GeauxTo
11-14-2007, 01:13 PM
This is a neat read. Here is a link with pics: eG Forums -> Hansen's Sno Bliz (http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=90896&hl=hansen)
Enjoy!
by Todd A. Price
Ashley Hansen (http://amazon.com/gp/product/B000IAEF26?ie=UTF8&tag=egulletsociety-20&link_code=em1&camp=212341&creative=384061&creativeASIN=B000IAEF26&adid=c1c20c29-19d6-4b34-870a-47f7ad3bb455) hefts a box of paper cups out of her 1999 VW Golf and makes space for a week's supply of sugar, chocolate and evaporated milk. Shopping is the hardest part of her day. It's eight in the morning on a hot Thursday in July. Yesterday Mr. Duplantier delivered enough ice to last through Sunday. Today, at one o'clock, Hansen's Sno-Bliz, the best snowball stand in New Orleans (http://amazon.com/gp/product/B000BVCCG8?ie=UTF8&tag=egulletsociety-20&link_code=em1&camp=212341&creative=384061&creativeASIN=B000BVCCG8&adid=259660a4-4fd3-4ea6-b665-6a8e4a1ba019), opens for the week.
Hansen's sits on a corner of Tchoupitoulas Street, which winds along the Mississippi River (http://amazon.com/gp/product/0684810468?ie=UTF8&tag=egulletsociety-20&link_code=em1&camp=212341&creative=384061&creativeASIN=0684810468&adid=34876297-cce6-49b5-8de2-e105e4b70dfc) and separates the port from the historically working-class Irish Channel neighborhood. One of the older areas of the city, it's several feet above sea level and escaped flooding when the levees failed after Katrina. Ashley lives next door to the stand in a renovated house that belonged to her great-grandfather. She was 15 when she began working behind the counter at Hansen's with her unwavering smile. Now she's 34, although anyone would guess that she's five years younger. Her grandparents, Mary and Ernest Hansen, opened the snowball stand in 1939. Mary died eight days after the storm at the age of 95. Ernest, a year younger, died six months later. Since then, Ashley has run Hansen's Sno-Bliz on her own.
A snowball is like a snow cone in roughly the same way that foie gras is like chopped liver. The shaved ice, drenched in flavored syrup, is as soft as snow. And the best, fluffiest snowballs are made by Hansen's. Ernest, a machinist, built the first motorized, all stainless steel ice-shaving machine in 1934. He didn't want his son eating snowballs shaved by dirty, sweaty hands. "He always told me that his inspiration were the drills that went through rock for oil rigs," Ashley says. "He wanted something that would go through ice like that." In 1939, when his wife made snowballs her full-time business, he built the machine still used today. In 68 years, the blades have never needed sharpening. Mary knew her ice and syrups— strawberry for the kids and chocolate for the parents—were the best in the town, and she charged two cents when other snowballs cost a penny.
New Orleans agrees that Hansen's Sno-Bliz still beats the rest. In the 2007 Zagat Survey (http://amazon.com/gp/product/1570061173?ie=UTF8&tag=egulletsociety-20&link_code=em1&camp=212341&creative=384061&creativeASIN=1570061173&adid=2428fd58-2e5e-4329-a4c4-0c947cb2d275), Hansen't got a 29 out of 30 for food quality. "It's so funny," Ashley says, "we rate up there with the French Laundry (http://amazon.com/gp/product/157965293X?ie=UTF8&tag=egulletsociety-20&link_code=em1&camp=212341&creative=384061&creativeASIN=157965293X&adid=9e26a44b-408c-4040-a2f1-dbf2fd5ea587) and we're just a little cinderblock stand on Tchoupitoulas." When Danny Meyer sought inspiration for the Shake Shack in New York, he visited Hansen's and took to heart its motto that "There is no shortcut to quality." Richard Coraine, chief operating officer for Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group, says, "I still have the picture of me standing by their refrigerator with that sign taped to the door. Their small batch method of daily syrups was inspirational for our daily custard calendar as well." Ashley will also tell you that Hansen's makes the best snowball in New Orleans. For her, though, it's a matter of faith.
