Home

Meatball Mania

07.02.83

For an update on the humanity of meatballs circa 2011, you could do worse than drop by The Meatball Shop in Manhattan’s East Village for the “Always Ball,” possibly the Reuben Balls with Thousand Island dressing.

Or, if you’re not in the neighborhood, click on the Web position and meet the Meatball Smash, two meatballs mashed on a brioche bun, and the daintier Meatball Slider, billed giddily as “three bites of transparent ecstasy, then they’re gone forever.” In another dish, called Everything But The Kitchen Sink Salad, meatballs are plopped on the chef’s pick of greenmarket veggies and lettuces—this is presumably for those on a diet.

Meatballs have rolled right into the pin spot. For reasons that won’t be explored here, they tend to be a guy chef kind of thing, but there’s often a grandmother in the paint.

“Everybody has some kind of good memory associated with meatballs,” says Chef Greg Hardesty of Breather in Indianapolis. “Every culture has a meatball and a sandwich made from a meatball, whether it’s wrapped in pita bread or a grape leaf.”

Source: Wine Enthusiast Magazine