Some New Orleans foods became famous in grand restaurants.
Roman Candy became famous rolling down the street.
For more than a century, generations of New Orleanians have known the sight of a red-and-white wagon carrying long sticks of hand-pulled candy in three flavors:
Chocolate.
Vanilla.
Strawberry.
The public Roman Candy business dates to 1915, but the family’s candy tradition is older.
Its story reaches through Sicilian immigration, New Orleans street vending, a remarkable custom-built wagon, a family tragedy, two generations of candy makers, Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest, Audubon Zoo, and more than a century of people recognizing the wagon before they ever read its name.
The Candy Came Before the Company
The Roman Candy Company traces the recipe to Angelina Napoli Cortese, the great-grandmother of longtime Roman Candy Man Ron Kottemann.
According to the company’s history, Angelina made the candy for relatives and friends on special occasions including Christmas and St. Joseph’s Day.
The family was Sicilian, and Kottemann told the Southern Foodways Alliance that his family had been involved in confectionery work in Sicily. He believed the candy tradition extended back several generations, although he was careful to say the family did not know exactly how far.
That distinction matters.
The documented New Orleans business begins with Sam Cortese.
The family recipe apparently reaches farther back.
Exactly how far remains family history rather than something that can be pinned to a specific year.
The Cortese Family Came Through Sicily
Ron Kottemann identified Sam’s father as Anthony Cortese, a Sicilian immigrant who made several trips between Sicily and the United States before eventually bringing his family over.
According to Kottemann’s oral history, Anthony had worked as a fruit-and-vegetable vendor.
Sam Cortese was born in Louisville, Kentucky, during one of the family’s periods in the United States, making him the first American-born generation in that branch of the family. The family later settled in New Orleans.
Street vending therefore did not suddenly appear with the candy wagon.
It was already part of how the family made a living.
Sam Cortese Survived a Terrible Childhood Accident
One of the most striking parts of Roman Candy history comes from the Cortese family’s own oral tradition.
In his 2006 Southern Foodways Alliance interview, Ron Kottemann said his grandfather Sam was around 10 to 12 years old when he was struck in a streetcar accident and lost both legs below the knees.
Kottemann said a man present at the scene who had military experience applied tourniquets, helping save Sam’s life. Sam eventually received artificial legs.
This story is preserved through family testimony and later New Orleans accounts; it should be understood as family oral history rather than as a detail EatBayou has independently verified from contemporary accident records.
What is well documented through the family account is what came afterward.
Sam did not stop working.
A Goat Cart Helped Him Get Around
Kottemann recalled that Sam’s father built him a small cart pulled by goats so he could travel after losing his legs.
He used the cart to get to school and later began vending.
By his teenage years, Sam was selling fruit and vegetables.
During winter, he also sold coal and firewood—physically demanding work even without considering his artificial legs.
This is an important part of the Roman Candy story because Sam was already a working street vendor before candy became his specialty.
The wagon did not create the vendor.
The vendor eventually created the candy wagon.
Leftover Family Candy Started Selling
The Cortese family continued making candy for holidays and family gatherings.
When there was candy left over, some of it went onto Sam’s vending wagon alongside the fruit and vegetables.
Then something useful happened.
People wanted the candy.
Kottemann recalled that customers began asking for it often enough that Sam realized there might be a business there. In the spring of 1915, he decided to try selling candy instead of relying mainly on produce.
There was one practical problem.
His mother could not spend every day at home making enough candy for Sam to sell.
If candy was going to become a full-time street business, Sam needed to make it himself.
Preferably while working his route.
The Solution Was a Candy Factory on Wheels
Sam approached wheelwrights with an unusual request.
He wanted a wagon from which he could both drive and manufacture candy.
According to Kottemann, most of the wheelwrights he approached told him it could not be done.
One said yes.
His name was Tom Brinker, and his shop was near Washington Avenue and Claiborne.
Together, Sam and Brinker designed the wagon in 1915.
It was not an ordinary vending cart.
The Wagon Had Running Water and Marble Work Surfaces
Kottemann’s oral history gives an extraordinary description of what Sam wanted built into the wagon.
Windows surrounded it.
Sam could drive from inside rather than sitting exposed on an exterior perch.
The wagon contained separate containers for hot and cold water feeding a sink.
It had marble work surfaces.
It had heating equipment.
And it had a candy hook for pulling the taffy.
In other words, the wagon was not merely transportation carrying finished candy.
It was a functioning mobile confectionery.
