Signature Dish: Bill's Balls

Welcome to the Q’Stoner food feature, Signature Dish! Once a week we check in with Queens restaurants and ask the owners about the all-time favorite dishes they serve. If you know of a dish you’d like to see featured here, please email emily@brownstoner.com.

The Spot: Bill’s Balls, made in Queens and served at local markets including the Astoria and LIC Flea and Food.

The Deal: Bill’s Balls is a venture eight years in the making. The husband-and-wife team of Bill Morris and Daniela Del Giorno spent nearly a decade planning the menu and the name before launching last year. The pair drew from their Italian-American backgrounds to develop meatball sliders with a twist. The hand-rolled sandwiches have specific flavor combinations.

“In general, other meatball restaurants offer a ‘mix and match’ type of system. They make one beef, one chicken, one pork and the customer chooses the meatball, the sauce, and so on,” says Del Giorno. “We really wanted our customers to experience specific flavor profiles so each meatball is seasoned to go specifically with the given toppings.”

Although the original business plan was for a food truck, the capital needed to start one was out of their reach. Instead, they tapped the growing festival circuit with the debut of the LIC and Astoria Food & Flea markets. (Their busy market schedule can be found on their website.) As Queens locals for more than 20 years, the couple also took care to source from their own backyard.

“We take pride in the fact that our meat and our bread are sourced from other Queens-based family businesses,” Del Giorno explains. “As long time Astoria residents we couldn’t be happier to be serving our food in our own neighborhood. Keeping it local is important to us.”

The Dish: The signature slider is The Upstate and the second recipe the couple crafted. The chicken meatball is covered in a house-made buffalo sauce topped with blue cheese dressing and celery chimichurri.

“It took us the longest to perfect and coincidentally is our most popular flavor,” Del Giorno says. “We like to name our sandwiches after the different neighborhoods and streets that have inspired that flavor. We want our meatballs to be memorable, and we think we have accomplished that with The Upstate.”