NYC Wine & Food Festival: Meatball Madness!
Posted by bellastraniera - 14/10/09 at 01:10 pm Dozens of NYC’s top chefs gathered on Sunday to turn out their best meatballs for the Meatball Madness event. A $5,000 prize was at stake, with proceeds from the event benefitting the Food Bank for New York City and Share Our Strength.
Here’s one sample of the deliciousness: Joey Campanaro’s meatball sliders for Little Owl. More meatballs and a video of the winner, after the jump.
Amanda Kludt of Eater picked these as favored to win via her Twitter feed from the event. Juicy, porky, and slathered in an excellent tomato sauce, Campanaro’s sliders were addictive. One of the best things about them was the soft Italian buns, however, which also made you wonder if they would have been quite as addictive on their own.
The most interesting meatballs were often the unconventional ones, like Esca’s made with tuna and mackerel, which tasted surprisingly meaty. Italians might shudder at the cheese on top of a fish meatball, but it all worked beautifully.
Fortunato Nicotra of Felidia sauced these crudo Angus Beef meatballs with a tiny dollop of tomato. A few skittish guests shied away at the idea of raw meat, but with Pat La Frieda supplying the beef, these meatballs tartare were quite a treat. Nicotra rolled them in breadcrumbs and served them alongside crunchy dry fried spaghetti.
Crudo meatballs – major points for creativity!
Michael White of Convivio added color and flavor with broccoli rabe and olives in the sauce for his cinghialle meatballs.
His pasta is some of the best in the city – he told us he studied pasta making in Italy for six years. That’s a lot of pasta. Then he turned to his sous chef and rattled something off in perfect Italian.
Piles of biscotti and bread from Grandaisy Bakery.
One of the event’s sponsors, Illy, just came out with canned latte macchiato. Watch out – it’s got amazing espresso flavor and should prove to be highly addictive.
Judges Frank Bruni, Jeffrey Steingarten and Gail Simmons tried every single meatball entry from the 29 participating chefs to pick the winner. It took hours. At one point Bruni looked up and sighed. It was seriously like a competitive eating event – even for the guests.
When I picked up on an Asian flavor in his duck meatballs, Chef Harold Dieterle revealed that it was a dash of sriracha sauce, or “rooster sauce,” as a friend of mine calls it because of the rooster on the bottle. He’s still not getting burned out on the restaurant game, he said, but it does help to travel and get away for inspiration. Where does he go?
“Thailand.”
We lamented the dearth of good Thai restaurants in the Village.
“The next time you’re over there,” I said, “you should bring a great Thai chef back with you. The neighborhood really needs one!”
“I couldn’t agree more,” he said.
A traditional Italian band, keepin’ it real.
Chef Amanda Freitag of the Harrison made a great meatball, but I was most appreciative of her grilled romaine salad. How does she do it? Put the leaves on a really hot grill, she said, and as soon as they start to char, take them off and cool them down in the fridge. A great twist on your usual green salad.
And here he is, the man of the hour, Locanda Verde’s Andrew Carmellini, who won for his lamb meatballs. Like Campanaro’s, his were served as sliders on mini buns. But no one else did lamb meatballs, dressed them in tomato sauce, and topped each with the thinnest sliver of half sour pickles. It was quite a creative and successful combination of tastes.
See him take the prize in this video, featuring the critics, Lee Schrager, Pat LaFrieda and Mark Pastore, Giadia De Laurentiis, and more.
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bellastraniera
a.k.a. Marcy Swingle - obsessed with food and fashion.
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