Houston bar East End Hardware is cooking up a summer treat: boozy snow cones

In Houston’s East End, an unassuming bar has gained a reputation for serving a boozy version of a childhood treat, a snow cone.

East End Hardware is the perfect place in the summer if you want a frozen alcoholic drink, unlike the other frozen cocktails in town. Its “boozy snoballs” are made with a SnoWizard machine that creates soft shaved ice native to New Orleans. Snoballs come in seven flavors: Tiger’s Blood, Pina Colada, Strocone, The Dude, Jon Snocone, Screwdriver and Strawberry. And there are rotating flavors as well, they are currently offering a Mangonada.

Owner Laura Jordan had the idea for boozy snoballs before she even opened the former hardware store as a bar in 2017. She grew up in the Clear Lake area of ​​southeast Houston, where she had plenty of treats shaped like a snow cone.

“I had never seen snow cones with alcohol before, and I didn’t know why no one else had made them, so we started and we’ve been making them ever since,” Jordan said.

At first, she didn’t know if it was possible to put alcohol on crushed ice without it melting. She even discussed this issue with SnoWizard, but they didn’t know about it either. It was all a great experience.

Jordan discovered that if she made the syrups with alcohol and kept them cold, the ice would maintain its integrity when she poured the syrup. She created most of the syrups with real fruits and fruit juices. Initially, a friend who had worked at a shaved ice stand in Hawaii helped her formulate the syrups. Although some, like Tiger’s Blood and Pina Colada, are made with traditional concentrates sold for these snow cones.

Occasionally, she invents new flavors herself. Last year during March Madness, she hosted her own Sweet 16 contest among new flavors of snoball. The winning flavor: Mangonada, followed by Vietnamese Iced Coffee.

Snoballs are kind of an East End Hardware thing, she said.

When a customer orders, they can see the freshly crushed ice in front of them, the syrup flavors added in three layers and finally, an umbrella to top it all off. Eat with a spoon or gulp it down, but the alcohol, whether gin as in the blackberry-and-lemon-flavored Jon Snocone or rum in the fruity Strocone, comes through immediately.

“The first day it’s hot, that’s what everyone comes for,” Jordan said. She noted that the bar offers snoballs year-round, including a peppermint flavor during the Christmas holidays.