emporio: a meatball joint

neighborhood:  pittsburgh the setup the second stop (though first chronologically) is to emporio. on this trip is official friends of dcwd rajistan and chill, and official co-writer/wife of dcwd texas. the vibe emporio is the bottom floor of a three part concept called sienna mercato (think what mbk was trying to do in dc). the bottom floor is the typical rustic bar space: exposed brick, dark booths surrounding a large bar area in the back. several tvs abound in this space, while more traditional seating sits upfront. the food emporio's concept is meatballs. that's it: pick one of four meatballs, one of nine sauces, and the method of meatball delivery - sliders, panini, grinder, or just in a pile. in some ways, this is refreshing: a bar that knows its target audience and just gives them comfort food, rather than trying to gussy it up needlessly. and you know what? they nail it. we all go sliders, and the fist-sized hunks of meat - or in texas's case, mushrooms, white beans, and cauliflower - are delicious,porkbolognese and arrabiatta sauces offer a hint of spice, while a spinach-almond pesto is a delicate counterpoint to the parmesan and herbs in the turkey meatball. and don't sleep on the government cheese: all the satisfying parts of kraft, but a whole lot better. the verdict pretty good bar food. food rating: *** (out of 5) date rating: 2.5  hearts (out of 5) dress code: casual bar rating: party in the usa vibe: energetic cost: $  (out of 5) (less than $25 for two)

i've seen some bad reviews but this place was top notch. our party of 4 used the no wait app and were seated immediately upon arrival. the staff was courteous and attentive. our server, vince, was excellent. good and drinks arrived promptly and both were delicious. we ordered poutine and pepperoni fritters to share and varying types of meatballs with sauces.porkbolognese, arribiatta and pesto were our favorites. everything was delicious and vince happily split our checks for the two couples even without prompting. even the appetizers were split in half! we had a great experience and i would definitely be back.

good not great. the space is contemporary and the service good. the prices are typical for the cultural district. our party of 5, one raved about the traditional beef meatballs with almond aioli. the others enjoyed their meals. the spicyporkmeatballs with spicy marinara was acceptable. the risotto tasted just like i make at home--from a box. overall we settled on a 7 of 10. i liked it--but i won't make a special trip to return.

sienna mercato is in this beautiful building downtown next to august henry's saloon on penn ave. it is refreshing to have a bar located in the penn ave tourist corridor that i don't hate. sharp edge is expensive, august henry's is plain awful, seviche is colorful but passe, sonoma grill is where dads drink and ten penny is bunch of pretentious bologna. mark's was my go-to until they replaced it with a piece of crap reception area. i honestly never thought pittsburgh would have a meatball restaurant. it seems awfully gimmicky, but it works. the emporio meatballs are not cheap, but the happy hour deal isn't bad at all. half off all drafts until 6 pm, but sadly no food discount. as for the meatballs, expect to dish out $3.50 a pop. the wonderful thing about emporio is the plethora of choices. you can choose from four different meatballs: beef, pork, veggie and chicken. then you choose one of nine different sauces: sunday gravy,porkbolognse, creamy parmesan

get the beef meatballs with theporkbolognese!
great place, easy menu, panini size makes for easy sharing.
i try to hit ths place when i am in town on the weekends, love it!

my buddy suggested this place while we were up visiting from louisiana, but overall it was pretty disappointing. the chicken chili cheese fries were good, but the two sliders i had -- beef marinara and spicyporkarrabiatta -- were bland and lacking flavor.

so this place was really good!! wait was only 10 minutes or less at 630 on a tuesday night which was nice because we had tickets to a show down the road. i had the spicyporkballs on parm mac n cheese. big balls! and the sauce was fantastic! my husband got the ball of the month which was a chicken chili ball which was also excellent. service was a little slow.

