The chalkboard sign on the sidewalk puts it bluntly: “Hot Balls!”

Polpette, which bills itself as “Home of the Meatball,” opened about a month ago in the take-out space next to Fornino on Fifth Avenue near Carroll Street.

The two restaurants share the same kitchen, and you can order anything from Fornino’s take-out menu at Polpette, but the latter presents itself as a distinct entity, with garish red walls and a few counter stools contrasting with Fornino’s understated elegance.

“Polpette” is the Italian name for meatballs, which form the heart of the menu here. They can be ordered a la carte (3 balls for $5.95), with two balls crushed in a roll ($4.95), four crushed in a seeded hero ($7.95), or three with a market salad ($7.95). Mozzarella or Parmigiano cheese is a buck extra. The size of the orbs is about halfway between a golf ball and a tennis ball, making even the a la carte order a fairly satisfying endeavor.

Polpette offers five varieties of meatballs, each with its own complementary sauce. I tried the Josephine’s Famous, a beef ball in a hearty tomato sauce; the Chicken Piccata, a chicken meatball topped with a lemon, butter and parsley sauce; and the Porco Due, a ball of pork in a fennel sausage tomato cream sauce.

I ordered all of them a la carte, and was delighted to find that each set of three meatballs came with a hunk of bread that sat around absorbing the sauce—and Polpette truly excels at sauce.

The Chicken Piccata had a great texture, moist, springy and spongy. The first couple of bites yielded a slightly musty old funk of hospital cafeteria food, but maybe that’s just my primary association with Chicken Piccata.

I found that the flavor grew on me the more I ate. There was a slight sweetness to the meatball, and the hunk of bread, saturated with the salty, lemony Piccata sauce, reached that divine state where the crust still crunches amid the sogginess of accumulated juices.

The 100% beef meatball in the Josephine’s Famous was not worthy of its flagship status. The very fine grind of the meat left little texture aside from the bits of garlic that occasionally studded the interior, while the seasoning was excessively mild, almost bland.

Worst of all, the ball was on the dry side. But, the tomato sauce was absolutely wonderful, tangy and sweet with chunks of onion and mushrooms. If someone served you this sauce and meatball combination over spaghetti, you would forgive them for the lackluster balls.

It’s the Porco Due, however, that redeems Polpette’s other meatball missteps, and that I think might make this place a dangerous habit for me.

The ball itself was once again fairly mild, with just a hint of sweetness and a clean pork flavor. It had the most going on texturally, with a coarser grind and a looser consistency, dotted with fennel seeds and garlic.

There’s not much more one needs to say about the sauce beyond “fennel sausage tomato cream sauce” to convey just how righteous it was, and what that might be like heaped on a slice of slowly disintegrating crusty bread.  

I’ll leave it to you to explore the Day After Thanksgiving, in which a turkey ball is filled with cornbread stuffing and topped with gravy, or the Veg, a ball of eggplant and mixed beans in basil pesto.

And then there’s the Bocce Ball ($7.95), a huge ball of beef encasing an entire egg.

You can round out your meatball meal with a selection of Polpette’s sides ($2.95), including a gorgeous-looking Indian Summer Succotash, potato salad, or pasta salad. I went for the white bean salad with pancetta vinaigrette, but found the beans a bit too al dente without enough seasoning to make up for it.

Polpette’s menu is similar to that of Manhattan and Williamsburg’s Meatball Shop, down to the odd-sounding option to have three meatballs served over a salad. But whereas the Meatball Shop rightly lists this combination toward the end of its menu, Polpette puts it first on its plating options, calling it “Park Slope Style.”

This led to some confusion when I was first looking into Polpette—I couldn’t see, at first glance, how to fit these meatballs into my life. This sense of rudderlessness is exacerbated by the fact that Polpette offers none of the starchy bases that Americans are accustomed to seeing cradle its meatballs (like the risotto, polenta and pasta offered at the Meatball shop).

The key lies somewhat obscured in the middle of the menu. It's odd that the meatball rolls and heroes aren't emphasized more in Polpette's presentation, but perhaps the restaurant is just protecting us from ourselves.

That fennel sausage tomato cream sauce heaped onto a roll over crushed pork, draped in mozzarella—that's maybe something you want to think long and hard about before ordering. Every night on your way home from work. And in your fevered meatball dreams.