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ITALIAN GULF COAST
J.P. Rouse, City Produce
Cusimano’s pasta plant manager, Leon Tujague, was a founding
partner in the Southern Macaroni Company, which created Luxury
Brand pasta in 1914.
“Spaghetti houses” (red gravy restaurants), serving what today we
call Creole Italian cuisine, rose to prominence on the restaurant
scene in the French Quarter and beyond. But they were not
confined to the French Quarter. Manale’s Restaurant, now known
as
Pascal’s Manale,
opened in 1913 in a former corner grocery store
at Napoleon Avenue and Dryades Street.
ITALIAN GROCERS
The grocery business proved popular with many first-generation
and second-generation Italian Americans. Italian-owned corner
groceries, dry goods stores and fruit markets proliferated in New
Orleans — there were nearly 400 by the late 1930s. Beans, rice,
flour and sugar were kept in large barrels and measured out for each
customer. Almost all of the proprietors lived upstairs or in back of
their stores.
The Solari family started with a small grocery on the corner of
St. Louis and Royal Street in 1864, and new groceries sprung up
to serve Sicilians working in the French Market and the enclave
of immigrants in the lower French Quarter christened “Little
Palermo.” Central Grocery and Progress Grocery both opened on
Decatur Street. Biaggio Montalbano started a delicatessen and
grocery on St. Philip Street around the corner. One of New Orleans’
longest-operating restaurants also began its life as a grocery store.
Sebastian Mandina, a Sicilian immigrant from Palermo, opened
Mandina’s in Mid City as a grocery store in 1898.The family lived
upstairs. Mandina’s evolved into a pool hall and sandwich shop,
then in 1932 it became a restaurant, which is still serving seafood
and Creole Italian food today.
Italian-owned stores and markets also opened in Shreveport and
Monroe, Louisiana, in the Mississippi Delta
around Natchez and Greenville, and across
the Gulf Coast in Biloxi, Gulfport and
Ocean Springs, Mississippi. But outside of
New Orleans, nowhere were Italian groceries
as popular as Birmingham, Alabama.
By the mid-1930s, over 300 Italian-
owned groceries were operating in the
Birmingham area, which had the largest
Italian population in the state. Italian
immigrants, many from Bisacquino, a small
Sicilian village near Palermo, were drawn
to Birmingham’s coal and steel industries,
railroads and plantations. They settled
around Birmingham in the suburbs of
Bessemer,Thomas and particularly inEnsley,
Alabama’s own “Little Italy.” Joseph Bruno,
whose parents were Sicilian immigrants,
opened Bruno’s in Birmingham in 1932
during the Great Depression. At the height
of its success, his company had more than
300 stores.
ROUSES MARKETS
J.P. Rouse expanded his City Produce Company from serving
public markets to shipping produce to stores and supermarkets all
over the country. In addition to buying from local farmers, he also
planted his own acres for cultivation.
His son, Anthony Rouse, Sr., and nephew, Ciro Di Marco, worked at
the company’s packing shed in Thibodaux. When J.P. died in 1956,
the two cousins took over. But the era of the truck farm was coming
to an end. Trading on the tradition of quality established by the City
Produce Company, they opened the family’s first grocery store, a
modest, 7,000-square-foot store in Houma, Louisiana in 1960.
They didn’t have big wholesale suppliers like there are today. But the
two men found ways to sell groceries cheaper.They made their own
Cajun specialties and dried all of their own spices.The butcher cut
meat to order. Farmers delivered their produce directly to the store,
while Rouse’s young sons were sent to the local dairy to get milk
for the store.
As supermarkets became more and more popular, and grocery stores
began adding more fresh goods,Anthony J.Rouse, Sr. began yearning
for a larger store where they could prepare food and have a full-service
bakery and deli. Ciro Di Marco preferred to retire and sold his shares
to his nephew, Donald. Rouses #1, a supermarket, opened in 1975.
Family members helped the new partners — father and son Anthony
J. Rouse, Sr. and Donald Rouse — operate both stores.
There have been many milestones since, including 44 more stores
across the Gulf Coast. A third generation led by Donny Rouse
is now managing the company. And a century after J.P. Rouse
immigrated to America, his Italian heritage is still being honored
on every aisle of every Rouses Market. You’ll find a taste of the
family’s history in everything from the San Marzano tomatoes, “00”
flour and balsamic creams, to the Pecorino Romano cheese from J.P.
Rouse’s home of Sardinia.