Meatball Shop – Italian – Lower East Side
It was just a couple of months ago that my boyfriend found a rudimentary menu for the soon-to-be famous Meatball Shop, and now the place has totally blown up into what you might call a phenomenon. And I love a gimmick as much as the next guy, so a co-worker and I rode the bus from our office in Battery Park up to the Lower East Side recently to give the balls a go.
The restaurant itself is all dark wood and old-timey feel, very small with a storefront entirely made of glass so that it gets plenty of natural light and air. The kitchen takes up the entire back wall and is also open so that you can see your meat being freshly-ground and your balls being freshly-formed.
My whole wheat hero with pork meatballs, spicy meat sauce, and mozzarella probably lost a lot of its freshness on its way back to the office, but that didn’t matter one bit. This wasn’t the biggest meatball parm I’ve had, nor the sauciest, but I’ve never had one made with better ingredients. Even the mixed greens salad with sliced pears and chives was worth talking about.
As usual, a small menu is a better menu when it means the chef can do a few things really well rather than a bunch of things mediocrely, and executive chef Daniel Holzman has meatballs down
Note: Everyone who tried my pork meatballs agreed that they were better than the chicken ones, so you know what to order.
84 Stanton Street
New York, NY 10002 (map)
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8 Comments
kimz
Considering how much I love meatballs and how consistently I crave them, I am going to demand that you bring me there the next time I come visit.
plumpdumpling
Gladly! I love the idea of spending an entire afternoon there, filling up on meatball sliders and ice cream sandwiches. I don’t know why we bother actually DOING things when you’re here when all we really should be doing is eating.
P.S. I love that the title of that photos is “meatball icecream”. We should invent that.
Tessa
I always feel like I enjoy your reviews so much more than I’d actually enjoy eating these things.
plumpdumpling
We shall see, won’t we? I’m taking you for the meatiest meatfeast I can think of. Brazilian churrascaria?
Bachelor Girl
I consider myself a meatball afficionado – in fact, when asked what I want for my upcoming birthday dinner, I replied, “Thirty-three meatballs, please.”
But as far as I’m concerned, the best thing about this restaurant is the iron-clad excuse to use the word “balls” hundreds of times in dinner conversation.
plumpdumpling
You know who makes a good meatball? Tom Colicchio. You know who makes a better meatball? MEATBALL SHOP. It’s the spicy sauce that does it for me.
What’s your criteria for a heavenly ball?
Heesa Phadie
Oh my word….I hadn’t heard of this place and wasn’t totally getting the whole “ball” thing so I had to head over to their website. Even with the limited menu I could eat here daily for quite a long time. You can come up with SO many different variations. I mean come one…a Chicken Ball with Parmesan Cream sauce on a Brioche bun….or a Spicy Pork Ball with Spicy Meat Sauce on the Whole Wheat Hero….goodness me…I could go on and on and on…my kind of place.
One favor…next time you eat here…blog about it again :P
plumpdumpling
I definitely will. I wanted to try at least ten sandwiches, but I didn’t know how good everything was going to taste by the time it made it back to my office. It’s the kind of place you can spend an afternoon munching and people-watching, so I’ll be back to binge on meatballs, purge out on the sidewalk, and binge some more.