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8
MY
ROUSES
EVERYDAY
SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2016
the
Italian
issue
The Spaghetti District
The Lower Quarter was also home to several macaroni
manufacturing factories. In 1902, Giacomo “Jacob” Cusimano built
the largest macaroni factory in the United States at the corner of
Barracks and Chartres. The factory was capable of churning out
10,000 pounds of pasta a day. 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.
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 FrenchMarket 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. 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 a restaurant.
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 in Ensley,
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-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 brought produce delivered directly to
the store. Rouse’s young sons were sent to 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. But 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.
J.P. Rouse, City Produce