Goldie's in Nassau, Bahamas...

After doing my homework before vacation, I decided to try authentic Island Food at Goldie's, being that it had the highest ratings and most positive reviews. As we are driving there we pass Twin Brothers, where we ate on our last trip, and the line is out the door.. Good sign, right?
We come upon Goldie's and there's not a soul near the place. We get out, get closer, look around and now I am apprehensive about going further. It looks like a real dump. No one is saying a word, but I know they're thinking, where the heck did she take us to this time?
I get closer to the inside window and say, I am not so sure we should go in here. No one's around, it looks dingy. I venture in and indeed there are a few people inside. The waitress asks if we want a table inside or outside, we decide in cause it was freezing in there. We go out back and there's no table, no chairs, no nothing. Now, we are laughing, out of confusion, not funny things.
We come back in and decide to sit in the front of the restaurant where there's 3 tables with mismatched chairs and a fan. I figure my group is gonna kill me.. But brave ones that we are, we open the menus and start ordering. First up, the conch salad, served cold with tomato, celery, garlic, lemon & olive oil. Fantastic..

Next dish, conch soup. Creamy, tasty, thick and delicious.. We are on a roll.. Next we ordered the conch fritters. I don't usually eat fried food but I had to stop myself from eating more of these delicious little balls of dough & conch with a great spicy dipping sauce of probably mayo & ketchup and some other unknown condiments. Don't care, it was great.

The main dishes were Grilled Local Red Snapper which came wrapped in foil with assorted veggies and plantains in the most delicate, delicious, flavorful broth ever.. Okay, so it wasn't really grilled as we know it, but it was absolutely fabulous. Fresh as can be. And it was $13 with a side of rice and peas.

We had the pork chop stir fry which was again, fantastically prepared and perfectly cooked. The grilled shrimp was cooked, again, in foil with assorted veggies & plantains, same delicious broth. And I had to try the Mac N Cheese, cause the Island people, to me, make it the best. True to form, I loved it. The others in my group weren't crazy about it, but I did enjoy it. The sides, rice n peas, cole slaw, potato salad, all homemade and amazing.

So, the moral of the story is, this was a great, great restaurant and i am glad we weren't too scared away by the looks of it on the outside, cause we truly would  have missed a fantastic meal. Oh, yeah, as the saying goes, "don't judge a book by its cover."  

The Meatball Shop. Gimmicky to me.

Sliders.. One bite and it's gone.

The place has 3 locations, one in the Village, on the Lower East Side and in Williamsburgh Brooklyn in NYC. Sounds successful.
My friend Joyce was dying to try this place and after hearing/reading so much about it on TV, magazine articles, foodie things, I wanted to go too. We decide to go pretty early on Saturday evening, making sure we got in. I get to the front of the place, packed already. The hostess asks for my name and cell number.  She informs me she will send a text confirming that we were there and another text when our table was ready. I like it.. very cool, very techno efficient. We had a 25 min wait, as estimated by the hostess.
So, we go inside, there's stools at the counter on the right and table on the left. A pretty small place that I think holds maybe 40. There's an open kitchen, music and a bustling staff. We get the menus and boy are they confusing. Our waitress comes over, very nice, pleasant girl. She attempts to explain the confusion and really makes it worse, I think. They have erasable markers on the tables for you to mark right on the menu your choices. Ok.  All 6 of us, pretty bright women, with the exception of one genius, figure it out.

Roasted cauliflower. Bland.

No sauce, unappetizing spaghetti, agreed?

So we order up some appetizers. We order the vegetable of the day, roasted cauliflower, spaghetti with marinara and a rigatoni dish too; and a market salad and the polenta, all around $4. And don't forget, they are tiny servings. We order a nice bottle of Chianti for $36. Good price, good wine. We wound up having 3 bottles and enjoying each one.

Too dry, tiny portion, no flavor.

Meatball hero with side salad. 

All the apps come out at once, including the Meatball hero, beef meatballs, with spicy marinara that was a main entree for one of us. From the looks of it all, the food was cold. And sure enough, it was. We summon our waitress and she takes it all back, apologetically. She then offers us extra food we didn't order and says she will take stuff off the bill. Ok.. The apps find their way back to us extremely quickly an we're hoping that didn't make it to the microwave.
So here we go. There are naked meatballs that come 4 to a dish, you pick from beef, spicy pork, chicken, vegetable or the special of the day, which was lamb. It comes with a side salad for $7.
You can have sliders at $3 each (top picture), again,  picking your ball and sauce. The sauces are marinara, spicy meat, mushroom gravy, parmesan cheese or pesto. You can order a hero on white italian or whole wheat, same set up, pick your sauce and ball, but there's the mozzarella or provolone for the top and a side salad for $9  You can have them over a salad. Why is beyond me. You can have 2 balls smashed on a brioche bun with a side salad for $8, also with the cheese.

Excellent polenta

We order a little bit of this and a little bit of that to taste it all. Only thing I didn't taste was the brioche bun. Once again,  the order comes out screwed up. Apologies, apologies. The manager comes over to apologize too and says, Desserts are on us.. Free stuff always makes things better.

Just meatballs with sauce

Ok, down to the meatballs. They're ok. Nothing special. I tried the pork, the beef and chicken. Eh.
The sauces were just ok too.  The pesto was very good though. The Polenta really was the best thing I tasted here besides the dessert. The hero bread was crappy. All the great bread makers in NYC, there is no reason for crappy italian bread. One of my dining companions, Patty, opted for the special balls of the day, which was lamb with Tzatziki sauce, couscous and a salad, (below). It looked great and she was quite pleased.

The desserts are ice cream sandwiches.. Again, you pick your cookie, you pick your ice cream and out it comes. They also have an ice cream special of the day which was strawberry lavender. I tried it and it was excellent. No cookie to make the sandwich for me. But I did taste the snickerdoodle with vanilla and it was really really good.

Chocolate Chip cookie with vanilla ice cream

Strawberry lavender ice cream. Yummy.

All in all, the idea of this place evidently is genius. Packed day and night. Why? I think cause it's sort of fun, at least to the crowd of mostly late 20s and 30s people. But the food all in all, not impressed, not so great.
I know at least 5 people on Staten Island who make those meatballs at The Meatball Shop taste like dog food.  I am not saying it's dog food, but these friends of mine who make meatballs, theirs are just far superior. t
The bill arrives, they took off a few of our ball dishes, desserts were free.. Smart business people.
I gotta get a meatball truck or something. People eat anything.