always-smiling Ashley Hansen, granddaughter of the founders, shaves ice with the same machine her grandfather invented in the 1930s and pours syrup from the same bottles her grandparents used, making this iconic sno-ball shop an important thread in the New Orleans food narrative.
I’m not breaking any ground putting Hansen’s in my top spot, but it’s the sno-ball stand that I don’t think this city could live without. Eating a Hansen’s sno-ball feels important, a rite of summer in New Orleans.
More Great Sno-ball Stands
Williams Plum St. Snowballs
Everyone’s favorite sno-ball shop is probably the one in their neighborhood (or the one they visited as a child). Just like corner stores did in the past, sno-ball shops anchor New Orleans neighborhoods and become little community hubs — Williams Plum St. Snowballs is my favorite.
Williams Plum St. Snowballs was a corner grocery when WWII POW Sydney Williams turned it into a furniture and hardware store in 1945 with sno-balls served out the back door. Eventually he closed the furniture store, and the sno-ball stand took over. A modest brown and yellow building at the corner of two residential streets in the Carrollton neighborhood, you won’t encounter this stand unless you seek it out. Current owners Donna and Claude Black (a fan since childhood) still serve sno-balls in Chinese food take-out containers, a tradition started by Williams. The pair uses many of the original recipes (like made-from-scratch chocolate) and added new ones like strawberry shortcake, bananas Foster, and king cake along the way. The flavors rarely change, allowing them to identify their customers by their favorite sno-ball flavors, as only a neighborhood shop could.
Imperial Woodpecker, the polished little Magazine Street sno-ball walk-up owned by Neesa Peterson, recently started pitching sno-balls on Freret and at the Batture, the forthcoming 10-acre development on the banks of the Mississippi near Audubon Park. Like the best sno-ball spots, it has perfectly fluffy ice and fancy syrups. Enjoying a sno-ball that hasn’t melted yet alongside the Batture’s expansive view of the Mississippi River is about as good as summer gets.
My favorite flavors are the luxurious cardamom cream, cereal milk, and Earl Grey cream. Strawberry-basil and pineapple-cilantro are both incredibly refreshing during the summer.
This newcomer to the Bywater owned by burlesque and drag duo Kitten N’ Lou definitely wins the award for best name. It has quickly worked its way into a lot of hearts with natural, small-batch, and seasonal sno-ball flavors like pistachio lemon cream, peach cobbler, and sweet corn and basil. They also serve “regular” flavors like dill pickle. Fridays bring “flight nights” with three minis with different flavors. You can turn your sno-ball into a “mimosa” by adding prosecco. Plus, the shop is incredibly cute, all decked out in the red and white stripes of a circus tent. All this to show that at places like this, the sno-ball is alive and well — and definitely not stuck in the past.
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