The New York Restaurant Where Guy Fieri Ate A Baseball-Sized Meatball

Celebrity chef and eternal Flavortown seeker Guy Fieri doesn't show every restaurant he visits on his show. He likes to keep a positive energy on "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives," and will omit restaurants he didn't enjoy. Even with his Food Network show only covering the standouts though, some still manage to surpass his high bar. Back in the show's heyday, a New York restaurant featured on "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" managed to do just that with an absolutely enormous meatball: The Mulberry Italian Ristorante in Lackawanna, New York (not far from Buffalo).

One of the restaurant's signature dishes is its Mulberry meatball, an absolutely massive beast of a meatball which Fieri tried on Season 9, Episode 2, "Homegrown and Homemade." To demonstrate how hearty of a meatball it is, the show brought in an actual baseball to place next to the meatball for comparison — the meatball towered over it. But the size wasn't the only noteworthy thing about this meatball. Fieri was even more impressed after tasting it, telling owner Joe Jerge that it was "alright" while whispering to the camera that it was a "really good meatball." Despite its hefty size, he remarked that it's not tough once you're chewing it and that it's delicate enough to melt in your mouth.

While the "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" episode premiered way back in 2010, Mulberry and its meatballs are very much still a presence in Western New York. As Fieri explained on the show, Mulberry Italian Ristorante is a result of several trips into New York City by Jerge, who would sample as much Italian-American cuisine as he could for research purposes and blend his findings with his family's own Italian recipes. More recently, Mulberry has added some Caribbean-style dishes to its menu. Still, it mainly serves Italian cuisine and has built a reputation on one main dish: the Mulberry Meatball.

So what exactly goes into a meatball large enough to eclipse your fist, you might ask? In the show, Jerge can be seen adding ground beef and ground pork into a tray with giant piles of parmesan, basil, parsley, garlic, and other typical meatball seasonings like oregano, salt, and ground pepper. Of course, he also adds some homemade breadcrumbs, a step you should never skip with homemade meatballs. Once he's done, he shapes and bakes them, with one tray containing enough meat to make 45 meatballs at once. Once served, there's no spaghetti required — the meatball, served on a plate with marinara, is big enough to be an entire meal if you want it to be.