Tom Sietsema Compares Meatballs to Airline Catering

Last week in a Good News/Bad News feature, we discovered that the hype machine known as Meatballs has not quite been the home run that many would have anticipated given the involvement of Michel Richard — and, as it turns out, BGR: The Burger Joint's Mark Bucher. Tom Sietsema gets in on the Meatballs-bashing today with a First Bite column that compares the food to that of airline catering:

The food on my table — dense beef meatballs, mixed greens you might find at 30,000 feet, crab balls that tasted a day away from the shore — remained largely uneaten; the dirty tables around me remained in that condition too long. For such a new business, Meatballs felt unsupervised and less than fresh. Still hungry, my partner in crime and I made a beeline for the finest Indian food I know, just around the corner. "The best thing about lunch at Meatballs," he said an hour later, "is going to lunch afterward at Rasika."

Ouch. For what it's worth, the Washington Post critic couldn't pin down just how involved Michel Richard is with the place either.

· Michel Richard Gets Around [WaPo]
· All Previous Meatballs Coverage [-EDC-]