Thursdays with TT: The Meatball Shop

One restaurant that has been on our radar for a long time is The Meatball Shop. It is one of the most popular new restaurants to open in 2010. The concept is genius! A restaurant that only serves meatballs. Of course, serving just one kind of meatball would get pretty boring, so they serve 5 different kinds. In addition, they have a number of sauces and presentations to keep the number of possible combinations quite high. CT & I had a preview of the shop back when we went to Meatopia. Their grilled chicken meatballs were tasty, so that only increased our desire to go to the restaurant. Little did I know that I would end up going to Meatball Madness the next day and end up in a deep meatball coma.

The restaurant is tiny so be prepared to cozy up to your neighbor if you end up in the communal table in the middle. Their ordering system is fantastic. Simply mark off what kind of meatball, sauce, presentation, and side you want on the dry erase menu.

We started off with a carafe of red wine to accompany our meal($15). We ended up with a milk jar of wine. Pretty cool serving vessel for wine. Very hipster, but not surprising since we were in the Lower East Side.

Very soon after ordering, our food arrived. Not surprising considering everything is made beforehand and just needs to be plated.

The only way for an individual to try different balls is to order them individually in slider form ($3 each). CT got Classic Beef with Spicy Meat Sauce (left) and Spicy Pork with Mushroom Gravy (right).

CT says: These were delicious! The meatballs were juicy and cooked to perfection. They also had perfect amount of sauce on top,not so much that it overwhelmed the taste of the meatball or made the bread soggy, but added a nice flavor. The spicy meat sauce was just a little spicy. The mushroom sauce didn’t have a very strong mushroom flavor in the slider, but if I had gotten in in the bowl, it probably would’ve been more prevalent. Plus, the bread-to-meatball ratio was perfect. I considered ordering 3 sliders, but with the side salad it was just enough to feel full with feeling stuffed.

She also got the Market Salad as a side ($4), which on that day was arugula with roasted squash.

CT says: This was a great side to balance the meatball. Nice and light. It was a little over-dressed, but I still happily finished it.

I went with an order of “A La Carte Balls,” four meatballs in a bowl with foccacia ($7). I chose the Spicy Pork topped with Pesto. These were some pretty good meatballs. A little heat from the spice, but nothing to call the fire department about. There was a ton of pesto on top. Super fresh with a lot of crunchy pine nuts.

For a side, I decided to go with the white beans ($4). When this came out, it looked like mac & cheese. Very tasty and quite a large order. I think we ate about half of this.

They had a large selection of house made ice creams and sorbets, but we were too stuffed to even think about dessert.

All in all, it was a great meal. It didn’t look like we ordered that much food, but it filled us up pretty quickly. I think our total bill including wine, tax, tip was about $50. I can’t remember the last time I was so full on that low a bill. I will definitely be returning in the future to try some different combinations and recommend that you do too.