Beach Snoballs in Treasure Island: a shivery taste of New Orleans
By Laura Reiley, Times Food Critic
In Print: Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Kimberly and James Boswell of Seminole opened Beach Snoballs in Treasure Island in March. The couple, both from New Orleans, have fond memories of the icy treat of their youth. There are about 40 flavor options, including wedding cake, tangerine dream and “frog in a blender.”
TREASURE ISLAND — It does it almost every time. A health scare rattles your cage, causes you to pause and refocus on your dreams. Kimberly Boswell's dream was of snow. She and her husband, James, grew up poor in New Orleans, she in the Gentilly Lakeview area, he in New Orleans East.
They ran around in the same circle in high school, James an avid skateboarder staying just one kickflip in front of trouble. What kept him out of harm's way: his mother and snow. Or, more accurately, sno.
Snoballs are a New Orleans delicacy. They are not snow cones. They are not Hawaiian shave ice. They are not even Baltimore-style snoballs, their closest relative. James' mom ran three New Orleans snoball stands, and at age 14 James started working the SnoWizard.
That's the machine that makes a New Orleans snoball possible. Invented during the Great Depression by George Ortolano as an inexpensive treat to generate extra cash for his grocery, it's a stainless steel box into which a block of ice is loaded and shaved into fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth snow. That snow gets flavored with fruit syrups, with sweet cream, with chocolate, even with soft-serve ice cream.
Last year, health problems caused Kimberly's thoughts to turn to the Wizard. She chucked her job as a litigation adjustor for an insurance company, and she and James, both 35, opened Beach Snoballs in Treasure Island (10927 Gulf Blvd.; (727) 415-8326). They bought their SnoWizard ($2,500), they bought an ice block maker that makes nine blocks every 10 hours ($5,000), they bought a reverse osmosis system to produce filtered water (a bunch more money). They were not kidding around.
The results have kindled a gleam in the eye of local New Orleans transplants and Katrina refugees. Like Proust and his madeleines, the snoball is an involuntary memory minefield, conjuring childhood summer afternoons of summer's swelter vanquished by a sweet cup of sno.
"In New Orleans," says Kimberly, "people add sweetened condensed milk, which came from the way they made old lemon icebox pies. And there's a traditional old-fashioned nectar with cream, almost a honeysuckle flavor with faint peach overtones, because one of the local grocery stores made what they called a nectar soda."
Topping options at Beach Snoballs are dizzying: wedding cake and tangerine dream, red hot and something called "frog in a blender," all of them accompanied by a couple of gummy bears to, as James says, bring everyone a smile. And the financial commitment is scant: $1.50 for a mini, $2 small, $2.50 medium, $3 large, $3.50 jumbo. What to choose for a maiden voyage?
James says, his accent a thick gumbo, "Gee whiz. My mother came up with a chocolate flavoring that's phenomenal, so I myself would choose the chocolate, and the Grasshopper is that chocolate and spearmint, tastes just like an Andes mint. And I love the Pink Flamingo. It's a nectar cream flavor, almost like ice cream without all the calories. And then there's New Orleans cream, which adds spice to your life."
Laura Reiley can be reached at lreiley@sptimes.com or (727) 892-2293. Her blog, the Mouth of Tampa Bay, is at www.blogs.tampabay.com/dining.
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