Hansen's Sno-Bliz and the Machine Ernest Built

A New Orleans sno-ball is not a snow cone. The ice is shaved as fine as snow and soaked with syrup, and Hansen's, at 4801 Tchoupitoulas Street, is one of the places that set the standard. In the 1930s Ernest Hansen built his own electric machine for shaving block ice, which he called the Sno-Bliz; the machine still in use was built in 1939, and he received a patent in 1950. His wife, Mary, made the syrups, and the James Beard Foundation dates the couple's shop to 1939. After Hurricane Katrina and the deaths of both founders, their granddaughter Ashley Hansen reopened in 2006 and kept the syrups homemade, including the house flavor called cream of nectar. In 2014 the James Beard Foundation named Hansen's one of America's Classics. It opens seasonally, roughly spring through fall.