Giada De Laurentiis Drinks Up at Meatball Madness

Giada De Laurentiis and Darryl Robinson sipped Campari cocktails at Meatball Madness.

Call her the queen of meat.

Food Network star Giada De Laurentiis presided over the New York Wine & Food Festival’s Meatball Madness competition Thursday night, in which more than two dozen chefs vied for the prize of top ball. West Village hot spot The Little Owl won over the judges with its gravy meatball slider; Lower East Side sensation The Meatball Shop scored people’s choice for its steak, bacon and cheddar hunk of delight.

But you can’t have all that meat without something to wash it down, as De Laurentiis demonstrated when she took a break from greeting fans to enjoy a Campari Negroni stirred up by Darryl Robinson, host of Cooking Channel’s “Drink Up.” “It was a great drink,” she said, as many of the nearly 1,000 attendees elbowed their way to her signature meatballs. De Laurentiis had more than one reason to cheers: Consumer Reports just rated her pasta sauce No. 1 out of all celeb-endorsed spaghetti toppers.