Review of the Week #1: 24th and Meatballs

May 3, 2017February 22, 2019 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Good evening, friends and neighbors!
As you may have noticed, I love food. I do some of my best writing when sitting in a cafe or bar, and over the course of two years I’ve accumulated a list of favorite places- some are great to write in, some have great music. Some have amazing food, others their drinks are the stars. Socialize in some, hide in others.
I’ve also got more than a few opinions on what good food and drinks ARE, and I don;t mind telling anyone that’ll listen.
So, at Emily’s urging, I’m gonna use this space maybe once a week to review the places I’ve been!
No totally negative reviews- every restaurant deserves a shot and your own opinion- but it will always be the honest truth. I’ll tell you not only where to go, but when and WHY.So let’s talk balls.

WHERE:24th and Meatballs, NE 24th + NE Glisan St.

A few weeks back, the planets once again aligned in a felicitous manner, and I had a day of beautiful weather off. Donning my favorite aloha shirt (they are always in fashion and I will fight you), I took to the streets for a bit of a wander around parts of the city I don’t often get to see.

As I walked and soaked up the sun before the inevitable days of rain, I found myself around NE Glisan. Before picking up my current job, I’d had an (obviously) unsuccessful job interview at a restaurant nearby, and found myself with some time to kill. If memory served, there was an interesting meatball place around here….

So it was. 24th and Meatballs clings to the end of an unassuming string of restaurants, with indoor and outdoor seating. The placement is perfect for people-watching on the busy street, with food well-bent toward the mid-afternoon doldrums.
Even before you walk in, the elephant in the room comes out and greets you. There are a LOT of testicle jokes everywhere- and yes, you ARE there to eat balls. Their phone number (50-EATBALLS), their menu, their advertising all make it quite clear that the dining experience will not include high-brow humor.

Behold- the Baller-Melon.

Now that the 12-year-old in you is satisfied, you can medicate the adult. The beer and cocktail menus are limited, but effective. Beers are mostly local microbrews, and the cocktails are twists on classics (with yet MORE ball jokes.) I put in for a Baller-Melon (vodka, lime, watermelon juice). The fruity, neon boat drink fits the weather- cool, refreshing, and pairs nicely with obnoxiously loud clothing.

Next comes ordering, done off a chalkboard. It’s a simple progression if there ever was one:
1. How do you want your balls? 24th and Meatballs offers their wares in various platings and numbers, including pasta and sandwiches, ranging from the humble slider (one ball on a bun for $3) to the Hero (three balls, sauce, cheese, on a hoagie roll for $10)
2. Pick your balls! (Choice of Classic Italian, Pork Piccante, Chicken, or Vegan)
3. What Sauce? (Classic Marinara, Creamy Cheesy similar to an alfredo, a pork bolognese, or an arugula pesto.)

All balls apparently work with all sauces, but I go with the Classic Italian and the Marinara- just three on a plate, with foccacia, referred to on the menu as “Balls, Balls, Balls” for $7. If you need extra balls, it’s $2 a pop. Much easier than getting surgery. (Crap, they’ve got me doing the jokes now. Sorry about that one.)

“Balls, Balls, Balls”… I think there’s an AC/DC song here.

My order comes out pretty quick, though I was maybe one of 5 people there on a Friday afternoon. Meatballs and booze in the sunshine? This I could do more often.

The meatballs are VERY good- very meaty, with not much filler. Most of the meatballs I’d had use bread crumbs or eggs as a binder. The ingredients are locally sourced, and the texture is firm and satisfying. The sauce, however…. oh good God that SAUCE.

This might be a nitpick that’ll earn me a beating in some circles, but I can’t stand sweet tomato sauce. I want fresh, spicy, zesty- but not sweet. Pizza, pasta, it doesn’t matter- if the sauce is noticeably sweet, it’s an instant turn-off to me.

24th and Meatballs’ classic marinara is exactly what I want out of a tomato sauce. When I think of “the gravy” in Italian-American cooking, this is what I come up with now. Take a look at that plate again. When I’d finished the balls and had run out of bread, I was sitting there scooping up with sauce with a fork. If I wasn’t sitting in public, I probably would have gone ahead and lapped at the bowl like a dog.

A cocktail, meatballs, and an aloha shirt in the Portland sunshine. I could REALLY do this more often. I need more of these balls in my life.

I’m sorry about that one too.

Not this one, though.

When To Go: Anytime seems right, but pick a day with good weather- indoor seating is somewhat limited.

Why: Because you need a simple, delicious, meaty lunch and a good drink to wash it down with on a lazy afternoon.

How: Visit them, or their other location on 87th and N Lombard St here in Portland (appropriately named “87th and Meatballs.”) If you’re stuck at home, they deliver! Order through their website at 24thandmeatballs.com, or call in at 50-EATBALLS.

P.S. Maybe you’re a purist who needs to have wine with your Italian. In yet another cosmic alignment of convenience, directly across the street from 24th and Meatballs is Pairings, “Portland’s Weirdest Wine Bar.” This guy sells wine the way I pick restaurants. Need a wine based on your zodiac? They got you. Pairings based on movies and tv, and even a wall of choices based on which awkward social situation you feel compelled to bring a bottle to. Eat your meatballs, then slip across the street for a glass of something red and weird. You might even see my wife there- it’s her new favorite spot.

Stay Classy,

Snapshots of the Bakeshop

April 28, 2017February 28, 2019 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Good evening, friends and neighbors.

