ROUSES_Fall2023_Magazine

missed a beat. A former competitor allowed him to use his facility to get back in business, guaranteeing that Vaucresson hot sausage po-boys would be served as usual at Jazz Fest 2006. Through the difficult years that followed, Vance pressed on, working festivals and pop ups while exploring different flavor profiles. Crawfish, Alligator, Green Onion and Chicken Jerk joined Vaucresson’s Original Hot Sausage; all were met with great acclaim. While keeping the business afloat, Vance was determined to reopen back in the Seventh Ward. He withstood years of rejection from lenders until Julius Kimbrough, executive director of Crescent City Community Land Trust, stepped in. “To protect and advance Black entrepreneurs and Black owned businesses for cultural preservation,” the CCCLT mission, dovetailed perfectly with Vaucresson’s goals. By creating two affordable housing units on the building’s second floor, they qualified for long-term, low-interest loans previously unavailable for the commercial location. Additionally, National Urban League President Marc Morial welcomed Vaucres son’s Creole Café into the Black Restaurant Accelerator Program, granting dollars for entrepreneurial assistance; it was one of the first restaurants in the U.S. to receive the distinction.

By Poppy Tooker Vaucresson’s Creole Café & Deli, on St. Bernard Avenue in New Orleans’ Seventh Ward, continues a family tradition that stretches back to 1899. That was the year Lovinsky Vaucresson, a French-Polish Jew, emigrated to New Orleans from Alsace-Lorraine with his wife, Odile Gaillard, a French woman of color. S onny took over the family business when his father passed away, but the bright, ambitious young man did not intend to be limited to the life of a butcher. Very fair skinned Sonny had sky-blue eyes and moved through New Orleans’ business world easily, never announcing that he was a person of color. The handsome, charming entre preneur successfully expanded into liquor and cigarette machine businesses, making friends along the way with major French Quarter players, including Larry Borenstein, the “father” of Preservation Hall, who had extensive real estate holdings there. Together, they opened Vaucresson’s Café Creole in 1965, the first black-owned business on Bourbon Street since Recon struction. The restaurant was revolutionary in many ways, with a menu featuring the traditional dishes of New Orleans’ Creoles of color. From calas with café au lait in the morning through panéed veal and tomato tinged jambalaya, the café was the first of its kind in the Quarter. In the fall of 1969, Sonny and Larry Boren stein lunched at the café with Alan Jaffe, who had recently moved to New Orleans to run Preservation Hall, and George Wein, founder of the Newport Jazz Festival. While discussing Newport’s success,

it was agreed the birthplace of jazz deserved its own festival. Soon, the element of food entered the conversation. “Sonny can bring food from the restaurant,” they collec tively agreed, which is how Vaucresson’s hot sausage po-boy became today’s enduring Jazz Fest staple. Vaucresson’s Café Creole closed in 1974, and Sonny turned his full attention to the sausage business. In 1970, he’d purchased a building on the corner of North Roman and St. Bernard Avenue, where he was determined to build his own USDA processing facility. He encountered many roadblocks due to the adverse racial politics that dominated Louisiana’s Department of Agriculture at the time, but Sonny prevailed, opening his facility in 1983. The USDA approval allowed him to seek out lucrative wholesale business previ ously unavailable to him. When Sonny’s youngest son, Vance, was in his senior year at Morehouse

College in Atlanta, his father paid him a visit and convinced him to return home to the family business. Together, they grew the business exponentially, successfully negoti ating and fulfilling large wholesale contracts. Sonny suffered a fatal heart attack in 1998 at the age of 67, and Vance stepped into his father’s shoes as the family business continued to flourish. Hurricane Katrina’s

floodwaters destroyed Vaucresson’s processing plant on St. Bernard Avenue, but the indomitable Vance never

Photograph by Adrienne Battistella

50 ROUSES FALL 2023