Arthur
Brocato
Angelo Brocato Ice Cream & Confectionery
214 N. Carrollton Ave.
New Orleans, LA
(504) 486-1465
In a certain sense, Angelo Brocato Ice Cream & Confectionery has come a long way since its founder immigrated from Cefalù, Sicily, and opened the store in 1905. For instance, the business relocated from the French Quarter (an Italian neighborhood at the turn of the last century) to Mid-City in the 1980s. Also, Angelo’s descendents have significantly expanded his original menu of gelato in the summer and cannoli in the winter. On top of that, the shop underwent two renovations in just two years: first for its hundredth anniversary celebration, and then again after taking on four feet of Katrina’s floodwaters.
The Sicilian ice cream parlor nevertheless is steeped in Old-World charm, from the vintage neon sign out front, to the glass-top café tables and the shiny copper espresso machine within. Patrons feel as though they’re partaking in history with each scoop of stracciatella gelato, each slice of torroncino, each biscotti di regina paved with sesame seeds. Indeed they are. The third-generation proprietor, Arthur Brocato, who currently runs the shop with his wife, Jolie, and the help of multiple family members, is vigilant about using Sicilian recipes. Many of them were passed down from Angelo himself.
Listen to this 1-minute audio clip of Arthur Brocato describing some of the traditional Italian desserts served at Brocato’s Ice Cream & Confectionery. Go here to download the player for free.] What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
SUBJECT: Arthur Brocato
LOCATION: Angelo Brocato Ice Cream & Confectionery, Carrollton Avenue,
New Orleans
DATE: February 17, 2007
INTERVIEWER: Sara Roahen, writer and SFA member
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Sara Roahen: This is Sara Roahen for the
Southern Foodways Alliance. It’s Saturday, February 17th. I’m
in New Orleans, Louisiana at Angelo Brocato’s ice cream shop. [Laughs]
Could you tell me your name and what you do for a living?
Arthur
Brocato: I’m Arthur Brocato and I’m the owner and operator
of Angelo Brocato’s Ice Cream and Confectionery in New Orleans,
and have been doing this basically all my life.
And I would add not only the owner but you make—?
I’m the—right [Laughs], owner, operator, baker, ice cream
maker, customer service, you name it.
Can you start with telling me when the shop opened, and where it was
then, and who opened it?
Well the shop was opened in 1905 in the French Quarter by my grandfather,
Angelo Brocato, Sr. He—my grandfather was born in Sicily in a town
called Cefalù, about 90 miles from Palermo, and he learned the
trade as an apprentice from 12 years old. They were—his father and
mother and brothers and sisters were here in America probably in the late
1870s, when my grandfather’s dad passed away with the yellow fever
epidemic and his mother returned to—having no family here returned
to—to Sicily with her children, you know, where there was more family
close by and they returned to Palermo. They lived in Palermo and that’s
where at the age of 12 my grandfather worked in several of the pastry
and gelaterias and restaurants in Palermo.
So did he go to school?
Some schooling—not much, no, not a lot of formal schooling. Things
were, you know, pretty rough in Sicily financially and so the children
in the family had to work, you know to help support everyone. So he and
one of his brothers went to work in the—in the pastry places and
the other brother—well his oldest brother, Salvatore, was a shoemaker,
just as his father was, and so they, you know, they managed that way and
he—he worked in the pastry places and became a master of the trade
over time and joined the Italian navy at 18 years old. In Italy, everyone
there—all the males—had to perform their duty to the country
so—. When he came out of the navy he came to Louisiana and worked
in the sugarcane plantations in Donaldsonville, cutting cane to try to
make enough money to—he was already married—to bring his family
here and to open up his own shop. His first shop was on—actually
it was on Decatur Street right off of Ursulines, and that area of the
French Quarter—from say St. Ann to Esplanade, from the French Market
to Rampart—was the, basically the Italian neighborhood in the turn
of the century. The first ice cream he made was a torroncino, which is
a cinnamon and almond ice cream.
Which you make?
