Meatballs with accents
Serve them with a lemon sauce, a sweet-spicy glaze or a tomato marinara
Meatballs are the little black dresses of the culinary world.
You can dress them up for dinner with a velvet robe of sour cream and wild mushroom gravy. They can be daytime simple with a jacket of roasted tomato marinara, trimmed with fresh Asiago cheese, and tucked into a crusty roll. Or they can be cocktail party sweet-and-spicy, glistening with a glaze of pineapple juice, Sriracha sauce and sugar.
They also are comparatively inexpensive; can be made ahead then sauced later; require little attention once prepared; often can be retrofitted on Day Two for a second go-round; and perform as well at a family dinner, a Sunday tailgate with friends, or a flavors-of-theworld themed get-together. For all this and perhaps more, the ubiquitous meatball is, well, ubiquitous. And they're trendy, too. One of the nation’s leading food research and consulting firms, Chicago-based Technomic, describes meatballs as a 2016 food trend that's part of a national movement involving the “elevation of peasant fare” to new heights. “Meatballs ... are proliferating — traditional, ethnic or nouveau ..” Technomic opines.
That’s no surprise to Brian Borres, general manager of Emporio: A Meatball Joint. Emporio is part of the Sienna Restaurant Group and it has two locations (although that’s about to change). One anchors a three-level enterprise in a first-floor location on Penn Avenue in the Cultural District. It opened in 2014. The second location is at the Village at Pine in the North Hills. It will mark its one-year anniversary in November.
Mr. Borres said growth is on the front burner for Emporio. Locations are pending for Robinson and the South Hills; exploration of properties is progressing in Irwin and at PNC Park; and a food truck