Back in the early days for Angelo Brocato Ice Cream, back when it started in the French Quarter more than a century ago, it was common for customers to queue up on hot summer mornings toting their own pitchers.
They filled them with lemon granita, the somewhat sweet, mostly tart, wondrously chilly treat that today often goes by the anglicized name Italian ice. Back in the day, these customers, mainly first generation Italian immigrants, were getting their granita for breakfast. The story goes that they’d bring home the frozen, slushy glass pitchers from Angelo Brocato’s and dip their seeded Italian bread in it as a cold start to the hot day.
My question: can we rewind to those days please?
Yes, times have changed. Angelo Brocato’s long ago relocated to Mid-City, it isn’t open at breakfast time, and anyway I wouldn’t trade modern air conditioning for old school Italian ice. But still, in the depths of a New Orleans summer, you can’t blame a guy for fantasizing for a frozen treat.
When these yearnings hit, the sno-ball stand is the instinctual oasis in New Orleans. But like granita, different cultures offer different icy answers to the swelter, and today New Orleans has access to more to them.
Take, for instance, the phenomenon of the Vietnamese freeze. Lots of people now crave Vietnamese soups and spring rolls, but Vietnamese desserts remain a little more obscure. When you spot them at restaurants they’re often in display cases by the cash register, sitting in plastic cups and looking like chunky, gelatinous mysteries. But when I ordered up one called three-layer dessert it underwent a serious makeover in the kitchen. It arrived in a sundae glass layered with lightly sweet beans, minty green gelatin cubes, a shot of coconut milk as thick as frosting and a glacier cap of crushed ice.
And then there’s bingsu, a Korean shaved ice dish that now has its own dedicated parlor inside a West Bank grocery called Hong Kong Market. Go past the produce section and you’ll find a colorful little spot called Yum Yang Ice. Bingsu is shaved ribbon-thin and served as layer upon layer upon micro layer, and that’s just the start. The toppings can range from broken candy bits to a powdery coating of crushed green tea, but the real kicker for bingsu is the way they’ll build a bouquet of fresh fruit over the icy base, which makes it taste lighter and doubly refreshing.
On Magazine Street a different type of bingsu is having its day at a restaurant called Little Korea. Order bingsu here, and the staff starts mixing water, milk and syrup right then and there. It’s poured into some kind of magical, super-fast freezing machine, and as you watch it’s turned into a delicate, milky snow. This gets piled up in glass bowls the size of small aquariums and finished with flavors of green tea, sweet red bean or toasty almond.
It’s been a long summer, and it’s not nearly over yet. When your hand starts grasping for something cold, when the prospect of brain freeze starts to sound appealing, remember that the answer can stretch from a good old sno-ball to a whole world on ice.
Granita (Italian ice)
Angelo Brocato
214 N. Carrollton Ave., New Orleans, 504-486-1465
Vietnamese frozen dessert:
Tan Dinh
1705 Lafayette St., Gretna, 504-361-8008
Bingsu (Korean shaved ice)
Little Korea BBQ
2240 Magazine St., New Orleans, 504-821-5006
Yum-Yang Ice,
925 Behrman Hwy., Terrytown, 504-309-8622
