Naked Balls.

I get really excited to go to restaurants that I have been eyeing for a long time. Crossing The Meatball Shop from my wishlist of restaurants to eat at was very satisfying. It's a trendy, relatively new restaurant with a fun concept. My friend and I walked down to the Lower East Side location expecting a long wait, but it ended up only being 30 minutes instead of the usual 1-2 hours. I love that they text you when your table is ready, so you can go elsewhere for a drink or walk around until your table is ready. Luckily, LES is surrounded by bars to easily pass the time.

The hardest decision I have had to make this weekend was picking what to eat. There are many choices of meatballs and sauces. Then from the naked balls (your choice of 4 balls, sauce), to heroes (3 balls, sauce, cheese on a baguette), to salads, to sliders. There is so much to choose from! I knew I wanted the spicy pork meatballs with classic tomato sauce, but in what combination, I wasn't sure. My friend and I decided to get our own meatballs but get risotto and mashed potato as sides to share. You can get the meatballs over the sides, but since my friend and I were sharing, we decided to keep it separate.

The meatballs were great. Melts in your mouth, but flavorful at the same time. I wanted to try the spicy meat sauce for sauce, but since I was getting the spicy pork meatballs, I didn't want to mask all the flavors with too much spice. The mashed potatoes are seriously to die for and mixing the sides with the meatball is a fat kid loving experience. It was definitely carbo-load, but very worth it. I have 2 meatballs to bring to lunch tomorrow :).

I heard a lot of good things about the ice cream sandwiches, so we ordered a brownie and chocolate chip cookie with caramel ice cream. The ice cream was delicious, but the cookies were rock hard. Especially with ice cream, I was expecting a soft cookie for freshness and easy to scoop, but the cookies were so hard! We were trying to scoop up and break the cookie and the cookie would fly everywhere! I'm not sure if that is how they usually are, but I definitely prefer a Coolhaus ice cream sandwich.




Love the table set up. The menus are like whiteboards and you check what you want.


Naked balls.


Our sides. Risotto and mashed potatoes.


Ice cream sandwich dessert (sorry, bad image!)

The atmosphere is dark and intimate and I really enjoyed the service. Our waitress was very attentive and helpful. The prices are affordable which is always a great plus for a trendy, cute restaurant. I will definitely be going back to try all the different meatball/sauce combinations, a great experience!