- service is good.
- 4 meatballs spaghetti portion a little smaller than i anticipated.
- daily special cod balls were delicious!
- spicyporkmeatballs were ok.
- salad is fresh but again, portion less than anticipated for the price.
- overall. food is good but i think slightly overpriced.

my group was visiting from california.

a tradition we have when we go on the road to watch our hockey team is to have a pasta dinner on our first night.  i found sienna mercato, and said the place was about 0.4 miles from our hotel, and the hotel had a shuttle that could take up to 11 of us. this restaurant is divided into three floors, the first floor is a meatball restaurant, second floor is a charcuterie and pizzeria, and a top floor is a beer garden. the third floor is on the roof, but the room is enclosed in glass.

reservations can only be made for the second floor restaurant, and since there were 20 of us, it took a while for a table as it was first come first serve. the staff was very nice and tried to accommodate us with two tables of 10. while we waited for the table, we went to the rooftop to get some drinks, but we had to wait for a table to free up as well.

fortunately, it took about 45-minutes to get my text message our tables were ready. we were seated adjacent to each other, but with different servers.   the downstairs level wasn't very large, so we were quite fortunate to have our group in just 2 tables.

the menu had a variety of things, but i wanted to try all their meatballs, so stephen and i shared a combination of them:

pork withporkbolognese, and the bom (ball of the month ) with marinara, vegetable ball with govt cheese, the turkey meatball with mushroom gravy, and my favorite of all, the classic beef meatball with the spinach-almond pesto.

what i didn't realize until we paid was our meatballs were the same price as sliders.  basically, we were not given our bread. i don't know if it was a miscommunication or an error on the server's part, but we left on a rather sour note. 

overall, everyone enjoyed their meal.  the service was decent, despite the size of our group.  most of the group had the 4 meatballs with pasta, which was too much for one person.  perhaps stephen and i should have split that, or, gone in with others to share a variety of meatballs and pasta. oh well, there's next visit.

great times. we went last night after the home show, while we could not get a table without waiting 1 1/2 hrs we were able to sit at the bar and order. the food was great, a little pricey but great. my husband had the spicyporkmeatballs with marina and i had the turkey meatballs with tzaiki (sorry about the spelling), we also had the poutain appetitizer, yum. our bartender andrew was great, it is an extremely busy place!

simply delicious. waited to try this place until i got more opinions about it, it was worth the wait. can you say tater tots. classic and crispy. also had sliders. love the pick your meat, sauce, and vessel to be served on idea. vegetarian slider with tzatziki sauce was great. my date had the vegetarian panini with mushroom sauce also great choice.porkwith marinara and turkey with pesto were my other sliders of choice, equally as good. also this place has a great craft beer selection. this may be my new home. but for all you meatball lovers please go and enjoy. free your mind and get as many combinations as you can stuff yourself with.

meatballs!. have heard different takes on emporio. for me, most restaurants overcook their meatballs, so was not especially wishing to go to emporio. a few of us were guided to emporio and found it to be a good choice. the restaurant is large, a little noisy with brick walls and a nice atmosphere. there a a few choices or meatballs, sauces, and the preparation (slider, panini with 2 meatballs, grinder with 3 meat balls and the saucy with 4 meatballs). pick a sauce and cheese to top and away you go. i had the spicyporkpanini. theporkwas cooked so it was tender on the inside and brown on the outside, not overcooked or like a rock as in most of the local joints. theporkmeatball had a nice flavor, with a little spice, could it be allspice? it really could be a tad more spicy. the arribiata sauce came on the side. nice! the sauce was a little spicy and thick. again, probably could be a tad more spicy, but good.
there at 32 beers on tap and starters, sides and desserts, but we only had the meatballs.
all in all, a nice meal and place.

