America’s Oldest Italian Restaurant Makes The Best Meatballs In Philly | Legendary Eats
Plates of meatballs beside twirls of spaghetti covered in marinara sauce
are ingrained in South Philadelphia and they've made this restaurant a landmark in the neighborhood.
This is Ralph's Italian Restaurant and it's been serving Philly's best spaghetti and meatballs
for 120 years. If you like traditional Italian red gravy Sunday dinner this is the place to come.
Back in the kitchen, chefs stay busy making 1,200 meatballs a week.
The meatballs, set beside spaghetti, have been a staple at Ralph's since the restaurant's very
first menu in 1900. I mean this is stuff that my great-grandparents brought over.
My grandparents made them. My parents made them. I'd say about 95% of the menu that you see now
is still the original menu. It's authentic South Philly. It's red sauce. It's good.
It's just good Italian food. But not every Italian restaurant in Philly does meatballs
like Ralph's. Other restaurants either use just beef, just pork, just veal, or a mix of all three.
But Jimmy sticks to two meats that bring out a smooth and tender texture in each meatball.
A lot of people, a lot of restaurants, a lot of people make their meatballs with just ground beef.
We use ground beef and ground pork. Pork for two reasons. Fat, flavor. The fat in the pork
and kind of gives it like a velvety texture. And obviously pork meat itself makes it nice and
lighter as opposed to like almost like a round hamburger. He adds small cubes of wet Italian
bread to help bind the meat together. And a mix of salt, pepper, crumbled Pecorino Romano cheese,
dry herbs, and sautéed caramelized garlic. And then Jimmy uses about four ounces of meat and
rolls each one by hand. The restaurant fries the meatballs rather than bakes them so they
get a crispier coating on the outside while staying soft and juicy on the inside. You have
to test the oil because if you put the meatballs in there while the oil's still like not hot,
it'll absorb them like a sponge and then you'll end up with oily meatballs. Once the meatballs
turn dark brown, they make their way to the plate next to a swirl of spaghetti and two ladles of
red gravy. I've always had a great meal here. I was here about two weeks ago with another buddy
I've never been here so there you go. Look how big this meatball is. Really though. My mom's
meatballs are not this big. Oh it's a dense, dense meatball. It's like what Jimmy was telling us.
He uses the pork to give it that silky velvety texture and it really is it's like smoother and
silkier and not like packed compacted ground beef. You get kind of like two different dimensions with
those two meats and it's it is incredibly flavorful. We've been coming here for at least 45
years. Ralph's officially became the oldest Italian restaurant in America, continuously
owned by the founding family in 2012 when a restaurant in San Francisco closed. But it wasn't
without a few bumps along the way. You're talking about depression, world wars, prohibition.
And it's funny because going back when I was a kid, there were still customers alive that were
alive then that remember my grandfather would serve them wine in coffee cups because you weren't
allowed to serve alcohol then. And those customers have kept coming back along with a long list of
celebrities from former president Theodore Roosevelt and Frank Sinatra to Taylor Swift
and Ed Sheeran who together famously left a $500 tip at the restaurant to the loyal locals who
consider it a staple and after 120 years couldn't imagine South Philly without it.
This is a certainly a part of the city, certainly a part of South Philadelphia and
iconic place on Ninth Street in the Italian market.