That was the idea that allowed Roman Candy to become what New Orleans remembers.
Cook while moving.
Pull the candy.
Form it.
Wrap it.
Sell it.
Then keep going.
The Same Wagon Design Became the Symbol
The company says the wagon created in 1915 remains the foundation of the Roman Candy tradition.
Over time, its red-and-white appearance became almost as recognizable as the candy itself.
The wagon and the animal pulling it turned Roman Candy into something people could spot from down the street.
That visual identity was not originally a branding exercise.
It came from how the business actually worked.
That is often how the strongest food traditions develop.
First solve a practical problem.
Then wait a few generations.
Eventually the solution becomes iconic.
Why Is It Called Roman Candy?
The name does not mean the candy came from ancient Rome.
Kottemann explained that his grandfather considered calling it Italian candy but worried that in New Orleans’ strongly ethnic neighborhoods, customers outside the Italian community might assume the candy was not meant for them.
So Sam chose Roman instead.
It sounded Italian without limiting the product so narrowly.
According to Kottemann, that is where the Roman Candy name came from.
It was a marketing decision made by a street vendor more than a century ago.
And it stuck.
Sam Settled on Three Flavors
Roman Candy became associated with:
Chocolate.
Vanilla.
Strawberry.
Sam experimented with other flavors, including orange and spearmint, but did not keep them permanently.
Kottemann explained that too many choices slowed customers down.
A street vendor needed people to decide and keep the transaction moving.
That may be one of the most sensible product strategies in New Orleans food history.
Three flavors.
Pick one.
Next customer.
The Candy Sold for Five Cents
When Sam began selling Roman Candy in 1915, a stick cost a nickel.
Then something remarkable happened.
The price stayed a nickel for the rest of Sam’s life.
He died in 1969, meaning the candy sold at that price for roughly 54 years. Kottemann later explained that the sticks became somewhat thinner as ingredient costs rose because there was only so long the business could maintain both the original size and the original price.
After the 1970s began, the size stabilized and the price finally started rising.
Even candy eventually meets economics.
Sam Worked Almost Until the End
Kottemann told the Southern Foodways Alliance that his grandfather continued vending until only a few months before his death in 1969.
By then Roman Candy had been traveling New Orleans streets for more than half a century.
Sam had covered an enormous territory.
Kottemann recalled that his grandfather’s routes extended from Chalmette to around Causeway Boulevard, across different parts of New Orleans, and even across the river by ferry into Algiers and Gretna.
A complete route could take a week or more.
The candy business was literally woven through neighborhoods.
Ron Kottemann Learned the Business Young
Sam had only one daughter.
Her son Ron Kottemann grew up around the candy operation.
Kottemann said he began making Roman Candy when he was about 14 years old.
He and his brothers also worked a family truck selling Roman Candy, cotton candy, popcorn, and peanuts.
So when the time eventually came to take over the business, Ron was not learning the candy from scratch.
His grandfather had already trained him.
That apprenticeship matters.
Roman Candy survived not because someone found an old recipe card decades later.
The actual technique passed directly from one generation to another.
Sam Died Before Ron Took Over
The succession was not immediate.
Sam died in 1969 while Ron was attending the University of New Orleans.
Ron intended to enter the business, but after working to save money he was drafted into the Army.
That created a roughly two-year period when Roman Candy disappeared from New Orleans streets.
After leaving the Army, Ron used money he had saved to obtain another mule and put the wagon back into operation.
He took over in 1971.
For a tradition that now seems almost permanent, there was a moment when it could easily have ended.
It did not.
Ron Also Bought His Grandfather’s House
When Ron restarted the business, he also bought the family’s house on Constance Street, which included the stable associated with the Roman Candy operation.
Kottemann remembered insisting on buying rather than simply accepting the property because the family was large and he wanted the ownership settled clearly.
In 1971, he borrowed the money and purchased it.
That kept several pieces of the tradition together:
House.
Stable.
Animals.
Wagon.
Candy business.
This was not a brand being transferred through corporate paperwork.
It was a working family operation.
A Second Wagon Appeared in the 1980s
Roman Candy eventually needed another wagon.
Kottemann recalled building a replica in the early 1980s for a proposed mall operation.
That plan did not work out as intended, but the additional wagon became useful.
During the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition, the original Roman Candy wagon operated inside the fair’s Italian Village while another wagon worked on the street.
After the World’s Fair, the additional wagon found a long-term home at Audubon Zoo.
