The children's novelist Sharon Creech once wrote, “Life is like a bowl of spaghetti. Every once in a while, you get a meatball.” But if you crave a meatball more than “once in a while,” here are 23 restaurants across America renowned for their delicious meatball offerings.
St. Louis
Website: www.charliegittos.com
Charlie Gitto's Italian restaurant has been a St. Louis institution since its founding in 1981. The restaurant takes credit for being the birthplace of toasted ravioli, but another signature dish is Charlie's baked spaghetti topped with meatballs, Bolognese sauce, and various cheeses. If you'd prefer a smaller meal, you can also get meatballs served as a standalone appetizer with Pomodoro sauce.
Brooklyn, New York
Website: www.frankiesspuntino.com
Frankies — no apostrophe since it is plural, named after co-owners Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli — cooks its meatballs in a red sauce before serving them smothered under even more red sauce, plus raisins, pine nuts, and cheese. If you'd prefer a quicker meal, the restaurant also serves its meatballs on parmigiana sandwiches.
Salt Lake City
Website: moochiesmeatballs.com
Even if you've never been to Salt Lake City, you may have heard of Moochie's, since it appeared on two different Guy Fieri shows — Diners, Drive-in, and Dives in 2008, and the follow-up series Triple D Nation in 2018.
Moochie's meatballs are made of ground beef, hot Italian pork sausage, and sweet pork sausage, mixed with eggs, parsley, garlic, and oatmeal. The baked meatballs are then simmered in marinara sauce before serving. The big meatballs (each one weighs a third of a pound) are served on sub sandwiches, or you can buy two meatballs and a quart of sauce from Moochie's take-home menu.
Chicago
Website: leonas.com
Leona's has helped hungry Chicagoans scratch their pizza itch since it first opened in 1950. But don't let the “pizzeria” name fool you; Leona's menu offers a wide range of Italian and American foods, including classic Italian meatballs offered as a standalone side dish offering.
You can also get meatball sandwiches, with meatballs smothered in marinara sauce and provolone cheese, all served on a hoagie roll. And of course, pizza lovers can choose sliced meatballs as a possible topping.
Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts
Website: www.alscafes.com
Al actually has four different cafes scattered throughout the Boston metro, each with slightly different menus, but all offer meatball-parmesan subs featuring large homemade meatballs that are cooked in marinara sauce before being topped with Parmesan and provolone cheeses. For lighter fare, try Al's homemade Italian wedding soup, which includes “tiny meatballs” on its ingredient list.
Los Angeles
Website: thehouseofmeatballs.com
The menu at LA's House of Meatballs offers standard Italian-American fare such as chicken parm, lasagna, and various ravioli varieties, but its main focus is its meatballs. The Build Your Own Meatballs Plate offers five varieties: carnivores can choose from beef, chicken, or pork, while vegetarians can enjoy eggplant or tofu balls. Then, choose your preferred shape of pasta, and top it off with your choice of homemade sauces: marinara, arabbiata, creamy tomato, white sauce, pesto bail, marsala mushroom, or bolognese.
Sister Bay, Wisconsin
Website: aljohnsons.com
Al Johnson's is a local landmark, easily recognizable thanks to the live goats that are often seen grazing on the restaurant's sod roof. Al's extensive menu includes homemade Swedish meatballs served with mashed potatoes, lingonberries, veggies, and a choice of soup or salad. If you'd prefer a smaller meal, you can also get a Swedish-meatball sandwich.
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Nashville, Tennessee
Website: cityhousenashville.com
City House's meatball recipe, devised by James Beard-winning chef Tandy Wilson, breaks the traditional meatball recipe rule: they actually contain more breadcrumbs than meat. The combination of pork shoulder, breadcrumbs (made of leftover pizza dough), milk, parsley, and garlic are first baked and then simmered for hours in a savory tomato sauce.
City House menus can vary based on the day of the week, but one recent “Sunday Supper Menu” included spaghetti and meatballs served with “Sunday gravy,” olive oil, and parm.
Brooklyn, New York
Website: grillmeatball.com
Köfte Piyaz is a Turkish restaurant renowned for its grilled beef meatballs (köfte is a traditional Persian dish of small balls of minced meat). The meatballs, which top the main-course listings on the menu, are served with rice pilaf, a house salad, grilled tomatoes, and Turkish bread.
Pittsburgh
Website: siennamercato.com/emporio-menu
Sienna Mercato is a three-story restaurant “marketplace” featuring a different theme on each floor. The ground floor hosts Emporio: A Meatball Joint, a casual Italian eatery featuring a variety of specialty meatballs — chicken, beef, deep-fried cod, spicy pork, and veggie balls. These can be ordered alone with sauce or served on sandwiches.
Or you can try various specialty “Bowls,” such as “Atomic Balls” (five buffalo fried chicken balls served with “government mac 'n cheese”, blue cheese crumbles, buffalo sauce, and jalapeno peppers), or “Angry Birds” (two chicken balls, more “government mac 'n cheese,” crumbled blue cheese, and crack sauce.
New York City
Website: themeatballshop.com
The name says it all: The Meatball Shop sells meatballs. Lots of meatballs, plus a variety of non-meat foods served in spherical form. You can get their “classic” balls (which contain pork), “Spicy Heritage Pork” balls, “mac 'n cheese” balls (containing beef and pork), buffalo chicken balls, and more.
