Meatyballs

Up until last year, street food was essentially illegal in Chicago. Several chefs worked with city council to come up with a way to serve good food mobilely (is that a word?). Philip Foss was sone of those chefs. Formerly the Executive Chef of Lockwood at the Palmer House Hilton, Foss came up up with the idea of his Meatyballs truck while he was still working at Lockwood. When he became tired of the "corporate grind", he left suddenly and started serving his gourmet meatball sandwiches shortly afterward and since. I went to Lockwood when Foss was the Chef and loved the food but after meeting him at an event at Chicago Green City Market, I found him a bit pretentious and he turned me off so I would have been happy never to meet him again. On February 17th it was a nice day and I decided to play hooky from work to go to the Art Institute. I didn't really have plans for lunch, I figured I would catch something at the museum but after I got off the train and was walking to the Art Institute, I came across the Meatyballs Mobile with Chef Foss. I looked at the menu and while all of the sandwiches looked good, they were also full of double entendres; Buff Balls, Thai'd Balls, Choke 'N Chicken Balls, I went with the Schweddy Balls. It was a spicy Tunisian style lamb & chicken balls sandwich with eggplant, zucchini & tomato. When he pulled the sandwich out, he asked me if I wanted my balls put in a ball sack (paper bag). When he bagged them, he also gave me some napkins so I could wipe the ball juice off of my chin. Obviously, Chef Foss was much less uptight than he used to be. The sandwich was kind of spicy but very good and I would be happy to hunt him down on another day that I decide to play hooky from work.