Family. Home-style cooking. Meatballs. These are the things that make “Mr. Meatball,” newly opened in Pataskala at 61 E. Broad St., special, say the Pataskala couple who own the enterprise. “We are truly a family business, doing most of our own production, and it’s about as close to home cooking as you’re going to find,” said Don Gullatta, who with wife Wendy, runs the new Italian food store.

Mr. Meatball has actually been around Central Ohio for about 50 years, since its founding by Angelo Casuccio, in Columbus. The enterprise launched as a kind of “wholesale operation,” as Gullatta put it. “Angelo had a little storefront there, but not freezers (of carryout food) or anything… you came in and he wrote down your orders and then went back and got what you wanted,” Don remembers.