Which we still make and we serve it the same way in a rectangular block
sliced. There were no such things as cones then. Or dipped ice cream.
Everything was—was in slices, and then he did vanilla and chocolate
and the combination of vanilla and chocolate, and he introduced the spumoni,
which was a little too sophisticated for its time…And then he did
the lemon ice and that was served—that wasn’t served in a
slice like the—like the torroncino and spumoni or vanilla and chocolate;
it was served in a glass—soft, right from the machine and went into
the glass and served with a spoon. The Italian people in the neighborhood
would use that as their breakfast. They would come in with their warm
Italian bread and they would dip the bread in the lemon ice and that was
the breakfast.
Can you describe the three things that you’ve mentioned, the
torroncino, the spumoni, and the cassata?
Well the torroncino is a vanilla based ice cream with cinnamon—ground
cinnamon and almonds. The spumoni is a three-flavored ice cream layered
and made in a mold, and it has pistachio, tutti-frutti, lemon, and it
has a special whipped cream center and it’s sliced into a—a
wedge. The cassata is the same as the spumoni but it has a layer of fruit
and cake in it. And you know, cassata was very elegant and used a lot
for people who had special occasions, if they have a baptism or bridal—wedding
shower or something like that.
Do people still use it that way?
No, that has changed over the years. We—unfortunately
we’ve lost a lot of the traditions for some things like that.
How long did the shop stay in the French Quarter?
Well the shop was in the French Quarter until 1981. He started off in
the one store in Decatur around the corner from Ursulines and then moved
a few doors down on Ursulines. He was there a short time and then he moved
to around two doors down on—on Ursulines…And then he moved
two doors down again [Laughs] where, he was there until 1921—’21—’22,
when he bought his own building in the 600-block of Ursulines, which most
people remember today—615-617 Ursulines, and it was that store that
he tiled and recreated the—one of the I guess most fashionable places
in New Orleans for having ice cream, trying to model it after some of
the places in Palermo. He had the white tile—ceramic tiled—floor
and walls all the way to the ceiling; the craft-tech ceilings and the
cornices, which were all decorative—archways—tiled archways.
So it was a very elegant place—the ceiling fans; big parlor, two
sides; had 20 tables at—at its peak. When the automobile became
more popular we even had car service. Actually my mother and two of my
aunts were car hops.
Was she [Arthur’s mother] from an Italian family also?
Yeah, yeah. LoCicero. And they lived in the neighborhood. They lived on
St. Philip and Dauphine. The neighborhood began to change after World
War II with—the city started to expand toward the lake. People started
to move out of the French Quarter—families started to move out—the
Italian families started moving out of the French Quarter and they would
come
back to the French Quarter to get their desserts for the holidays and
go to the Morning Call. But as the cars became more popular parking became
more of a problem; people’s patterns changed so they stayed and
became more suburban. And so with the—with the people moving out,
they wouldn’t come back down to the French Quarter for those—those
particular things. It was too much of a hassle and they would get a parking
ticket or get their car towed away. [Laughs] So we had to make a decision;
the family decided to sell the building in the late ‘60s; or my
grandmother sold it actually, before she died, and we remained there for
quite a number of years. But as the population moved out we had to try
to reach farther out in order to remain in business without having to
establish another retail store someplace else and then have two or three
stores. It would have been very difficult to manage; it’s a family
business. So we purchased the building on Carrollton in 1978 and renovated
it.
I’m assuming that for a while during your childhood parts of your
family still lived in the Quarter—?
Yeah. Actually I grew up and was born in the Quarter and grew up in the
Quarter, and I remained there until I was 19 years-old. And we—we
lived always a block and a half from the store; we lived on Dauphine Street
between St. Philip and Ursulines. I went to St. Louis Cathedral school—my
brothers and sisters and I; it was—the Quarter at the time was—there
were children in the Quarter. [Laughs] You went down the street, you knew
almost everybody in their house. When I grew up it was the last—the
tail-end of that; it was still a few families left and—but the Quarter
was in the changing mode—more professional people moving in, a lot
of apartments, and things like that but you know there were—there
were the shopkeepers there when we were kids, all the little shops, the
grocery stores; we had hardware stores, clothing stores—anything
you wanted you could get in the French Quarter. Drugstores, and you didn’t
need a car, and most of our life we didn’t own a car. We walked
from the house to the shop or to Canal Street to do shopping, or caught
the bus or the streetcar. It was a very unique place and, you know, we
had—it was a tight knit neighborhood so you knew everyone…It
was like an old New Orleans neighborhood and people in the suburbs just
cannot connect to that.
