13 Best Places to Eat Meatballs in Nashville | Eater Nashville

"Ask any self-respecting Italian-American about meatballs and you’ll hear one word: gravy. If a tomato sauce includes meat, it is gravy, not sauce, and it must be simmered for hours on a stove, preferably by someone who can legitimately tell you how it was done “in the Old Country.” Nick Pellegrino comes from that kind of family, and that’s one of the reasons he didn’t serve meatballs at all when Mangia opened. He was sure he’d hear a chorus of, “They’re good, but they’re not like my grandma’s,” so he held out — until he hired Salvatore Stacccuneddu, a man from the same town in Calabria as Pellegrino’s mother’s family. Stacccuneddu’s meatballs tasted like home to Pellegrino, and he knew they had to go on the menu. The recipe they serve now is a special blend of beef short rib and brisket, roasted in a brick oven and given a long bath in Sunday gravy. You can enjoy them, somewhat ironically, every day of the week except Sunday because, hey, even grandma needs a day off." - Ashley Brantley