Critic's Review
Review 12/3/19
Lunchroom is the newest, lowest end "sandwich" concept from Elliot Wolf and "Be Nice" restaurants. I haven't been to either of the 2 locations simply because I'm tired of wasting money on food that I know isn't very good or worth the price charged. Top Hat is so bad I'm astonished that anyone goes there.
This place used to be a Firehouse Subs; a place that serves bad, inexpensive sandwiches. They've ripped out the red and white tile and replaced it with drab green tile. Green is good for you or something. I'm not sure.
The wait for a meatball sub was longer than expected; about 10 minutes. "Lola Bunny" and "Cristina" blares on the sound system. This is a modern lunch concept, complete with wall murals and a green community table.
A dude brought out a bag and I was on my way. This is what I got:
"Stracciatella" is a soft cheese that is the center filling for burrata; burrata is basically fresh mozzarella with a stracciatella filling. I was curious how they worked this in.
The sandwich was well packed.
I opened the container and my first impression was that there was way too much Italian seasoning, the meatballs were too big for the bread, and that it was cold. I came straight home, but long traffic lights and a draw bridge can make a short trip take a long time in Fort Lauderdale.
Also, you can't eat this whole; I'm not sure how you're supposed to cut it in half with the plastic packet utensils.
Takeout food should be manageable with what's in the bag, in case you're on a bench in a park or something.
While the packaging clearly said "100% compostable", it didn't say if it was oven safe. I moved it to another dish and warmed it in the oven.
15 minutes at 300 degrees warmed it up without changing it's appearance much.
I cut it in half and dug in.
First of all, this didn't taste anything like the meatball subs I grew up eating. Mozzarella is the cheese of choice on a meatball sub, and this concoction had a different flavor. There wasn't much sauce and it didn't do much for the meatballs, which were almost completely bland.
It's difficult to describe the texture of the meatballs; they didn't even seem like meat. Wet and airy; pushing down on a meatball my finger went in the way it would with raw chopped meat. They were clearly cooked, however.
The weird texture of the meatballs made the sandwich difficult to eat. I didn't find any soft cheese on the sandwich, so maybe they mixed it with the meat to create the weird fluffiness? Whatever they did, it didn't work.
Conclusion
Italian meatballs derive their flavor from proper seasoning of the meat, seasoned "Italian" breadcrumbs and usually one or more of onions, parsley, garlic, parmesan or romano cheese. These seemed to be something different; some chef's idea of trying to improve on something that can't be improved.
I used to get mad at places that made you buy fries to jack up the price of a sub to $8; here it's $10 without the fries. This is a $7 sandwich.
The big meatballs are largely an optical illusion; they're mostly air. Here's my take on this: If you just mixed ground beef with salt and bread crumbs for the meatballs, poured a good jar sauce over them and sprinkled them with mozzarella it would be a lot better than this. It's a pretty low bar; and once again the folks at Be Nice have figured out how to make something even worse than just "OK".
And guys. Italian seasoning on the side or make it optional. Or put it in the sauce. Nobody wants dried seasoning all over a meatball sandwich.
Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function getUser() on null in /usr/local/www/classes/comments-class.php:267 Stack trace: #0 /usr/local/www/classes/comments-class.php(75): threadedComments->formatComment(Object(stdClass)) #1 /usr/local/www/classes/comments-class.php(100): threadedComments->printParent(Array) #2 /usr/local/www/insideftl/comments.php(74): threadedComments->printComments(Array) #3 /usr/local/www/insideftl/single-post.php(208): require_once('/usr/local/www/...') #4 /usr/local/www/insideftl/post.php(22): include('/usr/local/www/...') #5 /usr/local/www/insideftl/index.php(170): include('/usr/local/www/...') #6 {main} thrown in /usr/local/www/classes/comments-class.php on line 267