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♪ I was just completely addicted to the Gold Brick, the Elmer's Gold Brick eggs.

I mean when you got the nuts in that solid chocolate egg, it was the greatest, just absolutely the greatest thing in the world.

Never had an Easter basket that didn't have lots of them in there.

♪ Falstaff was a bit different because it was really a national beer with a local brewery.

Falstaff had- was number one in the country at one time, and they had a lot of money behind them.

The local breweries kind of struggled, but they had a strong following.

People were just clannish.

They, they stuck to their local beers: the Dixie, the Jax, and the Falstaff.

And-well, you knew a lot of people that worked there so you try to support them.

♪ McKenzie's king cake was like a brioche.

And, uh, it was just very plain and just had the three colored sugars on it and two cherries at each end and the baby inside.

But it was a very plain, but just satisfying king cake.

♪ I could go to the corner grocery store, I could get myself a, uh, you know, a Big Shot cream soda, a nice big moon pie, and a bag of Dickey's potato chips.

So, you know, pretty good little extra money there.

I'm Peggy Scott Laborde.

In New Orleans, memories of how something tasted or smelled in our childhood, continues to be a popular topic at local dinner tables.

Not only taste, but the way the cellophane wrapper looked, or the signs that advertised a beloved product.

Let's look back at some of those revered brands, and savor a few that are still around today, stuff we have enjoyed eating, made in New Orleans.

♪ (Peggy Scott Laborde) As the jingle used to say, "Look on almost any corner."

Katz and Besthoff Drug Stores, better known as K and B or KB, was founded in 1905.

It was renowned for its soda fountain.

With at one point more than 75 stores, the soda fountain at a K and B was the perfect spot for breakfast, lunch or a treat from the ice cream menu, perhaps a nectar soda?

The flavor itself was developed by a pharmacist, I. L. Lyons, who moved to New Orleans from South Carolina after the Civil War.

He sold his nectar syrup to local soda fountains, but it became best known through K and B.

(male #1) And I don't think anyone's ever equaled K&B's nectar sodas.

It's a cross between almond and cherry.

If you could imagine that flavor with a red color and which became pink when you poured soda water on it, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream, a straw, a spoon.

Mwah!

Divine.

It's pink, the happiest pink color, and always topped with some whipped cream and a cherry.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Past the days of soda fountains, Katz and Besthoff continued to produce their own ice cream, and even a while after they sold the drugstore business to the Florida based Rite-Aid Corporation in 1997.

I remember VanChocStraw and all that stuff where they would, uh, intermingle the flavors.

No, I didn't have a favorite, but I know a lot of people who did.

Perhaps that butter pecan and a few others that they liked.

If I had to pick one as a favorite out of the rest I would have to say Creole Cream Cheese ice cream.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Before there was Creole Cream Cheese ice cream, there was Creole Cream cheese itself.

Creole cream cheese was the naturally forming cheese in the days before refrigeration and pasteurization when the fresh milk would begin to clabber.

The Creoles would take that clabbering milk, they would put it in cheese cloth and hang it in the shade of the oak trees.

And that cheese would drip until you had a single, soft curd cheese much like the consistency of a flan.

So it's the classic New Orleans cheese.

It's not Philadelphia Cream Cheese.

Do not go to the Philadelphia Cream Cheese section looking for Creole cream cheese.

It is like a bowl of hardened, mmm, cream cheese in some milk down in the bottom that you have to put some sugar on.

I can remember visiting my grandmother's house in Lakeview uh, and every Saturday and Sunday morning, I got Gold Seal cream cheese, creole cream cheese in a bowl of celeste figs.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Salvador Centanni, Sr. learned the dairy business from his father, a Sicilian immigrant.

He started his own creamery in the Mid-City neighborhood in the 1920s.

Initially the business he and his wife Myra built was very hands on.

They milked their cows and they delivered milk with the horse and wagon.

And it was just "Centanni's Dairy," you know so as years went on things got bigger and better and they figured they should have a brand name.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) And soon that brand name for the creamery came from an early example of recycling.

They used to buy orange juice from Florida and distribute it in glass quart bottles, exactly like milk bottles orange juice came in.

And it was Green Spot and the bottles had a "G" and an "S" on it.

So we had all these bottles 'cause, you know, they didn't take them back.

So they start, and my mother put it together: "Gold Seal."

(Peggy Scott Laborde) By the 1950s, milk was obtained from dairy farms on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

A modern pasteurizing plant was built.

Sid Anderson, whose family lived across the street from the plant, delivered milk for the creamery.

(male #2) So I gave up my paper route and I got a job delivering milk on Saturday.

Uh, five dollars a day, twelve hours.

Would start out at six-o-clock in the morning, go until six-o-clock in the afternoon, you know.

Five dollars you know it doesn't sound like much.

Ok, but that five dollars paid for my school lunches, paid for when I went to Warren Easton paid for the, uh, streetcar fare, paid for the movies for a date, you know, ice cream soda/malt.

I remember when the milkman used to bring the milk and set it on the porch.

And it was in the glass bottles.

I tried to drink the milk pop that little paper cap out, drink some of the chocolate milk, run down in the garden, put water in it, and tried to get that seal back in place.

And the chocolate milk was for my Dad and he always would go, "Boy, this milk is something i wrong with it.

It's getting weake and weaker every time."

We'd meet the priest at, uh, at St. Anthony, you know, we delivered there.

We would, we'd, from them and to the working girls at the Music Box on Canal Street, you know.

We'd run into the noisy stores, for example they had a fella named Nuss.