"I've never had another snowball," she says. "I know how much work we put into it, and I know that they can't be putting the work into it that we do."
When Ashley returned to New Orleans and told her grandparents that she wanted to work full-time at the snowball stand, she feared they were on the verge of the closing it for good. "Naively, I thought they would hand over the keys and let me do it," she says. "Instead, they asked, 'When can you come get us?'" She worked with them—Mary greeting customers and Ernest shaving the ice—for nine years. From the beginning, though, Ashley ran the place. She did the shopping. She mixed the syrups. But if a customer asked, she said that Mary still made the syrups.
"People like myths," Ashley says. "Up until the last year people were asking if my grandmother was still making the syrups, and I said yes. She was 95, but people wanted to believe the myth." And Mary would swear that she still did it. "My grandmother always said, 'Don't contradict me in public.'"
At first, after Ashley came back, Mary's dementia made her aggressive. She accused Ashley of stealing her car. She got angry with customers. She hit her husband. And then, a few years before she died, she became calm. "At that point," Ashley says, "she was happy to be taken care of and be loved."
Her grandfather, the inventor and master machinist, never suffered from senility. "His problem," she says, "is that he would make shit up." (Ashley curses more and more as snowball season drags on, but never in front of customers.) If someone graduated from Tulane University, then Ernest graduated from Tulane. If a customer was a World War II history buff, then Ernest, who couldn't enlist because of cataracts and bad knees, would talk about his time overseas on a U- Boat. In 1992 he had an aneurism, and at the hospital he told a German nurse that he knees were still full of shrapnel from when the Nazis shot him down behind enemy lines. The hospital was about to run extra tests before his son set them straight. "Wait until your obituary comes out," Ashley used to tell him, "and people find out that you never did any of this stuff."
"This may sound egotistical," Ashley says, "but I really extended my grandparents' lives for 10 years."
Gerard arrives, but first he must sign a warrant for a cop waiting outside. Policemen get free snowballs at Hansen's, so they prefer to track down the judge here instead of in his chambers. Gerard loads a block of ice into the machine built the same year he was born. Outside, a family idles in their mini-van waiting for the doors to open. Soon, a crowd will be standing on the painted yellow line that directs traffic along the pink concrete floor.
Enjoy!
by Todd A. Price
Ashley Hansen (http://amazon.com/gp/product/B000IAEF26?ie=UTF8&tag=egulletsociety-20&link_code=em1&camp=212341&creative=384061&creativeASIN=B000IAEF26&adid=c1c20c29-19d6-4b34-870a-47f7ad3bb455) hefts a box of paper cups out of her 1999 VW Golf and makes space for a week's supply of sugar, chocolate and evaporated milk. Shopping is the hardest part of her day. It's eight in the morning on a hot Thursday in July. Yesterday Mr. Duplantier delivered enough ice to last through Sunday. Today, at one o'clock, Hansen's Sno-Bliz, the best snowball stand in New Orleans (http://amazon.com/gp/product/B000BVCCG8?ie=UTF8&tag=egulletsociety-20&link_code=em1&camp=212341&creative=384061&creativeASIN=B000BVCCG8&adid=259660a4-4fd3-4ea6-b665-6a8e4a1ba019), opens for the week.
Hansen's sits on a corner of Tchoupitoulas Street, which winds along the Mississippi River (http://amazon.com/gp/product/0684810468?ie=UTF8&tag=egulletsociety-20&link_code=em1&camp=212341&creative=384061&creativeASIN=0684810468&adid=34876297-cce6-49b5-8de2-e105e4b70dfc) and separates the port from the historically working-class Irish Channel neighborhood. One of the older areas of the city, it's several feet above sea level and escaped flooding when the levees failed after Katrina. Ashley lives next door to the stand in a renovated house that belonged to her great-grandfather. She was 15 when she began working behind the counter at Hansen's with her unwavering smile. Now she's 34, although anyone would guess that she's five years younger. Her grandparents, Mary and Ernest Hansen, opened the snowball stand in 1939. Mary died eight days after the storm at the age of 95. Ernest, a year younger, died six months later. Since then, Ashley has run Hansen's Sno-Bliz on her own.
