no.21 - The Meatball Grinder's Giant Balls

The meatball grinder is the great sandwich equalizer. It can be served in small, cheapo corner groceries or atop the swankiest five star hotels. Either can be atrocious. Both could be legendary.

For years I have used the meatball grinder as my compass. Like the fundamentals of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, the meatball sandwich consists of four basic elements: Bread, Meatballs, Sauce and (usually) Cheese, and through these elements one can learn volumes about an eatery.

If you make sandwiches, the meatball sandwich exposes you for what you are.

The bread should be both crusty and soft. This is the easiest element to get right and the one that is so often very wrong. Quality matters here, but mostly, the bread is mearly a delivery system for the other elements. If the bread is too thick or too thin, the grinder is compromised. If the bread is soggy, all is lost.

The sauce is the most subtle of the four elements, the one which can add nuance to the sub. A meatball sandwich can withstand a mediocre sauce, but a great sauce improves everything. If the quality of the sauce is good, the meatballs themselves have often been attended to with the same care. However, be warned, a tasty sauce is sometimes used disguise low quality meat. Conversely, and more common, many good and even great meatballs have been found in a bath of tomato-flavored oil and water, or a sludge of tasteless pale red.

The cheese is, by some, considered an extra. This is a bad sign. If the maker of your meal asks what type of cheese you would like on your meatball sub, they are really saying a request for American Cheese or Swiss would be okay. It is not.

The cheese should be mozzarella, grated and then melted while the bread simultaneously toasts. It should not be three slices of waxy provolone with the meatballs slopped on top to do the dirty work of cheese melting. (Provolone is often substituted, but only because it is cheaper and it is easier to manage in an office cubicle.)

Finally there are the meatballs. The quality of these is paramount. If the meatballs in the grinder could not survive on the outside of the sandwich - moved, say, to a side of pasta — the meatball grinder is not worthy. If a bite of meatball, without sauce, is unpleasant, the meatball grinder is a fraud. If the meatball does not taste of beef something is very wrong. This last problem is shockingly common, leading me to wonder what sorts of meats I have eaten in my life.

But most vexing of all meatball problems is the modern meatball which consists of enormous fat grey monstrosities the size of softballs, jammed into a grinder is if the circumference of the meatball were all that mattered. They are often so big they must be sliced in half to fit the sandwich. These artery-clogging meatstrosities are constructed under the theory that quantity is better than quality and they are usually pulled from a frozen bag and microwaved, possibly one at a time because of their enormous size.

From an architectural point of view, the giant meatballs tend to slide out, making this sort of sub-sandwich impractical for travel, work or, in my most recent experience, the waiting area at my daughter's gymnastics class. Besides tasting like an approximation of meat, the vast size throws off the sauce ratios as the surface area of the meatball becomes too great, requiring more sauce than can be ladled into the limited space between the bread. This means the grinder is hopeless. Sauce cannot hide it and cheese can not bury it.

These behemoths have surely grown over time. Being smaller when I was young, I should now perceive everything as smaller, not the other way around. But meatballs, I think, have slowly increased in size and, I must admit, so have I.