Big Easy Snowballs & Mardi Gras Snowballs

"Laissez les bons temps rouler"  (in 44 flavors)

Mardi Gras Snowballs (the shop on North Monroe, pictured to the left) and Big Easy Snowballs (the Food Truck) serve fluffy snowballs in the tradition of Sicilian immigrant to New Orleans George Ortolano (circa 1930's).  Mr. Ortolano saw the success of a snow cone business and wanted to do them one better, inventing a machine that created fine snow-like ice instead of the standard snow cone chunks.  Enter Mrs. O who experimented with flavoring and - here's the important part - added cream.

Their creations come in 44 different flavors (see them here), including cream flavors and sugar-free varieties. The specialty of the house is a "stuffed" snowball - a regular snowball in any flavor stuffed in the middle with French Vanilla soft serve ice cream.