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The Meatball Shop + Ice Cream Sandwiches

I have been meaning to go to The Meatball Shop for a long time and was fortunate enough that this place is close to Pianos – we wrapped up our set, watched Anni Rossi and then headed over to check out the magic. Chances of getting a seat looked pretty grim when we got there; the place was packed. Somehow timing was perfect, a group of four leaving just as we got in and we were seated in literally 2 minutes.

The Meatball Shop offers a fun menu with lots of options. You can get orders of meatballs a la carte where you choose one type of meat and one sauce, unfortunately no mixing and matching. The rest of the menu is much more open-ended. You can get Meatball sliders, a hero, or a meatball smash (2 meatballs on a brioche bun with sauce and cheese). The meat offerings are classic beef, spicy pork, chicken, vegetable, and the special of the day along with choice of tomato sauce, spicy meat sauce, mushroom, or parmesan cream.

I decided to go with two sliders, a Classic Beef with Spicy Meat Sauce and the special of the day, Buffalo Chicken with a Bleu Cheese Sauce. To start off, the classic beef slider was incredible. One of the tastiest meatballs I’ve had in a while, and the spicy meat sauce is perfection. This little guy had me wishing all I got was classic beef/spicy meat sauce sliders. That being said, the Buffalo Chicken meatball was surprisingly delicious. I didn’t expect to eat something that was so… buffalo-chicken in the form of a meatball. The bleu cheese sauce was great and this was super yummy.

For the big meal I decided to go for a Spicy Pork meatball hero with Tomato Sauce and Mozzarella. This is where I made a bit of a mistake, I got whole wheat bread – kind of a bad idea. I opted for the larger hero assuming that the spicy pork was going to be tastier than a beef meatball, but I was so enamored by the beef meatball it was hard to move on to this one. I had a few bites of the beef meatball first, then basically chugged this hero and then finished the meatball explosion by going back to the beef. Don’t get me wrong, the pork is awesome, but that beef is hard to contend with. Also, whole wheat was just stupid – shoulda gone for white.

The Meatball Shop offers an awesome build-your-own ice cream sandwich. I went for house-made mint ice cream in between a chocolate chip cookie and a ginger snap. The ice cream was incredibly soft and the flavor was completely not what I was expecting. This mint ice cream was so minty it was borderline herbal and ridiculously refreshing. A part of me was confused, but the other part loved it. The mint scoop was super soft and tasty, and the mix-and-match cookie combination was definitely the right choice. Chocolate chip and ginger? Golden move.

Look at Alexa and Gao Di so happy with their ice cream sandwiches! Fools for going with chocolate chip cookies on both sides – ha!

Anyway, the Meatball Shop rocked and I will definitely be back for more. You can definitely make a meal out of eating a bunch of sliders – I think next time I will go for a Meatball Smash as those seem a little more interesting than your average meatball sub and will allow you the stomach to consume more sliders. Bravo, Meatball Shop. I will be back!

The Meatball Shop is located at 84 Stanton St between Allen and Orchard

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Dijital Fix L.E.S. Opening x Hipstamatic

Photos from the grand opening of Dijital Fix’s Lower East Side location. The space is pretty amazing – store upstairs, cafe downstairs, gallery in the back.

This is so adorable.

Those aren’t manakins – that’s actually Weileen and Walice.

Creepy photo of me thanks to Eileen. Eyes very non-Asian here.

Dijital Fix founder David Auerbach.

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Congee Village’s Peking Style Pork Chops

I love Congee Village. This Chinese restaurant in the Lower East Side is awesome: good prices and great food, and I enjoy the random atmosphere. Last week I was here I heard people singing karaoke ridiculously loud from the lower level rooms and watched the hostess running around to turn the volume down while screaming to herself, “So loud!!!”

Anyway, my favorite thing to get here is the Peking Style Pork Chops. These pork chops are so savory and delicious. As you can tell from the picture, Congee Village gives you an awesome abundance of pork… up until you finish it all. Some parts crunchy, some kinda chewy- pork chops are simply fun to eat. Man, I love pork.

You also obviously need to get the congee (also known as porridge). My favorite kind to get is the Sliced Pork and Thousand-Year Egg Congee, I believe the price is around 3 dollars… an amazing deal. The Beef Chow Mein and Jumbo Shrimp are also excellent. Not that I was expecting them to be amazing here, the xiao long baos at Congee Village are pretty mediocre, as I recall they were dry and only offered in pork. While I do love pork, I much prefer the pork and crabmeat mixture. For much better soup dumplings I recommend going to Joe’s Shanghai or Nan Xiang Dumpling House which I wrote about a little while ago.

This is a good place to eat and drink. The price seems perfect with four or more people… maybe it’s simply because Gao Di and I can’t help ourselves when we’re on our own and just happen to order the same amount of food as we would with a larger group of people.

Congee Village is located on 100 Allen St between Delancey and Broome.