Meatball Lunch at Soda & Swine in Liberty Station

It’s been awhile since I’ve been to Soda & Swine and I felt like it was time to drop in again.

This is their Liberty Station location. The original location is over on Adams Avenue.

This location is bigger than the original and I love the style of it. It’s got an indoor-outdoor vibe to me. And also one of the biggest foosball tables I’ve ever seen!

We had Maya with us so we sat on the back patio. They let us walk through the restaurant with her to cut to the back patio.

On the weekends they have a “Meatball Brunch” menu. While some of these sounded quite good, we opted for a few other items. 

Soda & Swine’s meatball-y menu. I forgot to flip it over to show the “sides” menu. Oops.

We tried a few sliders. For the sliders they have a few favorites or you can make your own creation. The slider comes with one meatball, sauce, and your choice of cheese for $3.69. This slider has a smoked pork meatball with chipotle bbq sauce and provolone cheese. I quite liked the smoked pork. It was juicy and flavorful but it was not my favorite of the bunch! I also really like the little buns they use for the bread. The bread holds up well to the sauce and meatballs.

This one is The Bovine which has a beef meatball, marinara sauce, and mozzarella cheese. I thought the beef meatball would be my favorite but in comparison to the other meatballs it didn’t seem as flavorful. 

My favorite meatball was the from the slider I choose called The Hen. The Hen comes with a chicken meatball with a mushroom cream sauce and provolone cheese. The chicken meatball was the most flavorful and moist meatball of the bunch and I thought it paired perfectly with the creamy mushroom sauce. It kind of looks like a mess – but it was a delicious mess! I let Jake and T have a little bit of the chicken and they agreed the chicken meatball was the best one. But since this was covered in mushrooms I didn’t have to share very much of it. Muhahaha. 

The boys wanted to try this plate of Dirty Fries [$9.49] but we swapped the mushroom cream sauce for the chipotle bbq. There are meatballs crumbled on top and we choose one pork and one beef to go along with some pork belly, jalapenos, and Parmesan cheese. I really liked the french fries on this but the rest of it didn’t do much for me. The pork belly pieces I munched on were weirdly dried out and tasted overcooked. I wished there had been melted cheese instead of the Parmesan but I did enjoy the fries with the chipotle bbq sauce which had a nice sweetness to it.

Jake added an order of Mac and Cheese [$4.29] and I adored the mini cast iron skillet that it came in!! When I took the first bite of this I didn’t think I liked it. It need some seasoning… some salt, please! But as I ate more of it, I really enjoyed how creamy it was. I love soupy-creamy mac and cheese and this one fit that bill but it still needed some salt! They use cheddar as the only cheese in this creamy dish.

I added on the Crispy Polenta [$5.39] and was again tickled pink by the mini skillet. SO CUTE.

The crispy polenta has a spicy arrabbiata sauce on the bottom. Like… “dammmmn that’s kinda spicy” sauce. I actually found it a little too spicy for my liking and I was sad that the sauce started to make the polenta significantly less crispy. Booo. I also wished for more burrata on top – the amount was kind of like a cheese tease. The polenta itself was very firm and didn’t have a ton of flavor on it’s own. I loved the idea of this one more than the actual item, sadly. 

There were some definite hits here at Soda & Swine (chicken meatball! smoked pork meatball! slider bread! creamy mac & cheese!) but also some misses that could have elevated this to a supreme food experience. We’ll have to try out different sides in the future and definitely get more chicken meatballs! 

Soda & Swine
2750 Dewey Road #104
San Diego CA 92106