Have a Ball

REVIEW: Marabella Meatball Co.

by Adam Erace

Drew Lazor

At the height of its popularity in the late '80s and early '90s, the Marabella family of restaurants stretched from Blue Bell to Stone Harbor. Run by brothers Gabe, Angelo and Louis, there were eight locations, including one on Locust Street commandeering the ground floor of the Academy House. Were you to page through my parents' old photo albums, you might come across a picture of my 6-year-old self posed with the fam on the front step of that restaurant, backlit by the aquamarine neon sign.

Today, Gabe, 64, and his son, also named Gabe, have resurrected the family business with Marabella Meatball Co., a marinara-red charmer with seating for 30 and enough meatballs to feed the Roman army.

Blackboard menus unpack the spherical mania: Choose your balls, cheese, sauce, topping(s) and carb (three sizes of rolls, four varieties of al dente De Cecco pasta). It's just like ordering a salad at Cosi or Marathon — only instead of dried cranberries and balsamic vinaigrette, the choices are fontina and Alfredo, fat-laced prosciutto di Parma and mushroom ragu.

In all, there are more than 2,000 possible combinations — daunting, but the staff managed my group's meatball paralysis with patience and good humor. Their unfailing reco: all-beef balls, the family classic that eschews the common beef-veal-pork formula. Like all the meatballs here, they start with a "roux" of day-old bread, Locatelli cheese, eggs, garlic, salt, pepper, parsley and basil, then are rolled each morning and baked in the oven. But unlike the pork, chicken and veggie balls, the beef ones cook only halfway in the oven and get finished in Gabe Jr.'s paternal grandmother's tomato sauce.

Drew Lazor

"The beef gets flavor from the sauce, and the sauce gets flavor from the beef," says the 27-year-old commercial real-estate broker. This culinary symbiosis produces meatballs of uncommon sweetness and texture. Dripping with cooked-all-day tomato-y goodness, the four beef orbs snuggled with sharp provolone in a long Liscio's roll, so light I could have eaten four more. You can also downsize to the Nonni, two balls on a round roll — I suggest the pork balls, under slabs of Gorgonzola as punchy as the Parm-showered, extra-anchovy Caesar salad — or a slider single.

I loved the softness of the pork, as well as the heartiness of the denser, perfect-for-soup chicken, which cut a rug with rigatoni and bittersweet emerald broccoli rabe as good as it was garlicky. Bejeweled like a Sicilian baker's pastries with pine nuts and golden raisins, even the broccoli/cauliflower/chickpea veggie balls are bad-ass. Herbivores, cop them in the meat-free marinara. Just pronounce it "madinad" and no one will know you're not part of the family.

(adam.erace@citypaper.net)

Marabella Meatball Co. | 1211 Walnut St., 215-238-1833, marabellameatballco.com. Open Mon.-Sat., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sun., noon-6 p.m. Sandwiches, $3.25-$8.50; pastas and bowls, $7.50-$9.50; salads and sides, $4-$7.