Tall Guy and a Grill Opens Saturday on North Ave.

The latest in the line of businesses coming into East Tosa's North Avenue business district has an unusual specialty – meatballs.

But lest anyone think that's too esoteric to succeed, Tall Guy and a Grill, opening at 8 a.m. Saturday morning at 7227 W. North Ave., is not in fact a new business but an expansion of an already thriving one.

"I started out in 2009 and a couple years ago moved into in a small kitchen space down by the airport," said owner Dan Nowak. "I was doing catering jobs mostly on weekends, and it just grew to the point where I had to have more room."

What's really changing for Nowak with the move to Wauwatosa is that for the first time, his catering business is also his full-time job.

"I'm just this week finishing up with my job at BMO Harris bank," Nowak said.

Nowak graduated college in 2004 with a degree in finance and went into banking, managing 401k plans. But in getting there, he spent years working in restaurants – and perfecting his passion, grilling out.

"I got really pretty good at it, and I loved doing parties," Nowak said, "Eventually some friends said, 'You know, you should make a business of this.' At first I thought it would just be fun to do some catering jobs and see how it went, but it did take off."

Nowak believes his finance background will help him succeed where a lot of aspiring restaurateurs fall down, on the business side.

"If I just liked to cook, I don't know that I would try this," he said. "But I know how to watch my margins. And I've been very careful. I haven't taken on debt, but so far have taken each step as I could afford it."

Nowak also knows how to watch his step with his products. He pushes himself to be creative and take meatballs where they've never gone before. But he never unleashes a new meatball on the tasting, paying public until he's taken the time to perfect it.

At a recent UWM Alumni Association event at the School of Freshwater Science, Nowak prepared salmon meatballs in a Hollandaise-y matrix, and wowed his audience.

Saturday morning, he'll have a breakfast meatball offering of "ground pork with pancetta, some Italian bread, ricotto cheese, eggs, we'll do a little maple syrup on top, serve it with a sweet potato biscuit.

"And then we'll also do some barbecue pork meatball sliders. We're using Miller Baking Co., their small pretzel roll, do some slaw on the bottom, barbecue sause and some onion straws."

The walk-in hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, closed Sunday and Monday.

Nowak is also selling grilling accessories in the storefront, items he's tested and liked over the years. And, he has a product he's developing on his own – a mostly disposable tailgate grilling kit.

Packed in a box about the size of a large briefcase, it contains everything you need for a grill outing, except the food itself.

Other than reusable spatula, spoon and fork, everything can be tossed, with no mess to put back in your car.