Today, while creaming butter and sugar for coffee cake, I got to talking to Victoria who was herself between tasks. Up front, the baristas were zipping back, forth, in and out of the kitchen tending to a lengthy line of customers.

In the kitchen, however, things are smooth and mellow. The music of choice today is classic Dylan, slipped through with a little Hendrix, Bowie, and others. Victoria has interesting tastes and no one complained.
Victoria is shaking her head in bewilderment for a moment, deciding what to do next on her list. She has considerable experience cooking in commissary kitchens and restaurants- pastry kitchen and line. Never on a dessert line, though.

“That’d be pretty weird- what would I do? Just constant plating, but at line speed? Not sure I’m cut out for that.”

Victoria likes to be efficient- but on her timeline. She’d prefer to move along at her own- albeit quick- speed than have to keep pace with others, or under pressure from a chef or a sous.

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What We Give, for What We Get

April 16, 2017April 19, 2019 / The Black Hat Baker / 1 Comment

Good evening, friends and neighbors.

About a year ago this past December, I got my first tattoo.

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Serenity- Close to Home?

February 24, 2017April 19, 2019 / The Black Hat Baker / 1 Comment

Good evening, friends and neighbors.

It had been a rough week. Between a long work week, tax season, car problems and more, Emily and I have been failing miserably at our resolution to just have boring lives for a few months.

Last Sunday, Emily decided that we both needed a day to relax and just mosey around- me especially. After thinking about what kind of things would help me relax, we decided the first order of business was a hot bowl of ramen for lunch, and then maybe an afternoon at Lan Su Garden.

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Where You Find Them

February 13, 2017December 13, 2018 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Good evening, friends and neighbors.
It’s 5:15 in the morning. My alarm just went off, but I was up at 4… and at 2.

Since coming home from the wedding, Emily and I decided that for the first few months of 2017, all we wanted in the world was to be boring. No sudden moves. No job changes and hunts. No weddings, no big events, no nothing. For just a few months, all we wanted to do was wake up, go to work, come home, maybe eat out every now and again, and catch our breath after the last year and a half.

Things keep changing though, and the world comes knocking.

“Things change.”

“All things change, and we change with them.”

Since I was a kid, I loved folk stories and legends. One of my favorites was a story about the Magic Ring of Solomon. In short, the famous Biblical king seeks to humble an overly-proud servant of his by giving him an impossible quest: finding a magic ring that will make a happy man sad and a sad man happy. The legendarily wise king is astonished when the servant returns, claiming to have succeeded. The ring is a plain silver band, with the Hebrew for “This too shall pass” engraved on it. Immediately, the king realizes all his riches and success will one day be ashes, but that a man NOT fortunate enough to be king would take the message as a promise of good things to come.

According to the legend, Solomon rewards his servant handsomely, takes the “magic” ring, and it gives him balance and wisdom the rest of his life.

We do not all have magic rings.
We do not all realize how things can-and must- change.
We do not all know that nothing lasts forever.

I promised myself long ago that this blog would not get political- and I plan to keep to that promise. We are in a time of upheaval. There are those who would say we always have been, but don’t really pay attention.
So maybe this blog can be like Solomon’s ring- not everything to everyone, but SOMETHING to everyone, maybe everything to someone.

If nothing else, I offer a counter cliche to “things change.”

“Simple Joys”

I spent the last year or so in what felt like a constant state of flux. I travelled across the country, and set down roots somewhere far from everything I’d known before. I was jobless, job hunting, and hired several times- then fired for the first time in my life- so I officially started my own business, got hired again, and got married.

More than once, I felt burned out.
More than once, I wanted to rip my hair out and scream in frustration.
More than once, I collapsed in a sobbing heap and just wanted to pull the earth over me.

More than once, it really goddamn sucked.

Through all of it, the things that kept me together were not great gestures. They often weren’t expensive, or expected, or even “things” at all. Simple joys- by definition- usually aren’t.

Baking and cooking (though mostly cooking recently, as baking is my job.) The meditative prep and emotional lift of good flavors and smells- and feeding someone else- can’t fail to ground me in some universal truth: that all people eat, and being one who feeds them is a gift. Back at the casino, I told my friend Karen that when life gets really frustrating, I find myself looking forward to going to work because that’s where I know there are things under my control. I remember her chuckling and nodding and saying, “That’s absolutely it… and no one else will ever understand it.”

Warm Society. As I write this, I am sitting at the bar of the Liquor Store on Belmont in SE Portland. The bartenders and kitchen staff know me here. No one is really bothering or talking to me- and sometimes that’s how I like it. All the better to write. It’s a splendid thing to, every now and then, be wrapped in the ambivalent embrace of the public and carry on my day as a spectator to theirs. Perhaps they feel the same way about mine.

Books. I read and reread my favorites, the ones that inspire and make me smile. Certain stories wrap me in their lessons and words, reminding me that there is still hope in the world. There are always heroes, and who knows where they will come from- but when I read these books, I feel for a moment that I can be one.

Exercise. It does more than keep me healthy, it makes me feel ALIVE. It forces my body out of torpor, and so forces my brain to quell whatever it is that’s bothering me for the time being. With the sun on my face, weight in my hands, and sweat pouring, my mind can move in different directions. All of my best ideas come to me when I am exercising- it’s one of the few times I can go completely, perfectly blank.