He had a grocery store.

We'd run in "Nuss or bust, we finally made it," you know.

And Nuss would yell back "Twelve-o-clock milkman.

I never heard of Twelve-o-clock milk man."

(Peggy Scott Laborde) In addition to tending to business at Gold Seal, the Centannis would lavishly decorate their Canal Street home for the Christmas Season.

Mrs. Centanni drew inspiration from current events and children's books.

When they had the space program they had a spaceship with a Santa Claus.

And then this book she had bought, Santa Comes to Town with the Circus, we'd have the elephant and the lions on the side of the house.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Gold Seal and other dairies around the city had retail outlets that sold ice cream.

Among them was Sealtest, which was originally Clover Land Dairy.

But I remember at night um, if, if my dad loaded us in the car and said we were going to the, to get some ice cream, uh my fingers were crossed and I'd hope were going to Sealtest, and we very often did.

First of all, it was, uh, you know a beautiful place.

And it was very, it was palatial to me.

And secondly, to go in there and actually have a place that was dedicated to these dairy products, to these frozen dairy products was just, you know, this is before know Baskin Robbins hit New Orleans and things like this.

You know we didn't really go to soda fountains because things were still segregated so.

What I recall we would go when things got better, we'd go to Borden's.

Daddy would take us way on Airline Highway to get floats and malts, milkshakes and and malts, uh, and those kind of drinks.

They had a retail store in the bottom of what my sister and I thought was a Southern mansion the way that building was built.

My mom and dad would split a-a-a banana split, and we were each allowed to get a single dip cone.

And I don't believe the bill ever came to more than a dollar.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Next to ice cream shops, places that sold baked goods also held a special place in local memory.

McKenzie's Pastry Shops were everywhere.

They were owned by the Entringer family.

So why weren't the shops called Entringers?

In 1923, Wisconsin born Daniel Entringer was tired of cold weather and relocated to Biloxi, Mississippi with his family.

He opened a bakery and hired a man named McKenzie.

His new hire moved to New Orleans to open his own place, but later sold it to his former boss.

McKenzie had established a good reputation.

The enterprising Entringer kept the name and built on it, ultimately opening almost 50 shops.

His two sons, Donald and Gerald, eventually took over the business.

They had the green sign, and uh they had the cases along the walls when you went in where you could get like pies and cakes already made.

And they always had a certain type of lady working there, uh, usually usually older ladies.

And they were very, very polite.

And they all had their little hair nets on.

(Wanda Rouzan) And I'm Catholic.

I came from Corpus Christi Parish which was really one of the central focus points in our neighborhood.

And McKenzie's was right on the corner of Saint Bernard and Galvez.

So I had enough for uh, uh jelly donut and a glazed donut and then we'd go to the classroom, we'd go to church, go to Communion and then we'd go in our classroom and that was a big deal to sit at your desk and eat, because you know they were kind of strict.

And we'd have our little donuts and we'd have our milk and that's my McKenzie's memory.

To be honest with you, that was always a treat every First Friday.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Ultimately McKenzie's would offer almost 200 products through the years, but by far the most popular was its king cake.

[singing Oh, McKenzie's.

[tv announcer Top off you Mardi Gras weekend with a king cake fro from McKenzie's.

Remember, great treat are always at McKenzie's.

Stop by you neighborhood bakery.

[singing McKenzie's, you'll tast the difference.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) If ever the title "King Cake pioneer" was appropriate, it would be bestowed upon McKenzie's.

While king cakes were available at local bakeries in the 1800's, selling them on a larger scale began in 1936, with a request from a local Mardi Gras krewe.

The Twelfth Night Revelers hold their ball on January 6, the first day of the Carnival season and traditionally the first day locals partake of king cake.

Gerald Entringer's Uncle Donald received a request from the Revelers.

And he said they asked him to make a cake and they were going to call it a king cake and they kind of described it and that's when he said he made the first king cake at that time in 1936.

Uh, the baby was first, I think, as time evolved with the bead or the bean, then the plastic baby.

Then there was the china doll that was for a while.

But I think the plastic baby lasted and still continues on today.

The McKenzie's King Cake was the only king cake we knew.

You know I don't even know to this day so much about all that filled stuff.

There was something about that beautiful just plain, almost like a bread dough with the crunchy purple, green, and gold sugar on top.

And of course the king cake baby baked in.

That's another shame, that they can't bake the babies in now-a-days.

We've lost so much.

[singing McKenzie's.

[tv announcer Here they ar and we bake them fres seven days a week.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) One of the highlights of the vast selection at McKenzie's was the buttermilk drop.

My favorite thing that McKenzie's made was those buttermilk drops, and because my mother would only give me one.

I would take it and cut it in quarters and just take my time eating it.

And now that I'm talking about it, I remember saving a section, wrapping it in clear wrap, putting it in my room for when we had ice cream.

And then I would take it and crumble it on top of ice cream.

And my mom would go, What is that?

I said, I saved a buttermilk drop because I knew you wouldn't let me have another one.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The weekly commercials that advertised the bakery's selection of baked goods remains etched in local television history.

Dick Bruce would go on camera and talk about McKenzie's bakeries and what they were offering through the week as specials and then he would have the camera pan over and he'd take a slice out of a pie and put it in his mouth.

And "yum, yum," it was just so, you could almost taste it through the camera.

It was that good.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) A confection called turtles was truly a signature McKenzie's pastry.

A turtle is, it's a, it's a cookie dough and there's pecans on it and has the fudge on top.