Until what year did Angelo Brocato live?
My grandfather passed away in 1946 and was 71 years old. He worked in
his business until basically he died. There was no such thing as retirement.
He loved the business; he was a very hard-working man. He—he started
making ice cream before—without a hand crank. He would turn the
barrel of the freezer by hand and the ice cream was made with ice and
salt, and scraped the sides of the freezer with a big knife to make the
ice cream. He made ice cream in the summer months and in the winter months
he make cannoli and cookies, and you didn’t make cannolis in the
summer. Easter Sunday was the magical day; Easter Sunday was the last—the
only day you had both ice cream and you had cannolis. He even made a little
sandwich, a special Sicilian sandwich that he made in the winter months.
So you’re the third generation.
We would work—the boys, when we became about nine years old—we
had to go to the shop you know on the weekends and in the summer months.
You just couldn’t hang around the house. We had to do something.
No videogames?
No, there was no such thing as videogames. You had to go to the shop,
you know, and sw
eep
the floor and clean the tables and squeeze lemons or—do something.
You worked a few hours a day—it was about four hours a day doing
something and then you were free to go. If you wanted to come back at
night, when it was busier, and wait on customers and on tables and make
some tips, you could.
Did you like being at the shop?
Yeah, I enjoyed it. We all enjoyed it because it was family there. My
grandmother was there, my aunts. She had a kitchen in the back that she’d
cook dinner, and we had an uncle and aunt that lived upstairs on the second
floor and so it was—it was just like being at home, you know. It
was a family—.
Did you do anything in between?
No, I didn’t. I’m the only one in the family that didn’t
do anything in between. I was—I was a student at Loyola and actually
I was going into accounting and I majored in accounting and graduated
in 1974. I used to help my dad on the weekends, and in the summer I would
work over there with him, and then in 1973 my uncle retired. He had problems
with his legs and he couldn’t do the type of work anymore. So my
dad decided that he didn’t know what he was going to do and I said
I’ll help you and, you know, we’ll work it out; so—.
Here I am today 33 years later. [Laughs]
What about the next generation? Is there anyone from the youngest generation?
No, not really. They’ve all worked here at some point in time but
no one ever took that much of an interest to stay—unfortunately.
What about the recipes that you use, you know, that your grandfather
made? Do you have those recipes written down?
Well they’re written down. Things that you do regularly all the
time, you don’t need to look at it; it’s all in your head.
But we’ve started to put some of them on the computer so that we
don’t lose our papers like we did with Katrina. [Laughs]
Can you talk about the—I mean, I call them cookies but you called
the little baked goods that you make the biscotti?
The fig cookies are called cuccidati. Basically almost all the Italian
cookies are biscotti because biscotti means biscuit. And also they say
twice-baked; some—some cookies are twice baked, but not all of them.
Because most of your Italian cookies are used not as a—a cookie
just to eat like that. You know they—they were made to eat with
wine, with coffee, and not just to eat as a snack. They were used to dip
and that’s why they—most of them don’t have a lot of
shortening in them; most of them are hard and dry. They were made to last.
A lot of Sicilian cookies like we make are of Arabic origin. And they
were used to travel; they were—you know, they were used to keep
a long time, so they wouldn’t get stale or get moldy.
Can you say for the record why the Sicilians honor St. Joseph every
year?
