Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Ode to the Meatball

Oh, this long, extended weekend (how weird is it that half of New York shuts down for Columbus Day, which we stopped acknowledging long ago in Texas?), the hubby and I ate some really good food, sort of by accident (a really extravagant accident).
Saturday night, we ventured out with R & J, our couple-friends (who actually lived in the same building by design in Austin, and again here in NYC) to Gramercy Tavern for a night of good food and good friends. We went for a late dinner (left the apt at 8:30), and wound up not being seated (in the no reservations front room) at 9:30, which meant that I was ravenously hungry by the time we sat down with our menus. One item on the menu piqued my interest immediately - a stuffed meatball. I had seen Rachel Ray make a Gorgonzola "stuffed" meatball (more of a wrap-a-round) earlier in the week, so I was primed for the stuffed meatball at Gramercy. Oh, deliciousness! A meatball the size of a baseball was delivered to the table, and such a meatball I have never tasted. The meat was ground so fine, but not so fine as to be a ball of nothingness, and the spices were almost precisely interspersed in the meatball. The meatball was presented cut in half, and in the center was an ooey-gooey flow of cheese. Yummmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Yesterday, the hubby and I were out walking around Central Park (no, I couldn't convince him to row me around in a boat - because the water was scummy, uh huh), then we went tot the Apple store in an attempt to hook up his laptop to the television for optimal instant Netflix viewing (didn't work), when R & J emailed on the hubby's work pda to see what we were up to. A few minutes later, they were crossing 5th Avenue through the Columbus Day Parade to meet up with us for lunch. The hubby found out that Aquavit had a prix fixe lunch, so made a reservation and, lo and behold, one of the entrees was Swedish meatballs. I expected the plate would be smaller, with three or four meatballs, luckily (?) the plate came piled high with eight giant, tender meatballs. Thank goodness my hubby was so generous as to offer to eat one, after stealing the first one.

P.S. - curious to see what kinds of ads pop up on this post, and what kind of people, searching for meatballs wind up on the site.

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