Ten things to love: #2 Cardona's Market, Albany, NY

Where to start with Cardona's?

I could tell you about how when I was pregnant with twins and waddling through Cardona's with a toddler in tow, one of the dark-haired men behind the counter would always insist on carrying my bags to the car for me.

Or, I could tell you about how when my friend Nina visited from Austin, she stood in the middle of the store and sniffed one long inhale after another, as if she could suck in enough of the cheese-soaked air to sustain her Italian blood for a few more years in Texas.

Or I could tell you about the fig, prosciutto, and arugula salad in the deli. Or the open bins of olives. Or the Murray's chicken and the best tasting salmon in town.

But to really tell you about Cardona's, I have to start with Papa.

Papa is 92-years-old and the man behind Cardona's meatballs.

Papa was born Augusto Cardona in Tramo, Italy. He came to America in 1940 after he fell in love with the sister of his brother's wife. She had come to Italy for a vacation, and he spotted her the minute she got off the ship.

"She was a terrific looking girl," he says. "We liked each other right from the start."

They married, and Maria learned how to make meatballs from Augusto's mother.

Augusto bought his first grocery store in 1945, a small place on Hamilton Street, but much of his business was in wholesale sausage. There is magic, and money, to be made in the perfect combination of ground meat and spices, and Augusto was busy delivering to restaurants and stores across Albany. Soon he needed larger quarters.

He bought a place on Morton Avenue. He had planned to just make sausage, but people kept dropping by asking him when he was going to open up, so he put up a few shelves and opened Cardona's. What started out as primarily a butcher shop eventually became produce, Italian specialties and, of course, deli meatballs.

He and Maria had five children, and somewhere in the 60 plus years of finessing meat, bread crumbs, eggs and spices, Augusto became Papa.

Papa's son Robert opened the current incarnation of Cardona's on Delaware Avenue in 1978. Papa still comes to the store everyday, usually around 1 p.m., and most days he's there to work. On Tuesday, he made over 300 meatballs. His family estimates that he's made over 1 million in his lifetime.

Papa is the start of the story, but his son Robert is the reason I keep coming back even when I can't afford it.

It was Robert who welcomed me with a warm smile the first day I wandered into Cardona's as a double-income-no-kids professional who could afford to splurge on the occasional Delmonico steak. And it was Robert who treated me just as kindly when I wandered in years later with three kids, messy mommy hair and just enough cash to buy a package of pasta and jar of sauce.

Over the years, Robert has taught me how to cook lean chicken sausage so it doesn't dry out, explained the ins and outs of red sauce (I've given up at this point, but he tried) and counseled me on how to construct a rehearsal dinner for a combination of Brooklyn Jews, Senegalese Muslims and a smattering of Catholics, mostly of the Irish variety. The answer: eggplant parm. It worked like a charm.

Every six months or so when I have an Oregon moment, and I have to run through my list of what makes Albany my home, Robert is up there, along with the tulips and great houses for under $300,000. The meatballs don't hurt either.

Here's what goes in them:

a mixture of ground beef, pork and veal
eggs
Bread crumbs
grated Romano cheese
garlic powder
basil
oregano
parsley (Lots of parsley, only a little of the Italian spices, says Papa.)
salt
pepper
a little bit of love
cold water

Roll the meatballs into golf-ball size balls and bake on a flat sheet in the oven at 350 for 30- 40 minutes.

I asked Robert Jr. (seen above rolling out bread dough) what makes a great meatball. The key is moisture, he said. Moisture and 65 years of experience. OK, well here is the trick to the moisture part.

Most people, he said, only make the meatball wet enough to hold it together. But when you cook a meatball, especially if you bake them the way Cardona's does, the water evaporates. Then you end up with chunky lumps of gravel (my words and experiences not his.) So he recommends that you add extra cold water to make the mixture wet before you cook it.

"You have to compensate for the heat," he said.

And, of course, my husband would call for a correction if I wrote about Cardona's and didn't mention the cheese cake brownies.

Here's a link to Cardona's website with all the information you might need.