The “retro” storefront of Two Guys on Myrtle Avenue in Ridgewood. — Photos by Scarlett Lindeman

When it’s the kind of day when dusk shows up much too quickly, when the wind whips purposefully through the cracks in your sweaters and scarves, there is nothing quite as rectifying as a hot meatball sandwich. Whatever you want to call it — a hoagie, a hero, a sub — a long roll stuffed with meatballs, tomato sauce, and cheese is more than a meal, it’s autumn solace.

	Two Guys Pizza 5656 Myrtle Avenue 718-381-4077 Food: $4-15
	Meatball sub! Click to see more.

You can find some of the area’s best meatballs at Two Guys Pizza, a retro-looking but truly period pizzeria just past the Bushwick border in Ridgewood. "You gotta come all the way out here just for a meatball?" asked an MTA worker who was standing in line, as I hovered over a tray of glistening meatballs just pulled from the oven, "Doesn’t Bushwick got their own meatballs?"

The balls you want at Two Guys are baseball-sized and darkly burnished, hidden behind the counter lined with garlic knots and pepperoni rolls. Onions, garlic, breadcrumbs, and parmesan are mixed into finely-ground beef and packed into dense spheres which are then roasted in the pizza oven, owner Oscar Bravo tells me. Two Guys Pizza and the Two Guys Liquor Store on the corner were named by the old-skool Bushwick Italian owner, for his "two guys," his two sons.  Two years ago, Bravo bought the restaurant, recipes included. From a small town in Southern Mexico, he is the second wave in two tales of immigrant success.

"They need to rest," says Oscar, showing me a rack of just-cooked meatballs, all destined for sandwiches of heroic proportions — a trough of bread studded with sesame seeds, slicked with tomato sauce, packed with split brown orbs and covered in melted mozzarella. They kind of skimp on the sauce and it’s not buffalo mozzarella, but each bite, warm and deeply savory, will bolster you for the walk home. Oh, and there’s pizza too.