The Meatball Shop

Even though I'm a big fan of meatballs in any guise, I just don’t eat enough of them. From the slightly cumin scented Moroccan to heavily spiced Indian to the herby Italian meatballs. I love them all. So why don’t I eat more of them.

So when I came across The Meatball Shop on my research for this trip, I set aside a night for these wondrous little balls of goodness.

The Meatball Shop is not particularly large, it did however remind me a lot of Polpo back in London, actually thinking about it, they do look exactly the same. I wonder who took from whom.

Anyhows we managed to grab two seats at the bar and sat down for meatball heaven and ordered a bottle of red, and began to fathom the menu list.

Thankfully the barman was on hand to run through the menu in a little bit to quickly but we got the jist of it.

So after much consideration, we opted for some classic beef and tomato sauce, and another set of spicy beef with some spicy meat sauce. These were 4 meaty pieces of heaven that were just so good. I ordered some smashed white beans as a side to go with the spicy meat, and some oh my god I’ve just gone to heaven and back with the fresh milled polenta for the classic balls.

We found out that the polenta is from upstate New York and is milled fresh by the farmer. It was so creamy and I’ve never tasted polenta so good. I could eat this everyday for the rest of my life. Bliss.

The spicy balls with its spicy meat sauce were good, not to spicy, as that would have taken my eye off how good these tasted. Moping up that sauce with the fresh focaccia was just like being at home.

The classic beef with the tomato sauce, just like grandma used to make, as it says on the menu was, well how you expect. Bloody good, but can I mention again how good that polenta was. It was really good.

We also ordered some beef sliders, which went down very well, with a little dollop of tomato sauce. Man they hit the mark.

I was tempted to have an ice cream sandwich, but to be honest there was no room really. My stomach was in a war with my senses and thankfully my senses won. Phew.

Another thing I found here that annoys me with restaurants, as soon as we decided not to opt for a dessert, we were presented with the bill, even though we still had a quarter bottle of wine left. We paid and slowly sipped the wine as my own kind of defiance at this in and out regime that restaurants push these days. Hate it.

All in all The Meatball Shop was one of the best meals we had in New York on this trip, the whole ambiance of the joint was pretty pumping and fun. The girl next to me was celebrating just losing her job, which she seemed pretty pleased with it all. I’ve had shit jobs that when you leave is a kind of a blessing.