Well it goes back to the famines in Sicily, and St. Joseph is the patron
of the family; he was a provider for Mary and Joseph and also the patron
of Sicily. When there were famines people prayed to St. Joseph for rain
for the crops to grow. There was nothing to eat; the only thing they had
that would grow was fava beans, and the fava beans they used to feed the
animals. When we were kids I heard them call them horse beans. They would
cook them and then eat them and that’s why they call them lucky
beans, because they were lucky to have them to survive…So they put
altar food on his feast day, and they fed the poor and they had a feast.
And that’s how the tradition grew and it was carried on here to
America when the Sicilian immigrants in New Orleans, having such an intense
Sicilian population—they brought these traditions with them. And
it was not only—became not only to pray to Saint Joseph for the
food; it was to pray to Saint Joseph for anything you may need. [Laughs]
And if your favor was granted you’d put up an altar of food.
There is also a tradition, I know, when you go to an altar you get a little
goody bag of maybe some cookies and a fava bean and a piece of bread—.
Right, right, that had evolved—you know it’s like the Italian
people; you go eat at their house and take something home with you.
You know how you get a little piece of stale bread sometimes that people
store until there’s a hurricane? Did people do that when you were
growing up?
The blessed bread—the altar table is blessed by the priest and he
prays over it, and the blessed Saint Joseph bread—you kept that
and you didn’t throw that away. You could eat it stale if you wanted
with coffee, but you didn’t throw it in the garbage can, all right.
You kept it in your house as a protection and when—if there was
a storm or heavy rain storm, you’d take a piece of that bread and
you’d throw it out into the storm to say a prayer and ask Saint
Joseph to kind of quiet the storm. You can believe it works or you don’t
believe it works.
And did you do that before Katrina?
I didn’t throw it out and that was my mistake. [Laughs] It would
have been a major miracle if everybody there was a flood around except
us. [Laughs] But we took—we had a piece in the building in the back
and before we left we put it on the table, but at least the water didn’t
get that high. [Laughs] Now my brother, he threw it out before he left.
His house didn’t flood. [Laughs] It was in Metairie and the house
next door flooded. [Laughs] The houses around him flooded but his house
didn’t flood.
So how much water did you have in here for Katrina?
We had about four and a half feet.
And then how long did it take you to reopen?
Thirteen months—Katrina was in August and we reopened the end of
September—we opened 
September
23rd, my dad’s birthday, so it was 13 months almost to the day that
we reopened.
Did you consider not reopening after Katrina?
Yeah, I didn’t know whether we would be able to return here. I knew
I had to go ahead—I had to still work to make a living. [Laughs]
There was a choice of either getting a job somewhere in some type of food
service business, or opening up the store someplace else. And when we
were told at first that you couldn’t come back because they wouldn’t
have the water pumped out for six months, you couldn’t go back home
for maybe three months, you know—that’s a long time. The question
was, would these buildings survive? What would six months of these facilities
under water, the equipment under water for six months—there’s
no way—there’s no way anything would survive. We had some
insurance but not nearly enough to put things back to what we had. We
didn’t know what the condition of the population is going to be.
How can we open up to something that we—we didn’t have any
people back? So we had several considerations. We were in Houston and
we thought about opening up a little place in Houston, a little retail
store. And we looked around because all we had was time on our hands.
And we looked around and nothing seemed like home. It was very suburban,
and it just didn’t have that same feeling. Then we had Hurricane
Rita. [Laughs] And then we began to think, you know—we were thinking
more along the line of Baton Rouge; it’s still Louisiana. Louisiana
for all of its problems has a culture of its own, more of a European culture
than Texas. So I said well, maybe we should think on seeing some friends
in—in Baton Rouge, and we were looking around there… And after
we got here and, you know, we assessed the damage and all that and first
we had to clean out the building. We couldn’t leave things the way
they were. So once the buildings were cleaned out—cleared out—we
looked at it all and said well, it doesn’t look so bad—as
it looked before. It smelled bad but it doesn’t look bad. And there
was still a population in Jefferson Parish and Uptown...We said well,
there is still a market here…And that’s how we decided to
reopen and, like I said, the response we had when we opened was overwhelming
and looking at it now I guess we made the right decision for right now.
To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.