The Meatball Shop

200 Ninth Avenue

(between 22nd and 23rd Streets)

www.themeatballshop.com

The third outlet, with its Chelsea locale seems to be an inspired choice. With the neighborhood’s gay-friendly environment, the restaurant can have quite a bit of fun with its menu.

You can order your balls prepared the way you want it with your meat and sauce preference. Make no mistake, this restaurant does not offer your mother’s meatballs. They offer ball specialties of the day (it was lamb on the day we went for lunch) and a lounge bar that opens in the evenings called Underbar.

Although we went to lunch on a weekday at noon (as soon as the restaurant opened and allowed seating), the place quickly filled up in less than half an hour. So be warned, it's a highly popular hotspot with all types of customers--from girlfriends catching up at a lunch, to union guys grabbing some hearty heroes, to older touristy couples.

Staff is attentive and knowledgeable. They were also very accommodating as my friend wanted to replace some of the greens in her meal and they were more than willing to do so. I also was unsure as to what I wanted for a drink order. They had a lemonade special--tarragon--and kindly offered me a tasting in a shot glass. Way too spicy and syrupy so glad that they let me sample as I could not imagine having an entire glass of it.

The menu is interesting as it’s laminated so that the customer can mark his/her selection with a black marker that is provided in a jam jar on the wooden table.

I went with two sliders. I had a beef ball with mushroom sauce (which was very tasty!) and a spicy pork ball with pesto sauce (with lots of olive oil that soaked through the bread) and my friend ordered the Everything But the Kitchen Sink with the lamb balls (which I thought had too many nuts (a pun!)). The greens though that came with her order were very good as they were all crunchy (another pun!!).

The highlight to me though came with their homemade ice cream sandwiches prepared to your choosing. And the staff offered to split the sandwich for us so for easy sharing!

We chose espresso ice cream with a top cookie of brownie walnut and a bottom cookie of oatmeal raisin. That brownie walnut was warm and literally melting. So good!

We washed it all down with the pint of beer that I finally decided on, and the total came to $15/person for lunch. Definitely will come back to try some more ice cream sandwiches and for more balls (and another pun!!!).