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.