A snowball is like a snow cone in roughly the same way that foie gras is like chopped liver. The shaved ice, drenched in flavored syrup, is as soft as snow. And the best, fluffiest snowballs are made by Hansen's. Ernest, a machinist, built the first motorized, all stainless steel ice-shaving machine in 1934. He didn't want his son eating snowballs shaved by dirty, sweaty hands. "He always told me that his inspiration were the drills that went through rock for oil rigs," Ashley says. "He wanted something that would go through ice like that." In 1939, when his wife made snowballs her full-time business, he built the machine still used today. In 68 years, the blades have never needed sharpening. Mary knew her ice and syrups— strawberry for the kids and chocolate for the parents—were the best in the town, and she charged two cents when other snowballs cost a penny.
New Orleans agrees that Hansen's Sno-Bliz still beats the rest. In the 2007 Zagat Survey (http://amazon.com/gp/product/1570061173?ie=UTF8&tag=egulletsociety-20&link_code=em1&camp=212341&creative=384061&creativeASIN=1570061173&adid=2428fd58-2e5e-4329-a4c4-0c947cb2d275), Hansen't got a 29 out of 30 for food quality. "It's so funny," Ashley says, "we rate up there with the French Laundry (http://amazon.com/gp/product/157965293X?ie=UTF8&tag=egulletsociety-20&link_code=em1&camp=212341&creative=384061&creativeASIN=157965293X&adid=9e26a44b-408c-4040-a2f1-dbf2fd5ea587) and we're just a little cinderblock stand on Tchoupitoulas." When Danny Meyer sought inspiration for the Shake Shack in New York, he visited Hansen's and took to heart its motto that "There is no shortcut to quality." Richard Coraine, chief operating officer for Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group, says, "I still have the picture of me standing by their refrigerator with that sign taped to the door. Their small batch method of daily syrups was inspirational for our daily custard calendar as well." Ashley will also tell you that Hansen's makes the best snowball in New Orleans. For her, though, it's a matter of faith.
"I've never had another snowball," she says. "I know how much work we put into it, and I know that they can't be putting the work into it that we do."
When Ashley returned to New Orleans and told her grandparents that she wanted to work full-time at the snowball stand, she feared they were on the verge of the closing it for good. "Naively, I thought they would hand over the keys and let me do it," she says. "Instead, they asked, 'When can you come get us?'" She worked with them—Mary greeting customers and Ernest shaving the ice—for nine years. From the beginning, though, Ashley ran the place. She did the shopping. She mixed the syrups. But if a customer asked, she said that Mary still made the syrups.
"People like myths," Ashley says. "Up until the last year people were asking if my grandmother was still making the syrups, and I said yes. She was 95, but people wanted to believe the myth." And Mary would swear that she still did it. "My grandmother always said, 'Don't contradict me in public.'"
At first, after Ashley came back, Mary's dementia made her aggressive. She accused Ashley of stealing her car. She got angry with customers. She hit her husband. And then, a few years before she died, she became calm. "At that point," Ashley says, "she was happy to be taken care of and be loved."
Her grandfather, the inventor and master machinist, never suffered from senility. "His problem," she says, "is that he would make shit up." (Ashley curses more and more as snowball season drags on, but never in front of customers.) If someone graduated from Tulane University, then Ernest graduated from Tulane. If a customer was a World War II history buff, then Ernest, who couldn't enlist because of cataracts and bad knees, would talk about his time overseas on a U- Boat. In 1992 he had an aneurism, and at the hospital he told a German nurse that he knees were still full of shrapnel from when the Nazis shot him down behind enemy lines. The hospital was about to run extra tests before his son set them straight. "Wait until your obituary comes out," Ashley used to tell him, "and people find out that you never did any of this stuff."
"This may sound egotistical," Ashley says, "but I really extended my grandparents' lives for 10 years."
Gerard arrives, but first he must sign a warrant for a cop waiting outside. Policemen get free snowballs at Hansen's, so they prefer to track down the judge here instead of in his chambers. Gerard loads a block of ice into the machine built the same year he was born. Outside, a family idles in their mini-van waiting for the doors to open. Soon, a crowd will be standing on the painted yellow line that directs traffic along the pink concrete floor.