Very good.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Turtles came to New Orleans thanks to a gentleman who called on McKenzie's to sell baking supplies, and as part of his sale brought with him everything the Entringers would need to make the new product.

So you, maybe this is a new product you can try, you'll like it; your customers will like it and of course you'll buy the ingredients from them.

So he came there to the store on Prytania Street.

He made two pans of them.

And my uncle said, "Well, they have pecans fresh pecan and everything on there," he says "Well, how much you thin I can get for these?"

And the guy suggested that five cents.

That doesn't sound like anything today but I'm sure in 1936 that was a ton of money.

So he sent two pans up to the store on Frenchmen Street.

They called him in a half hour later and said, "You need to make more Those are gone."

And I guess the rest is history.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) But it was around the holidays that the pastry shops were really buzzing with activity.

(Edward Piglia) My aunt, my mother's sister, loved the Holiday cookies which was basically a shortbread-type cookie with tons of colored sugar on top.

And we would just love to, to eat those cookies.

And they had one I think on most holidays: Valentine's Day, um, of course Halloween and Christmas, (Peggy Scott Laborde) Celebrating Mom and Dad's special days also kept the pastry kitchens humming.

For Father's Day there was the cake shaped like a man's tie.

Well we took some cake and we had a wooden mold cut, and we'd put the mold on top of it and actually cut it by hand.

And they had it shaped as a tie, you know, it would come out like this, bow out a little bit and then come back in.

We can't leave out Mom, we can't leave out our mothers.

But they flew in orchids from Hawaii to put on, those little orchids.

You might remember they put them on Mother's Day cakes.

They did it for about three or four years.

It got too expensive after a while.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) There is another bakery item that continues to be identified with New Orleans that isn't found in a bakery and isn't originally from New Orleans Hubig's Pies.

Simon Hubig, a baker originally from Cincinnati, founded the Simon Hubig Pie Company in Fort Worth, Texas in 1918.

His company came to New Orleans in 1922, when Hubig leased the Dauphine Street property in the, Faubourg Marigny neighborhood.

At the time, the pies sold for 10 or 15 cents.

Hubig died just a few years after he opened the New Orleans branch.

It changed hands, with several generations of the Bowman and Ramsey families running it since then.

[tv announcer Hubig Pie are out to lunch, and have bee for over 40 years.

For good tasting pies lunch time, any time, enjoy a hubig pie only a dime.

I think my mother was the police and the sheriff for the Hubig's pie department.

Because she would give my Dad and I one pie and we would have to split it.

We usually got apple or lemon.

And we would split that pie and sit there on a Sunday afternoon with our half of pies and just sit at the kitchen table and go look at each other, not saying a word being thankful at least she gave us a half of one at least.

And yes, I did not pose for Simon the Pieman on the front.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Sadly, a fire destroyed the Hubig's factory, on July 27, 2012, but the owners quickly vowed to rebuild and reopen.

For over a hundred years the descendants of Angelo Brocato have been producing cookies and ice cream in a style reminiscent of his roots, Sicilian.

My grandfather was from Palermo, Sicily and my grandmother was from Cefalu, and it just so happened they had the same last names.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Upon arriving in New Orleans, Brocato went to work in the sugarcane fields near Ponchatoula, Louisiana.

He ultimately settled in the French Quarter.

By the late 1800s, this neighborhood was home to many immigrants, primarily from Sicily.

Brocato's descendants continue to make both cookies and ice cream the old fashioned way.

Angelo Brocato III remembers his Grandmother.

(Angelo Brocato III) Her name was Michelina, Michelina Brocato, Michelina Brocato Brocato.

And as a little kid, at night when we were closing up, ready to close and I'd be sweeping or something and she'd be in the back or way down the hall with the light on counting the money, the take for that day, you know.

And my Dad would tell me, "Go there and ask for five dollars," in Italian.

And I'd say, "No!

Dammi cinque dollari bezza", you know.

Give me five dollars, you know.

She'd say that means in Italian she'd give me "three kicks in the behind and a nickel."

(Peggy Scott Laborde) In these rare home movies taken by Angelo Brocato III we see his grandmother and family members celebrating the tradition of St. Joseph's Day, erecting an altar of foodstuffs in thanks for favors granted.

For some reason New Orleans is such a time capsule that a place like Brocato's is frozen in time.

And if you traveled to Sicily and you're a big aficionado and fan of Brocato's products, you might be disappointed with the real thing.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Mention chocolate in New Orleans and Elmer's will quickly enter the conversation.

The local candy company dates back to 1855.

We have a gentleman named Christopher Henry Miller to thank for turning his pastry chef expertise into the Miller Candy Corporation.

His son-in-law, whose last name was Elmer, eventually ran the business with his sons, hence the name change.

The Nelson family has owned the candy company since the 1960s.

The great expectation for many New Orleans children on Easter Sunday morning would be that Elmer's chocolate candy would be found in their basket.

That's all that was ever allowed in our baskets.

That's all the Easter bunny ever brought was Gold Brick eggs, Heavenly Hash eggs, and some jelly beans.

But, um, and then, uh, also the Merlin candy chocolate rabbits was also in the Easter basket.

But my favorite was the Heavenly Hash.

I just liked it 'cause it had marshmallow in it.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Heavenly Hash was introduced in 1923.

Gold Brick Eggs, chocolate eggs with specks of pecan, came along in 1936.

Now, how can you pick a favorite out of Gold Brick or Heavenly Hash?

You don't.

So you just eat 'em all.

You know, that was the other thing I used to do.