not a favorite, but i'd try again. before getting into the food, i have to remark on the service. i think that it definitely tarnished my feelings toward the food a bit, even though i tried to maintain an open mind. our server was nice, but she just completely disappeared. she asked us for drink orders when we immediately sat down, and we wanted a minute to look at the beer menu. 15 minutes later she was finally back, so we gave drink orders, ordered the poutine as an app and asked her to walk us through the menu a bit. at this point, she left. so we waited. then we got our appetizer. then we ate our appetizer. then they cleared our empty appetizer plates. we didn't even order our meatballs by the time our appetizer had come, been eaten, and cleared. if she had rushed over full of apologies i would have been a little forgiving, but when we finally got her attention she acted as though everything was hunky dory and normal that she hadn't spoken to one of her tables in 45 minutes. just bizarre. the rest of the meal it took forever to get her attention to get another drink and just all in all we were turned off. additionally, she told us when we ordered a ball with arribiatta sauce how she had this 'dick of a customer once' who told her she was saying arribiatta wrong. i've been a server, i've had asshole customers, but i wouldn't be telling my other tables what i thought of them. just so unprofessional.
anyway - the food was decent. i wouldn't order the vegetarian ball again, that's for sure. i had the turkey ball which they seem to have recently replaced with chicken. the beef andporkwere good, but it just wasn't quite enough of an experience for me to say i really liked it. as far as sauces go, i tried the arribiatta, bolognese, tzatziki, and spinach-almond pesto, all of which were as expected and pretty good. i will say, we got the poutine with tator tots (as opposed to the typical french fries) and it was bomb.
i think i would try it again, with the hopes of having a server that's a bit more interactive and will offer suggestions/tell me some best sellers and favorites. i think that's almost necessary in a place like this when you're faced with just so many choices. at this point though, i'm not hitting that thumb's up button.

good food & a nice happy hour spot too! i've been to emporio three times. all three times, i enjoyed my meatballs, the sauces i tried & the apps & sides as well. the poutine is fantastic. my side salad was crisp & fresh. the mac-n-cheese was great. i've had swedish meatballs,porkmeatballs & i think maybe the regular beef too - all were tasty. i particularly loved the swedish meatballs (they were the meatball of the day) with mushroom gravy & gouda as a panini. delicious. they have good beer specials too, & it's a hip downtown atmosphere. there are two big garage doors that are open in the front, if you can sit there on a nice day, it's particularly enjoyable. and the prices, for downtown, are not bad at all. i think a two meatball panini is $7.

one thing i will mention is that our waiter put both my food & my friend's food on my debit card. he brought us two receipts to sign, so he must have ran my card twice. when i realized this the next day, i called the restaurant & they credited my bank account for the mistake immediately. and they were apologetic. so kudos to them for having good customer service as well.

i look forward to going back again very soon!

delightfully delicious meatballs. i have dined at sienna sulla piazza several times and am a huge fan so i had been greatly looking forward to visiting emporio (brought to you by the same people who own sienna) for quite some time. i finally made my way there on a tuesday night, arriving at about 8:00pm. i love the industrial design of the restaurant-the "garage door" opens when the weather is nice too. we were greeted immediately upon walking in and the hostess seating us gave a very good overview of the menu, filled our water glasses, and left the carafe on the table (which i always like). service started off shaky-we were waiting for a good 10 minutes when our server came over and apologized for the wait, thanked us for being patient, and added she was having a computer issue and couldn't find anyone to help her. having worked in food service before, i'm very understanding and wasn't bothered by this as i've had the same issue. she took our drink order and those were promptly brought to our table (i had the boulder mojo a nitro ipa and my boyfriend had an old brown ale). they have a decent draft selection-lots of ipas which i love. most are between $5.50-$7 so typical pittsburgh prices. we started off with the buffalo fried chicken balls with blue cheese and celery. the celery was shredded and blended with the blue cheese which topped the fried chicken balls. they were delicious-had a definite kick to them-and there were 6 balls so it was perfect for sharing. for our entrees we both decided to do 2 sliders (since you can't do multiple types of meatballs in any of the serving options-that was my one negative). we both did a meatball of the day slider. the meatball of the day was a ground beef/corned beef mix topped with saurkraut and stone ground mustard. wow! it was perfectly pink in the middle-how i like it-and the flavors blended together perfectly! my boyfriend chose a spicyporkslider with arribiatta sauce which he said was very good. i chose a chicken meatball with the tzatziki sauce and again-wow! the tzatziki sauce was probably the best i've ever had and i really liked the flavors in the chicken meatball. after that hiccup in the beginning, service was great-we were checked on at exactly the right points during our visit, our glasses were always full, after we finished the plates were immediately cleared. she was very talkative and friendly and made a great suggestion on the boulder mojo i had. she also told us the 2nd floor opens next week so we will be visiting that hopefully soon. we had a great experience from start to finish (minus that hiccup with waiting for our server at first) so do not hesitate to make your way down to emporio for some delicious meatballs-we will absolutely be back for a return visit.