Of course, they also serve a wide array of pasta-and-meatball dishes, such as spaghetti in meatballs. (That's spaghetti in meatballs, not and: three large classic balls with spaghetti baked inside them, each one served in a different sauce.) Or try the Cavatappi Chicken Pesto, mini chicken meatballs served with broccoli and mozzarella. They also offer sandwiches featuring classic meatballs, chicken meatballs, veggie balls, and more.
Philadelphia
Website: ralphsrestaurant.com
Ralph's is one of the oldest Italian restaurants in America, having been in business (and run by the same family) since 1900, (Fior d’Italia in San Francisco claims the title of oldest though it did temporarily close in 2012) and Ralph's meatballs have been a menu staple from the very beginning.
The restaurant’s “best of Philly” meatballs, made with a combination of ground beef and pork, Pecorino-Romano cheese, and caramelized garlic (plus a small amount of Italian bread as a binding agent), can be ordered alone, or on top of pasta.
Midlothian, Illinois
Website: bartolinis.com
If you're looking for a “challenging” meatball, Bartolini's is the place for you. Literally — the restaurant hosts an annual meatball-eating championship, and also a “10lb Meatball Sandwich Challenge” wherein a brave (and very hungry) solo diner gets 40 meatballs (two ounces each), 1.5 pounds each of red sauce and melted mozzarella, and a pound of roasted green peppers, all served on a three-foot loaf of French bread.
The meatballs are made of pork and beef combined with egg, Parmesan cheese, garlic, and milk-soaked bread, and in addition to the challenging portions mentioned already, they can also be ordered as a modestly-sized appetizer with red gravy and mozzarella, on a French bread sandwich, or atop a pizza or pasta dish. If you can't get to the Chicago area, Bartolini's ships nationwide.
Flushing and Bayside, New York
Website: shanghaiyougardennyc.com
Shanghai You Garden is a Chinese fusion restaurant whose menu mainly focuses on dumplings, but one of the restaurant’s most popular non-dumpling entrees is its meatballs, which are made of pork and crab meat braised in soy sauce.
San Francisco
Website: emmysspaghettishack.com
This Mission District restaurant is so popular there's a waiting list to get a table inside, though if you don't want to wait you can also order carryout. You can get Emmy's spaghetti topped with three all-beef meatballs, and there's also a vegetarian option where the spaghetti is topped with two plant-based “Beyond Balls” made from a combination of peas, mung beans, faba beans, brown rice cocoa butter, beet juice extract, apple extract, and unspecified “natural flavors.” If you're trying to cut carbs, you can also order meatballs or Beyond Balls individually, for $4 each.
Kansas City, Missouri
Website: ragazzakc.com
At Ragazza's, you can get moderately sized homemade meatballs topping a platter of spaghetti, or try a “Meatball Grande,” a ten-ounce meatball served with red sauce and grilled focaccia bread on the side. Smaller individual meatballs with red sauce can be ordered as side dishes for $2.50 apiece.
Baltimore
Website: dipasquales.com
DiPasquale's meatball recipe has been a closely guarded secret for over a hundred years, ever since the first DiPasquale’s location opened for business in 1914. The deli’s meatball subs feature meatballs and marinara sauce stuffed inside a hollowed-out loaf of freshly baked bread, or you can order a side dish of two meatballs plus sauce.
Santa Monica, California
Website: baycitiesitaliandeli.com
This combination bakery and delicatessen has served fresh-made bread, pasta, and other Italian food to Angelenos since 1925. One of its signature hot sandwiches featured two enormous meatballs served with melted mozzarella on a loaf of toasted bread.
They also cater (with advance notice), and a tray of its catered “cocktail meatballs” ranges in price from $35 for 25 meatballs to $120 for 100 meatballs. You can also order a two-foot-long meatball sub sandwich for $60.
New York
Website: frankrestaurant.com/menu
Here's a semantic mystery to unravel: how big can a meatball get before it qualifies as a meatloaf instead? The answer might be found at Frank (not “Frank's”), where the dinner entrees include polpettone, a spiced meatloaf served with tomato gravy and potato pancetta that can easily feed two or three people.
If you prefer smaller portions, you can order a side dish of meatballs and sausage, and every Wednesday, the special is spaghetti and meatballs.
Chicago
Website: beatrixrestaurants.com
Beatrix has five locations throughout Chicago, with several Asian or Asian-inspired menu offerings including its Buffalo chicken meatballs served with yogurt ranch sauce.
Southold and Northport, Long Island, New York
Website: maronicuisine.com
Maroni boasts that it is “home of the original hot pots”: a take-out pot filled with Maroni's meatballs and red sauce. Its all-beef meatballs, made from an old family recipe, are so good, that Food Network chef Bobby Flay featured them in a “meatball throwdown.” If you visit Maroni's, bear in mind that they do not accept credit cards. And if you can't make it to Maroni's, its meatball recipe is here.
Multiple locations
Website: wildfirerestaurant.com
This small, jazz-themed restaurant chain has five locations in Illinois (mainly in Chicago and its suburbs), and one each in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and Tysons, Virginia. Wildfire's lunch and dinner appetizer menus both feature meatballs made from bison, with tomato sauce and asiago cheese.
Multiple locations
Website: ikea.com/us/en/stores/restaurant
Although Ikea is best known as a source of affordable home furnishings and décor, most stores also feature an attached restaurant where hungry shoppers can break for a tasty and affordable meal. The menu only offers a few items, including its flagship Swedish meatballs (also known as köttbullar), made of beef and pork under cream sauce, served with sides of mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam. If you prefer eating at home, you can also buy sauce packets and frozen Swedish meatballs in the store's bistro section.