I used to get this great big basket at Easter and it would be full of the Elmer's eggs.

I would - those eggs would probably last me a year because I would take a Ziplock bag, throw those eggs in it and hide them in my closet.

And every once in a while, my Mom would go, What are you eating?

Nothing.

As a nice Jewish boy, I would always look forward to Easter because I knew I would get my Heavenly Hash.

Marshmallow, chocolate and uh almonds.

Uh and it's a little nougat in there as well, you know I guess a lot of nougat.

(Poppy Tooker) I'm a Heavenly Hash girl.

The blue color on that Heavenly Hash egg that must be the color of Heaven.

So I think that must be why they did it.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Elmer's is currently headquartered in Ponchatoula, Louisiana.

Even though the candy company has local roots, today some of the candy is nationally distributed, enabling others beyond our area to enjoy our local brand.

In 1934, R. L. Atkinson and Clifton L. Ganus opened the first Mrs. Drake Sandwich Shop in New Orleans and eventually expanded to Memphis, Tennessee.

The owners' initials also became well known with their string of A and G Cafeterias.

But for someone hungry and short on time, picking up a sandwich at one of the shops or later at a local convenience store made the business a big success.

There was no shortage of flavor combinations.

I used to work at the Timesaver on uh, the corner of Green Acres and Veterans Highway, and there were, uh, a couple of barbers who had a barbershop right next door.

And they would come in and get a sandwich.

And one day, I think the guy's name was Emile if I remember right, he came in.

And he looked, and he said "Where are the res of the sandwiches?"

There was only one left.

They had-they had cleaned us out that day.

And I said "That's it.

Sorry."

And he said "Oh, Brother."

And he picked it up, and he looked at it.

Luncheon Meat and Pickle on Raisin Bread.

It existed.

It really did.

I'll never forget that as long as I live.

Mrs. Drake's uh, used to stick to the roof of your mouth.

That white bread sometimes, you needed to get a chisel, your tongue wasn't enough you know had to use your finger, use a digit to get it off the roof of your mouth.

But, uh, you know you could survive on them.

(Peter Mayer) And then there was a tag on top, which mentioned the flavor of the sandwich and there was a duck on it from Mrs. Drake.

Get it?

Oh yeah.

I mean that was one of the mainstays of the Time Savers that they sold dozens and dozens and dozens of those things depending on where the store was.

The one that always seemed unusual to me was what they called the Club Special.

The Club Special had its two halves.

They cut them on a diagonal, and then they, they wrapped them in cellophane so the cut side would face out so you could see what was in there.

The Club Special, one half of it was salami and cheese.

One slice of each so you still had your two slices.

And the other half was bologna and cheese.

And I always wondered Whatever club that is, I never want to be a member of it.

If you had a party it was Drake sandwiches.

And we would go there and pick them up.

We'd order them and they came 50 or 100.

And I distinctly remember their chicken salad and their tuna fish salad.

And, um, they had a lot of, as we say my-naz in them.

But, those were what we thought was delicious.

And, uh, when I went to Cabrini, the Drake sandwiches would come.

That and the potato chips, the Dickey Potato Chip man.

And we would have, that was the only time we actually saw men at Cabrini was the guy delivering the Drake sandwiches and the guy delivering the Dickey's Potato Chips.

And so it, fond memories of that was our lunch there.

Every day was Drake sandwiches.

Oh Mrs. Drake sandwiches, what a treat that was, you know.

A Mrs. Drake sandwich was almost like a full-sized party sandwich in a box.

And the label, the Mamma Duck, you know, walking with the little babies, and of course that's what we always called them.

They were Mamma Duck sandwiches.

(Jim Letten) Oh, without question, tuna salad, tuna salad and white bread.

Didn't matter if it was soggy, how long it had been there, didn't make a difference.

And to this day- to this day, um, if I-you know I will love tuna salad on white bread.

It was sort of a local gag.

You want to go out for lunch?

We're going to have Drake's sandwiches.

I mean, I'm chintzy.

I'm not going to buy you very much.

But it was lovely.

It was a good sandwich.

[singing Chicken and biscuit from Popeyes, just like Mardi Gras and New Orleans, just like peaches and cream.

[singing Spice is right but deliciously light .

Sorry mom, this biscuit tastes better.

[singing Chicken and biscuit from Popeyes.

Number one, uno.

Deliciouso.

Totally.

[singing Love tha chicken from Popeyes.

It's a great combination.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Al Copeland came from humble beginnings to create a fried chicken outlet empire that included over 700 restaurants.

The first one opened in Arabi, Louisiana in 1972.

Success only came with some challenges along the way.

Copeland started with a Tastee Donut shop but noticed a chicken stand nearby was far more successful.

We were the guinea pigs growing up in our house for the chicken.

My Sister and I would taste the chicken and he was trying spicy chicken on us and we didn't like it.

And so my uncle who had owned Tastee Donuts at the time and had franchised one to my father said, Look, Al, Popeyes.

People eat chicken for dinner.

They bring it home to their families which means they're feeding kids.

And if your kids don't like the spicy chicken, neither will the other kids.

He said "Before I go down, I gotta tr my spicy chicken."

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Copeland's son shares the story behind that famous spicy flavor.

It came about from my Mother's side of the family LeComptes, He was completely inspired by my Mother's side of the family to create Popeyes.

Cajun Rice that you see on the menus today started as dirty rice in a pot in my Grandmother and Grandfather's house in Houma, Louisiana.

We were probably heavy in the spices in this environment long before the rest of the country took off and has a higher tolerance now.

