SFA | Oral History | New Orleans Eats

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.]

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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.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

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 sweep 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.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

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