Two Meatballs in the Kitchen hosted excited patrons in the dining room for its Aug. 14 launch in North Naples.
Two Meatballs has been eagerly anticipated since The Warehouse Cuisine & Cocktails closed in March after operating for nearly eight years at 9010 Bellaire Bay Drive, near the northeast corner of Immokalee Road and Collier Boulevard. The new restaurant is Franco Russo’s seventh restaurant and the third location of Two Meatballs, which also operates in Fort Myers and Cape Coral.
“We’ve been here for the last couple of weeks touching things up and the phone rings off the hook. People walk in asking if we’re open,” Russo said. “So, people have been waiting. I think it’s awesome. We’re excited to be in Naples.”
Two Meatballs features a full bar and a variety of seating options at tables and booths in comfortable recesses, niches and rooms throughout the restaurant. Its menu features a variety of options for signature pasta dishes and pizza, as well as soups, salads, appetizers and chicken, seafood and veal entrees.
“Obviously, Mama’s Meatballs are very popular. It’s in the name, so it’s got to be good,” Russo said. “We sell a lot of them, but we also sell a lot of our pastas and chicken parms. Our House Favorite is really popular because you can choose your pasta, your sauce, the meatball, the sausage. Chicken parm, veal parm are my favorites, too. We have a new gnocchi on the menu with a vodka sauce that’s phenomenal, too.”
Russo renovated the kitchen in the freestanding 5,400-square-foot building that he thinks is in a great spot. The colorful redesign of the dining spaces by KDL Interior Design accentuates the restaurant’s cozy corners.
“This one’s different than the other two. This one is Mediterranean in style,” Russo said. “My family was from that area in Italy — Positano and Capri and Amalfi. That’s kind of the vibe we went with, with the lemons and the greens and the yellows and the blues.”
This first restaurant for Russo in Collier County is something he really didn’t plan on, but the prolific local restaurateur would consider further expansion in the Naples area.
“This one just kind of fell into my lap, to be honest,” he said. “Right now, we’re looking at a couple locations, but nothing is set in stone.”
Although Russo also owns the local dining brands Fresh Catch, Junkanoo Below Deck and Stones Throw in Lee County, he most likely would launch additional locations of Two Meatballs in Collier.
“I think the focus right now is probably to expand this concept,” he said. “I think that the one in Fort Myers, the one in Cape Coral, they do really well and have gotten great responses for so many years. Italian food I don’t think is really going to go anywhere. I think that now more than ever people are really wanting to seek out value, and I think we really give that to our customers in the form of great prices and great quality and large portions.”
Russo thinks value is what sets Two Meatballs apart from the many other Italian restaurants even before he acquired the first location, which launched in 2008.
“I think we just capitalized on that and were able to grow,” he said. “You know we’ve tweaked some things over the years. I think people love our happy hour. People love our full menu. We do a lot of off-site catering, so I think we are just able to offer a lot of different things that maybe the other Italian restaurants can’t. But Meatballs has been around for a very long time, too.”
For now, the new Two Meatballs will be a dinner-only restaurant and be reservation-only except for at the bar and high-top tables, where walk-ins are welcomed. Hours are 4 to 9:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 4 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
“When we get our feet under us, we’re going to do lunch, so it will be 11 [a.m.] to those same closing times,” Russo said.
Dining and Cooking