But the U.S., in, most of the U.S. had very bland food so Popeyes would be arresting to them.

And it certainly was and they liked it.

And the success is there to see to this day.

I called it the Best Fried Chicken in New Orleans in the article I wrote.

And I think it was the first article ever written about Popeyes.

I'm not sure but I think it was.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Now after 40 years, the origin of the name remains an intriguing story.

(Al Copeland Jr.) He saw the movie, The French Connection.

Popeye Doyle's in the movie and he crashes the door down and he said "Popeyes here!"

Alright Popeyes here.

Get your hands on your heads.

Get off the bar and get on the wall.

C'mon move.

And he turns to my Mother and says, "I think that's wha we're going to name it.

We're going to name i Popeyes."

And she said "You're crazy!

Everybody thinks that' the Spinach Guy."

And so he says "No, I like it.

I think I'm goin to call it Popeyes."

So he called it Popeyes Mighty Good Fried Chicken.

And he opened up in nineteen, June 13th, 1972.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) King Features, which owns the rights to the Popeye the Sailor Man cartoon, soon got wind of the new name.

(Al Copeland Jr.) Kings Features did knock on the door one day and said "Hey, you are using ou trademarked Popeye name."

And he said, "No I'm not.

"That movie wa a name I got "from the movi French Connection.

"It's not becaus it has anything to do wit Popeye, the character.

"It has to d with the fact that Popeye- "The chicken i so spicy that it'l pop your eyes out."

And that, so that was kind of a strategy to fight Kings Features against Popeyes.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Later, Copeland saw the advantage of having Popeye characters linked to his chicken chain, and signed a deal with the cartoon company to feature characters in his commercials.

It was a position that he took initially with it but we ended up making a deal with Kings Features for a royalty and actually brought the character in.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) As the number of Popeyes restaurants grew, the area and ultimately the country became dotted with structures sporting lava- like facades.

The early Popeyes really stood out.

The building itself sort of jumped out at you between that red roof and that black lava rock.

We worked with an architect um and a designer to build our house in Houma, Louisiana.

It was built on the bayou; it wasn't an extravagant house; but one of the things that he was very excited about in the design of this house was he built a fire pit and it had uh, you know, two seats and a lower pit - it was a lower setting.

We called it The Fire Pit.

It was a fireplace and you had to step down in it to sit and it had lava rock going all the way up to the ceiling.

And he loved that lava rock.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) As Copeland developed other products, he drew upon the expertise of such talented New Orleans chefs as Warren Leruth, Gary Darling and George Rhode, IV.

Throughout the company's history there was a gradual change in its official name.

Popeyes went from Popeyes Mighty Good Fried Chicken.

And we opened our second location, we opened it in Kenner, Louisiana.

And someone had told us that they had driven from Saint Bernard to Kenner to come get this chicken and the customer referred to it as "famous" . "

Your chicken is famous."

So, a week later he changed the sign to read, "Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken" because of this one customer that did that drive.

So, that was the second name.

The third name Popeyes Chicken went to is Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits.

The biscuits came first and we rolled that out.

We had Popeyes restaurants that grew their sales by one hundred percent just because of the addition of a biscuit.

So, it was a great addition to us.

And red beans had the same type of effect.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) With lots of energy, Copeland developed other restaurant concepts.

One of the most successful was a more upscale chain of restaurants he named after himself.

In 1989 the purchase of Church's Fried Chicken resulted in bankruptcy, but Copeland retained the rights to his recipes and products.

A group of creditors created a company, AFC Enterprises, that now owns the Popeyes brand.

Today, we own the recipes for Popeyes Fried Chicken and Popeyes pays us a royalty for that, for the right to use those.

And we have a supply agreement to supply them with those recipes.

It was great to be able to have a place you could go and get your chicken because you were so used to standing over the stove and dredging your chicken in that flour and seasoning it and frying it yourself.

And to be able to go and get something that was so delicious that it was almost as good, not quite, but almost as good as your home cooking.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Times were tough.

America was in the throes of the Great Depression.

Having just lost his job working for the state Highway Department, William W. Dickey got work peeling and frying potatoes, at the Canal-Villere grocery store.

He eventually decided to try his hand at producing and selling chips on his own, selling them from the rumble seat of his car.

Locals literally ate them up.

The Dickey Potato Chip Company was born in 1935.

Oh God, those were good potato chips.

Their plant was on Elysian Fields at the River.

They had a big sign and a great aroma when you drove by.

And they were just great potato chips.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The chips were a hit for almost half a century.

(Wanda Rouzan) And you could see the potato chips in the bag to my recollection.

And you'd go to the show, and you'd have enough money for a nickel bag of potato chips and a pickle.

And you'd, we'd pour that juice in that bag.

And I want to say it was red and maybe yellow.

And, um, and those were delicious potato chips.

(Tom Fitzmorris) At some point, this would have been again around late Fifties, uh Dickey's decided that it needed something to make its chips even better.

They already by far led the market, and they would do so for another twenty years at least.

That was the number one selling chip in the Time Saver I could tell you that, even the big bags.

So anyway, they uh, they put this little envelope that consisted of activated charcoal and silica gel which had the effect of removing moisture from inside the bag, keeping the chips from going soft on you which is not something you want.

(Jim Letten) I think the cellophane bags they were in, they were in cellophane bags that were kind of an amber, yellow color.

Um and they had the Dickey's regular, and they also made a killer barbecue flavor chip.

Uh, and we'd get'em- we'd get 'em actually- we could get them out of the machines, the small bags at St. Matthias for about a nickel a piece.

