Every time we visit the stretch of Walnut Street that crosses through the Gayborhood, we seethe with jealousy at the range and quality of places the people who live and work in that area have at their fingertips. Our neck of the woods is near South Street and, honestly, we are so over cheesesteaks, pizza and Chinese food.
So, added to our list of places we would like to be closer to for our lunchtime hunger pangs is Marabella Meatball Co., 1211 Walnut St.
Owner Gabe Marabella and his staff are up early each day making the fresh meatballs that are the center of their menu. The restaurant is efficiently Spartan in form and function, creating the ideal space for a quick lunch or dinner whether you are sitting down or taking out.
The menu reinforces the idea of doing a handful of things very well. There are four kinds of meatballs to choose from (beef, veggie, chicken and beef/pork/veal), as well as three sauces (marinara, tomato and mushroom) and a number of toppings, ranging from pesto and ricotta cheese to broccoli rabe and spinach. You can have the meatballs in sauce, with or without or in a sandwich or sub. Salads and garlic bread round out the menu.
The meatballs definitely bring it on all fronts, especially and surprisingly so with the veggie meatballs. Topped with pesto sauce over rigatoni ($8.95/$6.75), the balls offer a nice range of flavor and have a tender heartiness that holds up against their meaty cousins. Here’s another place we’d be happy to take vegetarians on the go.
The chicken meatballs with spinach and ricotta ($8.95/$6.75) were satisfying as well. The garlic crostini definitely must be ordered with the pasta, as they are maddeningly good and crispy.
The traditional beef meatball sandwich ($8.95) definitely turned us back on to meatball sandwiches. It isn’t that we don’t like meatball sandwiches; it’s just that Marabella made us realize that too many other places make them sloppily and with inferior meatballs. But Marabella’s sandwiches include the perfectly textured meatballs in excellently toasted long rolls. The cook also knows when to say when with the sauce and is generous with the cheese.
And Marabella doesn’t mind if you want to pass of his work as your own, as he keeps a refrigerator case stocked with quarts and pints of sauces and packages of meatballs ready to go in case you want to enjoy them in the candlelit confines of your abode … or, in our case, at the computer-screen-lit desk where we watch Netflix.
People along Walnut Street have all the luck. We either need to move or get some interns with rickshaws to fetch us better lunches.