Cortina’s: Anaheim, CA

I’ve had this place bookmarked, like, forever! Whenever I get a craving for a meatball sandwich, it always seem to be on a Sunday, and unfortunately, Cortina’s is closed on Sundays. I didn’t have lunch and wanted something hearty for dinner. It was a Friday, and I remembered this was also recommended as a place for a meatball sandwich.

I thought that being only 5:30 pm, I would be early enough to beat the crowd. Apparently, that’s what the crowd thought, too. At 5:40 pm, the parking lot was packed. That should have been a clue that the inside would be packed, too. We ended up parking across the street next to the In-N-Out and (jay)walked across the street.

There’s 2 parts of Cortina’s: the market to the left, and the restaurant to the right. Once inside and there were 2 lines, one was for phone orders, and one was for the walk up customers. Placing and paying for the order didn’t take very long, and Karen and I decided to split a large 10″ meatball sandwich.

Street view

The sandwich, along with 2 sodas, came to $13 and change, and it took about 15 minutes for our order to be called. While we waited for our food, we also tried waiting for a table to open up. Sadly, it seemed the customers just sat down, or were in the mist of devouring the large pizzas they serve.

Lucky for us, we found an unoccupied table outside, and braved the warm summer evening. Thankfully the sun was going down, so it was tolerable to eat outside.

The portion for the large sandwich was more than adequate for TWO people. The meatballs were the size of golf balls, and completely filled the inside of the french bread. The outside of the bread was toasty, while the inside was soft, making each bite oh so yummy.

We left the place very satisfied, and as we walked back to the car, we watched the next wave of hungry customers walking to Cortina’s to get their Friday dinners.

Large Meatball Sandwich