This recipe, and the man behind it, remains the same from NDG to Saint-Henri

By the time you’re reading this, chances are Mr. Amerigo has already rolled a few hundred meatballs, and he’s probably about to roll a few hundred more. His hands move with the kind of rhythm you only earn through repetition, a quiet muscle memory developed since the age of ten.

“I make them all the same,” he says plainly and he puts them down, one after another, the word reflecting the precise repetition. “I make them all the same.”

The meatballs—served at both Bistro Amerigo in NDG and its younger osteria sibling in Saint-Henri La Spada—are the kind of dish that outlives trends: Classic and consistent, almost stubbornly so.