That gave Roman Candy something it historically had not had:
A relatively predictable place where customers could find it.
Jazz Fest Became One of the Biggest Times of the Year
Roman Candy also became closely associated with the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
In his 2006 oral history, Kottemann said Jazz Fest and Mardi Gras were his busiest periods.
With someone helping wrap, he estimated he could make about 2,000 sticks in one day, working from before sunrise until after sunset.
He emphasized that the process was still not mechanized.
That is a remarkable production number for candy still being pulled, formed, and wrapped largely by hand.
Roman Candy had become festival food without becoming factory candy.
Mardi Gras Was Another Major Season
Mardi Gras naturally fit the business.
Crowds were already on the streets.
Roman Candy was already a street food.
The wagon could become part of the larger carnival landscape.
That relationship helped introduce the candy to generations of people who may not have encountered the wagon on an ordinary neighborhood route.
Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest turned a local vending tradition into something visitors could discover too.
Roman Candy remained a New Orleans neighborhood memory while also becoming a New Orleans tourism memory.
Those are not always the same thing.
Here they overlap.
Hurricane Katrina Disrupted the Routes
Hurricane Katrina changed Roman Candy’s operating environment along with nearly everything else in New Orleans.
During the 2006 Southern Foodways Alliance interview, Kottemann described reduced routes, population loss, changes around Audubon Zoo, and the practical difficulties of returning his wagon and mule to parts of the city.
He noted that his grandfather had once covered neighborhoods across the entire metropolitan area, whereas the post-Katrina reality was different.
Roman Candy survived that disruption too.
A tradition built around movement had to adapt to a city whose population and neighborhoods had suddenly changed.
Even the Wagon Had to Be Maintained by Hand
Keeping a 1915-style wagon operating in modern New Orleans created problems Sam Cortese probably never expected his grandson to face.
By 2006, Kottemann said the city’s last wheelwright had died years earlier.
When wagon wheels needed work, he handled much of the repair himself, obtaining components from Amish suppliers and assembling them.
The business therefore required knowledge beyond candy making.
Animal handling.
Wagon repair.
Street vending.
Festival logistics.
Candy pulling.
Wrapping.
Roman Candy survived because someone kept maintaining the whole system, not merely the recipe.
The Recipe Was Passed by Practice
When interviewers asked whether the recipe had been written down, Kottemann said it had not.
He explained that several members of the family knew how to make the candy because they had learned by working in the business.
He described the basic ingredients as corn syrup, sugar, flavoring, and a little vegetable shortening.
The real knowledge lies in technique.
Cooking.
Cooling.
Pulling.
Judging the texture.
Forming the sticks.
Working quickly in New Orleans weather.
A recipe can tell you ingredients.
A tradition teaches your hands.
More Than a Century Later, the Business Continues
The Roman Candy Company continues to present itself as the descendant of the family business Sam Cortese established in 1915, still centered on the same three classic flavors and the familiar New Orleans wagon tradition.
That continuity is unusual.
Restaurants close.
Recipes change.
Companies are sold.
Brands become national and detach from their original communities.
Roman Candy remained strikingly specific.
One family.
One city.
One peculiar candy wagon.
Three flavors.
Why Roman Candy Matters to New Orleans Food History
Roman Candy is important not because hand-pulled taffy exists nowhere else.
It matters because of the particular way this family confection became part of New Orleans street life.
Its history captures several pieces of the city at once.
Sicilian immigration.
Street vending.
Neighborhood routes.
Family labor.
Horse-and-mule transportation.
Festival culture.
The persistence of small family businesses.
And the ability of a simple food to accumulate meaning because people encounter it again and again across generations.
Sam Cortese did not open a grand candy store.
He built a wagon that could make candy while he traveled.
That practical decision created something far more memorable.
A New Orleans Tradition That Kept Moving
The Roman Candy story starts with family candy made for holidays.
Then a young vendor carries leftovers onto his produce wagon.
Customers ask for more.
A wheelwright helps build something unusual.
The candy becomes a business.
The wagon moves through New Orleans.
A nickel buys a stick.
Chocolate.
Vanilla.
Strawberry.
Sam works the streets for more than half a century.
His grandson learns beside him.
The business pauses.
Then starts again.
It reaches the World’s Fair.
Audubon Zoo.
Mardi Gras.
Jazz Fest.
Hurricane Katrina comes and goes.
The city changes.
The wagon keeps moving.
That may be the most appropriate history possible for Roman Candy.
New Orleans never needed it to sit still.
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