Once more, there will be "No shortcuts to quality"

Hansen's is back. Never take it for granted.

Hansen's Sno-Bliz back in business
Friday, May 26, 2006
By Brett Anderson
Restaurant writer

The sweetest spot in New Orleans come summer? In the minds of scores of locals, it's Hansen's Sno-Bliz Shop, the cinder block snowball stand at 4801 Tchoupitoulas St.

But its belated opening for the summer season on Saturday comes at the end of certainly the most sorrow-filled months in the business' 67 years.

Neither Mary nor Ernest Hansen, the founders who'd been married 72 years, will be on hand to dispense pleasantries or fluffy cream of strawberry snowballs. Mary passed away Sept. 8, at the age of 95, after evacuating to a nursing home in Thibodaux. Ernest, inventor of the Sno-Bliz machine that yields the stand's preternaturally fine ice shavings, succumbed to cancer in March.

Ashley Hansen, Mary and Ernest's granddaughter, will -- with the help of her father, Orleans Magistrate Judge Gerard Hansen -- keep the New Orleans tradition alive.

"We had 1,200 pounds of ice delivered today," she reported on Wednesday. Hansen's will be open only Friday through Sunday, at least at the beginning, until it can be adequately staffed.

"We don't have any employees yet," Ashley said of the family-run institution, "because we've never had to hire anybody before."