By Frank Sabatini Jr. | Restaurant Review

The latest imaginative venture by Consortium Holdings has sprung into Normal Heights with a catchy concept inspired by a successful eatery in New York City, called The Meatball Shop. Add to the offerings a protracted list of craft sodas, some of them rather obscure, and you end up inside highly deconstructed digs on Adams Avenue at a place called Soda & Swine.

Replacing a laundromat and adjoining taqueria, the redesign impresses with exposed wall slats and a hollow ceiling that allows bright sunshine to filter through its wooden rafters. Additional lighting is supplied by old-fashioned radio vacuum tubes and a metal fireplace as the focal point. If it weren’t for the blue-tiled kitchen off to the side, you could almost be fooled into thinking that you’ve entered an old Quaker farmhouse that was never completed.

Soda & Swine connects through a back hallway to Polite Provisions, a sibling operation resembling a 1920s pharmacy where spirits and wines on draft rule the roost. Food ordered in person at Soda & Swine is brought over by a server, should you prefer washing down your meatballs with single-malt scotch or pinot gris.

Consortium also owns Craft & Commerce, Underbelly, Neighborhood and El Dorado, although only at Soda & Swine will you encounter a menu that gives meatballs such unusual top billing. A separate category of side dishes such as twice-cooked fries, Scotch eggs and apple salad ends at a short selection of desserts, where you’ll find stellar Yorkshire apple pie with aged cheddar cooked right into the piecrust.

The meatballs are sizable and available in sliders, submarine sandwiches, spaghetti or a la carte. There are five different types to choose from. A friend and I tried them all except for the vegetarian balls made with quinoa, feta and pesto, which I suspect are dandy.

In three sliders we ordered, the “swine” meatball made of smoked pork was the spiciest due to chipotle and pepper Jack cheese cranking up its volume. The “hog” tasted similar, as it’s made with chipotle chorizo and bedded on mozzarella. Our hands-down favorite was the “hen,” a chicken meatball containing fennel, turmeric and paprika. It’s topped with Provolone cheese and mushroom cream sauce.

When ordering spaghetti, you’re allowed three meatballs of the same kind. For that we chose classic “bovine.” The beef was coarsely ground rather than the fine texture I prefer. But the flavor of the herbs rang through nicely, which is precisely why the kitchen recently changed the grinder to a looser setting. The rougher the cut, the better the herbs stay intact.

Chunky marinara on the spaghetti was sweet and scant. A couple more tablespoons in the bowl would have been sufficient, especially for complimenting the mozzarella melted over the noodles.

We augmented our meatball fest with a few sides. The apple salad with celery, toasted hazelnuts and Manchego cheese was exceptionally refreshing. A medium-cooked Scotch egg encased in chorizo was rich and sumptuous, although roasted Brussels sprouts with bacon needed some oomph, maybe from vinaigrette or garlic that other kitchens commonly use when flaunting the vegetable.

Unfamiliar bottled sodas add to the restaurant’s fun factor and effectively reset the palate between meatball samplings. Such was the case with thirst-quenching Ting Grapefruit Soda from Jamaica and Jackson Hole Huckleberry Soda, which packs a whopping 53 grams of sugar that we willfully ignored.

Among the rarer picks is Dublin Dr. Pepper, which captures the original recipe using cane sugar. The bottling plant in Dublin, Texas (not Ireland) has since shut down; hence the soda is on the verge of extinction, so get it while it lasts.

Soda & Swine and Polite Provisions stay open until 1:30 a.m. every day, adding architectural panache and a lively shot of fizz to the neighborhood.

Soda & Swine
2943 Adams Ave. (Normal Heights)
619-269-7632
Prices: $3 to $10