NY: Friday – lunch time - Mulberry Restaurant

We went to another “must eat at” from Guys list, a restaurant called “Mulberry”. The head chef Joe is this awesome guy who travels to NY City all the time to just eat and talk with other chefs and learn all he can so when he comes back to this little restaurant in the middle of this neighborhood in the middle of nowhere just so he can serve great food to THEM at a great price.

Location: 64 Jackson Avenue, Lackawanna, NY 14218 (in the middle of a neighborhood)
Phone: (716) 822-4292
Website: http://www.mulberrybuffalo.net/

I got inspired to go after watching this clip: http://dinersdrive-insanddives.blogspot.com/2010/04/homegrown-and-homemade-dv0902h.html

And I printed off his donated meatball recipe to Guys webpage from here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/meatballs-recipe/index.html

We didn’t have time to stop for lunch and eat, but I was still determined to get Joes signature on my recipe page. When I came in they actually hadn’t even opened yet, and I told the lady I was really hoping to meet the Joe and have him sign my recipe for meatballs. Joe wasn’t there yet so I asked if the next head chef was there and if I could have him sign my recipe. He came out, great guy! We talked for a little while about family and stuff, I told him that I was just passing thru the area but found out about their restaurant thru the triple Ds webpage and was so impressed I just had to drop in and get my recipe signed. I asked him, since Joe wasn’t here if he would sign it. He said he would be very happy and honored to do it. This is what he wrote, I thought it was great!

He told me he hated for me to leave without trying one of their meatballs (They’re known for their awesome meatballs. They make them a little bit bigger than a baseball!) so he told me to just hold tight for a while, while he went back to heat me up one. I told him I didn’t want to be a bother, but he was very insistent on serving to me. And he told the ladies to let me sit at a table to eat even though they weren’t even open yet. He was being very sweet. And I DID get to have a meatball, check out the size of this sucker, it’s the size of my fist! And it was extremely moist, flavorful and yummy!

I felt so honored to be getting special service like that but then as were getting ready to go, JOE came thru the door! I hopped up “Are you Joe?” “yeah!” “oh, I came in just to meet you” and I told him my story, he was such a nice guy too and was so sweet to talk with us for a while. He thought Amanda was so cute, he asked if she would like some chocolate cake, her eyes light up. “Sure, why not?” I said, so we hung out for a little while longer while Joe went back to get us some FREE chocolate cake! While we waited we checked out all the cool signed pictures and chairs in the lobby and we found Guys’ “tag”

Joe really delivered, he just didn’t bring us back chocolate cake, he brought back 3 more meatballs for the family, also ON THE HOUSE! He was such a sweetheart! Derick took Andrew for a walk and Amanda and I had a mommy-daughter moment and feed each other bites of this yummy chocolate cake! It was so great! I foresaw us eating chocolate cake just us together 10 years from now. We’ll have to make this a mommy-daughter tradition.

I asked Joe if he would sign my recipe of meatballs, he took a look at it and said “I’ll tell you a secret, this isn’t my real recipe I use in the restaurant, I’ll signed it, but I’m going to email you the real recipe, what’s your email?” I was so shocked, this guy was putting his name-stamp menu item recipe into my email box! I was so honored! He signed my recipe card too, this is what he wrote.

It was really great getting to meet Joe and the other chefs! They were SO nice to me! they gave us like $20 in FREE food! Here is a picture of me and Joe!

We had a great time! We’ll come back again if we’re in the area.