One of the best potato chips in the history of potato chips.

Dickey's was so good I'd put it on my sandwiches.

On the luncheon meat and cheese and some Dickey's potato chips and smash it down and make one of the greatest sandwiches ever.

(tv announcer) The pick of any picnic is Fiestas, [Mexican music playing] Dickey's Fiestas.

[Mexican music] The flavor fresh crunchy corn chips that sound like fun.

Fiestas.

[Mexican music] Get the message.

[Mexican music] (Peggy Scott Laborde) Dickey's may be gone, but continues to be associated with good memories.

Whenever there were relatives coming over, or we had a Christmas Eve, or a party or anything at the house we had these big bags of Dickey's potato chips.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Preserved in the pages of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces as the irascible Ignatius Reilly's beverage of choice, Dr. Nut was part of the local scene from the 1940s off and on until the late 70s.

Its distinctive label and flavor remains memorable to a small but loyal fan base.

Yeah, Dr. Nut was really my favorite.

It-it was sort of a, like an early Dr. Pepper.

It was like a strong drink.

And-and it had the squirrel on the, on the bottle.

When I was little that- that was my favorite drink, really.

You know, I'd-I'd get it just because of the squirrel, you know.

Dr. Nut was the best soft drink there ever was.

Uh, it has existed in three different periods.

And it was the same little six and a half ounce bottle with the squirrel on it: Dr. Nut.

And I didn't know what that flavor was until many years later when I was at a bar or at the end of a meal somewhere, and someone bought Amaretto as an after dinner drink for everybody.

And I took one sip, and I said, "That's Dr.

Nut."

That's the taste.

Still around though no longer locally owned, is the Big Shot brand of soft drinks.

(Bob Murret) It was a guy, uh probably circa 1930s, derby hat, uh kinda like a mustache with a cigar - type of the big shot kinda guy from the Thirties.

They originally started right there on Metairie Road little- little bitty place - right there by the- on the railroad tracks on the left hand side.

Flavors they used came in five-gallon white pale buckets- like if you wanted uh, orange or strawberry and it would say on the bucket, you know, strawberry, orange.

And they would pour that- that flavor in the mix and they would mix- make the soft drinks right there.

Well Big Shot was really what they call a flavor bottle.

It had a large variety.

Coke is very good at making Coke, uh, other companies are very good at making all these other drinks, orange drinks and, uh, lemon-lime drinks, and, uh, grape drinks, and etc.

etc.

So that was Big Shot's real forte was making all this variety of drinks.

Big Shot came in 'cause you got more value for your buck.

Big Shot came in with huge drinks, 16 ounces.

Big Shot came with the first 16-ounce soft drink.

I mean, you know, really your mother loved that 'cause you were hyper all day after drinking a couple of Big Shots.

[laughing] (Peggy Scott Laborde) In the early 1990's the Florida based National Beverage Company purchased Big Shot.

(male tv announcer) It sparkles and bubbles.

It quenches thirst and refreshes.

It's the root beer for today's taste.

(female tv announcer) Because it cools the blood and tones the system, we call Barq's bottled health and drink it morning, noon and night.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Depending upon what you were having for lunch or dinner, sometimes you had to have a root beer and Barq's stood out among the rest.

Barq's the company was founded in Biloxi, Mississippi by the Barq family in 1898.

And, uh, the reason New Orleans got involved with Barq's is Mr. Barq eventually had a foster son named Jessie Robinson.

Mr. Barq, I'm told, taught Mr. Robinson the formula for, for root beer.

And so the two had sort of parallel businesses eventually because New Orleans was a larger market, Barq's took on a presence in New Orleans all of its own even though the headquarters and the founder were still in, in Mississippi.

And that's the company that my partner and I ended up, uh, growing into a nationwide company.

I loved and still do, I love the Barq's, the root beer.

And of course whenever you could find a cream soda that was-that was the bee's knees, you know.

We had what we called- there were two types of Barq's cream sodas.

There was the clear and then there was what we calle "the red drink."

You know and if you were a local, you know, you'd say "I want a red drink."

We would take our Barq's bottles of cream soda and root beer and freeze them and then take them out in the afternoon and take an ice pick and stick it right through the cap.

And then, and then it would, and you'd have to grab it, shove it in your mouth, and hang on.

It'd come out your ears just about because it was, uh, super charged with that, you know, frozen carbonated beverage in there.

It was fantastic, just fantastic way to consume a soft drink.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Koerner and his partner sold Barq's to the Coca-Cola Bottling Company in the mid-1990s.

By the mid-1800s New Orleans was quickly establishing itself as the beer capitol of the South.

Thanks for the most part to the influx of German immigrants starting in the 1850s, by the end of the 19th century there were over 30 breweries in the city.

In 1890 Lawrence Fabacher opened the Jackson Brewing Company, which became the largest independent brewery in the South and a major national brand.

The brewery was named after Battle of New Orleans hero and U.S. President Andrew Jackson.

The brewery complex along the Mississippi Riverfront in the French Quarter was a standout.

Angelo Brocato, III worked for Jax.

They were brewing and you could smell the yeast in the air and the grain and all you smell all of that cooking in the cooker.

You smell all of that and as you went uptown, you smelled the coffee - the coffee roasters.

But that plus the smell of, there was a lot of smell of garlic cooking 'cause the people didn't have air-conditioning yet.

Had the windows open, cook you could smell the garlic and the onions simmering, you know.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Jax management recognized early on that marketing was vital to the company's success.

