Rhode Island’s best meatballs find new home in Warwick

Don Fowler
Posted 10/16/14

Cheryl Mirabella makes the best meatballs I have ever tasted. For years she ran a tiny ice cream/hot weiner stand on Allens Ave., where I occasionally stopped on my way home to Edgewood. Not for the …

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Rhode Island’s best meatballs find new home in Warwick

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Cheryl Mirabella makes the best meatballs I have ever tasted. For years she ran a tiny ice cream/hot weiner stand on Allens Ave., where I occasionally stopped on my way home to Edgewood. Not for the wieners or hot dogs, but for her homemade meatballs.

Fran’s Place closed for the winter, and I lost track of Cheryl until I discovered that she had opened her own “Italian Cucina” in March, appropriately named Mirabella’s, in Warwick’s Governor Francis Plaza. I stopped by the other day to see how she was doing, and what she was doing. Why, making meatballs, of course!

Cheryl is a Type A person by all accounts. She is president of Wheelock Insurance Agency at 953 Namquid Road. When the space became available at 963, she decided it was time to fulfill her dream, opening a neighborhood place where people could bring their families, sit down and eat in comfort, or take out prepared food, sandwiches and pizza.

We chatted while she was making a huge bowl of meatballs, mixing the ingredients lovingly with her hands.

“It’s all fresh,” she said. “And the family recipe is a secret. If I were to tell you, I’d have to kill you.”

After a thorough mixing, she rolled each meatball and carefully shaped them into a perfect ball, placing them on an oven pan. The process took over a half hour, and she would repeat it many times.

“They are my most popular item,” she said. “I can’t keep up with the orders.”

There’s a lot more to Mirabella’s than meatballs, although they are on the top of the menu. The family history of Sunday Italian dinners carries over to the huge prepared food case, where over 24 dishes are sold by the pound. Watch for the daily specials. Sausage and peppers, assorted pasta salads, pasta and broccoli, chicken and eggplant parmesan, lasagna, Italian tuna salad and meatloaf are but a few.

I’ve had the chicken salad, which Cheryl says is $2 a pound less than that famous brand, and it is creamy, tasty and enhanced by tiny bits of celery.

Cheryl thought about hot wieners, but they just didn’t fit with the gourmet dishes, so she added 16 “gourmet pizzas,” offering a dozen choices, from a terrific white pizza (Joyce’s favorite), made with olive oil, minced garlic and your choice of two or more toppings for $12.99, to an Italian grinder pizza, topped with salami, pepperoni, capicola, cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, hot peppers, with balsamic vinegar on top ($14.99).

There are fresh spinach and Italian calzones ($3.99 and $4.99), hot or cold sandwiches ($4.99 and $5.99), salads and soups. Mirabella’s is one of the few places in Rhode Island that serves homemade pasta fagiolo soup ($3.99).

Bread is delivered daily from a local bakery, and where possible Cheryl buys local.

“I buy it, try it, clean it, cook it and serve it,” she said. “I won’t cook or serve anything I wouldn’t put on my own dinner table.”

Mirabella’s Italian Cucina is open seven days a week, keeping over seven employees busy Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday to 9 p.m. and Sunday noon to 5 p.m. Call ahead at 270-5060.

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