The Meatball Shop is an affordable, yet super delicious spot to have any meal of the day. They serve typical and not-so-typical combos of meat and sauce, which means that there is a meatball for everyone. They also sell more than just meatballs, they have sandwiches, delicious sides, and even ice cream sandwiches. Add in the economical pricing and it makes it a perfect place to have a great meal.
Having a store that specializes in only meatballs is strange yet intriguing. This either means the meatballs are amazing or they are just getting the immediate attention for focusing on something so specific. The shop was started by Michael Chernow, who is the general manager and Daniel Holzman, who is the executive chef. Together they have built a menu based entirely around meatballs. They have come up with many variations like in sauces like classic tomato, spicy meat sauce, mushroom gravy, parmesan cream, pesto, and special. There are many choices of meat: classic beef. spicy pork, chicken, veggie, special. They also serve them on top of spaghetti, on top of polenta, as a hero or as sliders. So there are many ways you can enjoy the meatballs.
Now there are six stores all in New York City and Brooklyn. The restaurants stay open till 2 o'clock, so you can have comfort food any time. The restaurants have an old fashion vibe to it from the tin ceilings and wooden communal tables. On the walls there are black and white portraits of people staring down at you. They have a very cool and efficient ordering system of getting erasable menus and markers to mark what you want. They also have a chalk board with the specials up on the wall.
The Meatball Shop's most popular dish is the order of four meat balls, where you pick the meat and the sauce it comes in. The restaurant serves food almost all day, but they have a special brunch menu, which gives you a choice between Balls, Biscuits & Gravy (2 fried eggs, 2 biscuits & mushroom gravy), Breakfast Sandwich (bacon, fried eggs, & american cheese on a brioche bun, served with our simple salad), Balls Benedict (2 poached eggs, bacon & hollandaise on a brioche bun), or (Balls Florentine 2 poached eggs & hollandaise over steamed spinach) for eleven dollars. Chernow's wife makes the ice cream sandwiches, which are amazing!
The meatballs there were actually really good. The regular beef meatballs are kinda boring and not memorable, but the spicy pork is much more flavorful. The food looked and tasted simple yet delicious. The sandwich was basically meatballs flattened and put between two buns, but the flavor combination was perfect. The salad was actually pretty good, too. The apple and vinegar complemented each other and the freshness of the salad cut the richness of everything else. It is good to see that they pay attention to the dinner details. The risotto was not anything too special, but it was not bad. Overall the food was very good. It was a quick and fun restaurant to go to. The decor is a little strange and the service is not great, but it doesn't really have to be for such a simple restaurant. This is great for college kids because the prices are low, yet the food is high quality. They do not take reservations and it is a very popular restaurants so you should call in advance to see if there are tables available or you can just wait for a while. I would definitely go back and I think you should try it, too.