(Angelo Brocato III) They gave coasters; they gave napkins; they gave clocks, table tents, menu clips.

There was always a competition, you know the bar owners, they wanted as much as they could get.

They'd say "Give me this, give me that.

"I want.

I just have to g get some Falstaff or go get some Dixie" 'cause Dixie and Falstaff, they gave some things out too, you know, but not as much as Jax.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) During the 1960s TV commercials advertising Jax Beer became a part of local television history: Bar maid.

Yes.

I'd like a bottle of mellow Jax for myself, and a bottle of mellow Jax with a real beer taste for my horse.

Oh I thought that was a horse.

You'll have to get that horse out of here.

I just want a bottle of mellow Jax for him.

No, no I'm sorry.

We don't allow horses in here in the first place and we don't serve beer to horses in the second place.

And just get your horse out please.

He's gotta have a bottle of Jax.

You know it's premium brewed from 100 percent natural ingredients.

No, no.

You mean you don't serve horses.

There's a big sign over the bar.

We do not serve beer to horses.

Well, can't you make an exception this once.

My horse is parched lady.

We do not make exceptions.

We do not serve beer to horses.

We just won't do it.

Not even mellow Jax.

No, no.

He really craves that real beer taste.

No sir.

If we serve beer to your horse pretty soon every horse in the neighborhood will be coming in asking for Jax beer.

Now just get your horse out of here.

I'm awful sorry Seymour.

Oh never mind Hank.

I'm driving anyway.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) There was a perk working for Jax Brewery that proved quite popular among its employees.

You could drink all you wanted free at Jax, as long as you didn't get drunk.

Some of them, some of them, oh yeah, people driving the forklift around and they had, they had a special place on the forklift where they could put their bottle of beer.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) In addition to Jax there was Regal, also located in the Quarter, where the Royal Sonesta Hotel is today.

Falstaff, a national brand, purchased a defunct local brewery in the 1930s.

Dixie Brewery was founded by Valentine Merz in 1907.

Some New Orleans neighborhood bars had clear favorites when it came to the choice of beer brands.

In my neighborhood was Falstaff and Regal.

I mean I used to work at the grocery stores.

You could tell by the delivery trucks.

That I had two barrooms in my neighborhood.

The Falstaff truck would come up like a tractor-trailer and unload thirty and forty, fifty cases of Falstaff at the-at the bar.

And, you know, you might be the Dixie guy would pass it up.

And maybe two cases of Jax.

I can recall there was an old, colorful guy in my neighborhood.

Uh, he used to be a Jax drinker, and he would not order Jax.

He'd walk into the bar and said, "Give me a ma on a horse."

Now of course you had to be a bartender to understand what that meant.

If you look at a Jax beer it's a man on a horse.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Breweries had their own form of direct marketing to their customers.

Each company had a salesman in the neighborhood.

They would come in once or twice a week into the bar and buy rounds of beer.

Jax appealed to people uh, who didn't like a heavy beer, who wanted a light beer.

So those people drink Jax.

Regal was a very good in between beer.

It wasn't light and it really wasn't heavy.

If I was gonna sit around and just eat some peanuts out of a container on a bar what have you or smoke a cigarette at a bar and just talk and pass the time I would probably be drinking either a Regal or a Falstaff.

Regal, was the number one selling beer in New Orleans during the 50s and even though you had Dixie 45.

Dixie 45 was very popular as well.

But it appealed to people who were robust drinkers you know.

It just had a stronger flavor that went well with, you know, seafood that kind of thing.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Although it was a national brand brewed locally, locals recall Falstaff, but not always for the beer.

(Alan Smason) The sign had the letters "Falstaff."

And they also had a globe at the top.

And you could always tell the weather report by just looking at the sign because what would happen is if the weather was going to go up temperature-wise, then the sign would light up from the bottom up.

But if the temperature was going down then the lights would descend.

Also, if you had a white globe it meant cloudy skies; green meant fair skies and a red globe meant storms.

So if you saw that red globe you were really kind of wondering what was coming your way.

And I just loved it.

Also if the temperature was staying the same, it would flash on and off.

So there you have it.

That was the way to tell the weather report.

(Judge Edwin Lombard) My daddy drank beer every day.

Across the street was a grocery store called Joe's Grocery Store, and you could buy six Falstaffs for 95 cents, then it went up to $1.05.

We were such great customers that we would only - we would bring the bottles back once a week.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) An advertising campaign for Dixie Beer in the 1950s was an early form of what would be considered interactive marketing today.

(Peter Mayer) Roy Schwartz came up with that idea and those were little hand-drawn uh cartoons.

And people would submit them and it'd go on the billboards.

And they were little doodles that made Dixie popular beer.

We had relatives work for Dixie.

My wife had relatives work for Jax.

You had to watch who you were inviting over your house and what kind of beer you bought, you know.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Another reason for local brand loyalty was a basic one.

They were less expensive.

The local beers were a quarter.

Budweiser, Schlitz, those beers were- were thirty cents.

The beers that were impor- when I say imported I mean imported from, you know, from St. Louis or from Milwaukee.

(Tom Fitzmorris) Over at the Time Saver again, we were talking about the sixties, uh, Falstaff was by far the number one seller.

Jax was a, a fairly distant second, among the local beers.

And Dixie was even behind Jax.

Falstaff was absolutely the leader.

And, uh, the other, the national beers Budweiser and Schlitz and all of those, those were on the bottom shelf, one row.

Hardly no- hardly anybody got it at all.

Well this was a local beer town.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Eventually national brands won out, what with marketing and increased distribution, but the local breweries impact can still be felt.

