Meatball Sandwich Review: Spring Street Natural

Truth is, I don’t go to a lot of places with “Natural” in their names. There’s a Korean grocery in Hoboken, Natural + Plus, that I used to frequent quite a bit—my old roommate and I called it “The Natch.” And I’ve consistently gone to Soho’s Spring Street Natural a few times a year since the mid-90s. It was near work and on our short list of “nicer” but still affordable restaurants for landmark lunches: welcomes, farewells, birthdays. Affordable was important, because depending on who was in charge of our division’s finances, sometimes we could expense the lunches and sometimes we couldn’t. What else can I tell you about the place? The tea is free, and I once saw Lou Reed and Penn Jillette sharing a meal there.

Today I went to Spring Street Natural for a non-landmark lunch with my friends Maria, Mirtha, and Jackie. As we approached, I told Maria that I’d be getting the chicken sandwich. I think every time but one, I’ve had the chicken sandwich. (That other time, I had the chicken burger, perhaps ordering it accidentally.) Oh, I’ll look at the daily specials, the omelet of the day, the quesadilla. But I always get the chicken sandwich—no cilantro, please, dijon mayo on the side. And I always gripe to my fellow diners about the homemade ketchup (for the accompanying fries) which is just not very good.

I hadn’t been in Spring Street Natural in more than a year, but everything looked the same. I scanned the specials on the menu, then shifted my eyes to the right where my old friend the chicken sandwich would be. But underneath the chicken sandwich listing, and the chicken burger, and something involving vegetables, there was an item I’d definitely never seen before:

HOUSE MADE GRASS-FED MEATBALL HERO toasted baguette, marinara sauce, romano cheese, baby green salad

Intriguing. I do enjoy a nice meatball sandwich. Chicken parm is still the king of sandwiches in my book, but over the last several years, my interest in meatball sandwiches has certainly been on an upward trajectory. My guru in the field is my friend Allan who has recommended some excellent places to get meatball sandwiches and has never steer-ed me wrong. (Sorry.)

Having ordered and consumed this new (or new-to-me) meatball sandwich, I thought I’d report back to Allan. So why I am also sharing these thoughts with you? Please, let’s not forget my lengthy tenure as a New York Times food critic.

Before ordering, there was one potential roadblock troubling me: the baby green salad. A salad has no place next to a meatball sandwich. There is a trendy meatball shop called The Meatball Shop that makes a nice sandwich, do not get me wrong, but they serve it with a side salad and as a result I do not trust them. (OK the sandwich is also strangely unwieldy and the meatballs kind of fall apart on you so points off for that.) Spring Street was cool about not adding cilantro and placing mayo on the side, but what was their substitution policy?

Unwittingly, my friends helped me out. Mirtha and Maria both asked if they could have salads instead of fries with their not-meatball orders. The waiter was totally cool with that. Ah-ha! So the reverse exchange would also have to be acceptable. And it was.

Now, here’s what I’ve learned about meatball sandwiches over the years. You need fresh beef. And even if a place uses fresh beef, do they make meatballs every day? Or just on Sunday and then freeze them for use during the week? Other factors include the choice of bread, quality of sauce, inclusion of cheese, and that hard-to-define overall tastiness. Beware of cheap meatball sandwiches, typified by Subway’s $5 Footlong. Oh those terrible, terrible spongy little meatballs which do not taste like meat. This is the meatball equivalent of the processed chicken patty for a chicken parm. Yes, a time or two a year, I’ll get the meatball marinara at Subway, sure I will. Five dollars for a 12-inch sandwich? Come on! But I regret it every single time, I truly do.

The Spring Street Natural rendition arrived. Nice longish toasted roll (though completely split into top and bottom sections. Fail!). Fries and a little container of their weirdly dark, not-quite-right-tasting ketchup. Now, would I be able to pick up this sandwich and eat it? They should’ve cut it in half. Points off! Like an animal, I had to cut the sandwich myself. Would it pull a Patsy Cline and fall to pieces? No! So no further deductions in this category.

I bit in, and it was… okay. The toasting added a not-displeasing crunch to the proceedings. The sauce was decent—not too sweet, but perhaps a little too subtle. At any rate it didn’t draw attention to itself. And the Romano cheese sprinkled on the meatballs was barely noticeable.

But the meat itself, how was the meat? Definitely fresh. Dare I say, too fresh. Or rather, fresh in that healthy way that is lacking in flavor. We needed spices, we needed herbs. Where was Mama Natural’s secret recipe from the Old Country?

So, a pretty good attempt at a meatball hero. I’m happy they added it to the menu, and I’m glad I gave it a try. But mark my words, I am absolutely going back to the chicken sandwich.

Feeling not quite full, I may have had an overpriced but delightful chocolate chip cookie on my way back to the train. If I did, it was very good.