(Jim Letten) I mean this was part of the fabric of your life.

You know as a kid you knew all the beers because it was part of your culture.

Um, and-and it was, uh, and of course the-the-the metal trays when you ate boiled seafood, you had a metal Falstaff or Dixie or Regal or whatever tray.

And of course they started to get pitted and rusty after a while, but it didn't matter.

You kept eating crabs in those things.

And we had them.

We had a stack of them.

Whenever we boiled- boiled crabs or crawfish we had the Falstaff trays.

Oh yeah, with that had Regal on them and Falstaff and that's what they ate.

You know, we would get that.

On occasion as things got better with integration, we'd have special nights that daddy would take the family out and we'd go to Fitzgerald's out at West End and that was, or Bruning's.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Crab Boil, Creole mustard- -just a few of the New Orleans food products bearing the Zatarain name.

Emile A. Zatarain, Sr. decided to start his own business in 1889, after spending years as a grocery clerk.

He sold products to such local groceries as Solari's from his uptown New Orleans establishment on Valmont Street.

Pa-poose root beer extract was among Zatarain's earliest creations.

According to a 1921 advertisement, a three-ounce bottle could make 5 gallons.

The label reminded customers that Pa-poose was to be considered an "All Year round" drink.

Uh, when mother made homemade root beer for us, she would use the Zatarain's root beer extract to make that.

And it was always delicious.

She'd either make root beer or she'd make homemade lemonade.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Zatarain had some tough times in those early years but he persevered.

He always hung on to his mustard grinders because he must've really known he had something there.

And with that he was the one who made the first, commercial Creole mustard.

Now what's Creole mustard?

It's a course, rough grain, brown mustard that is much like a lot of German mustards that you will find.

But it's spicy; it's hot.

And it's the integral ingredient in Remoulade sauce.

You can't have a Remoulade sauce without Creole mustard, and the only Creole Mustard that I recognize is Zatarain's.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Boiled seafood is a New Orleans staple and crab boil from Zatarain's has become essential.

Whenever my mother and father would- would boil the crabs, uh, you know, you'd have that, it's that-that odor of the crab boil was just, you could just smell that seasoning.

You knew when somebody was doing that in their house or it was just sort of this wonderful all kinds of different seasonings mixed together.

Crab boil is a very unique flavor profile.

And what a lot of people don't realize about crab boil is there's a lot of brown spice in it.

Clove is one of the predominant spices in crab boil.

So I think that that crab boil flavor was a traditional spice blend that people were using here in the 1800s, and it came together in crab boil.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) So, what has happened to some of our local brands?

In 2000, the Entringer family announced that they were closing McKenzie's but retained their Chicken in a Box store.

They sold the bakery business to new owners who filed bankruptcy the same year.

In more recent times a local Tastee Donuts franchise has secured rights to the beloved recipes, including turtles and buttermilk drops.

While it may no longer be possible to order a nectar soda at a drugstore soda fountain, it does pop up occasionally around town, including Chef John Besh's Soda Shop at the National World War II Museum.

Creole Creamery makes nectar sherbet and the flavor is also a popular one at local snowball stands.

The syrup is bottled commercially as New Orleans Nectar Soda Syrup.

Gold Seal Creamery is no more, but Creole Cream Cheese is experiencing a revival.

The creamery facility has been converted to the Gold Seal Lofts, an apartment building.

Brocato's is no longer located in the French Quarter but in the Mid-City neighborhood, still serving sweet Sicilian treats the old fashioned way.

The Zatarain Family sold the business in 1963.

McCormick and Company is the current owner.

And what about our breweries?

The main structure of the Dixie Brewery is on tap to be part of the new Department of Veterans Affairs Hospital complex.

Still locally owned, the beer company owners are having Dixie brewed in Wisconsin.

Though the brewery went out of business in the 70s, since the mid-Eighties, Jax Brewery has been converted into a complex that includes shops, restaurants, and more currently, condominiums.

With a nod to its past there's a collection of memorabilia on view.

Falstaff Brewery has been converted into apartments.

The current owners have restored the Weather Ball sign, continuing to offer New Orleanians a unique way of getting a weather report.

So the next time you have a poor boy, have a Barq's or a Big Shot soft drink with it.

And if there's room, there's always a cannoli from Brocato's.

Let's continue to savor each bite that reminds us why we live here.

I was asking him a question and said, What's something really unique about you that I might not know.

And it was just I don't know why, didn't say anything about it in the conversation, and he said and you know it came right out, it came right out of him.

He sai "you kno I'm in th restaurant business "and I' very successfu in th restaurant business, but I hate to cook."

And I said you know I've never seen you cook, so that's pretty good.

And that was, that was kind of a moment, a piece of information there that probably no one really knows about him.

Nobody said sodas here or pop.

It was always soft drink.

And uh, and again if it was red like the cream soda you would say give me a red drink.

I guess it was when Ronald Reagan was president.

They had an accord in, I want to say Williamsburg, and Chef Prudhomme went up there to feed them.

And he called me and he said, "I want t do a breakfas with Creol cream cheese.

And how ca I bring the up there," So we packaged them for him to bring them to this Williamsburg accord and he served it to all of the world leaders.

He served them Creole cream cheese.

These gallon size plastic tubs with a snap on cap with the purple K&B logo on top that we had gotten ice cream in.

And you yeah used it for everything.

So you'd go and I think it was 99 cents for a gallon of chocolate ice cream.

And it was as good as it got.

It was just wonderful.

Oh yeah!

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