They stirred the pot.
A Florida couple went viral for hosting a meatball-themed gender reveal party, which some critics panned as more tasteless than three day-old cannoli.
Mom-to-be Rosanna Fontana posted footage of the March 2 celebration on Instagram, showing the festivities inside restaurant North Italia where a sign asked, “What will Baby Fontana have? Meatballs or no meatballs?”
In the clip, a restaurant employee brings over a canister filled with tomato sauce, and Fontana pours its contents over a pan of pasta, which is being held by her husband, Christopher.
There were no meatballs inside the sauce, meaning they are expecting a girl.
“I actually cried when I realized there were no meatballs,” she said. “Because I wanted a boy.”
The meatball motif divided Italians like oil and water
“You can not get tackier than this,” one responded.
“Classless,” another said.
“This isn’t cultural… it’s created on stereotypes,” said another.
Fans raved about its originality and said it “incorporated their culture.”
“The most creative gender reveal I’ve seen,” and “I love everything about this” were among the comments, which Fontana said were 98% positive.
“There were some Italians who loved it and some Italians that didn’t like it. I mean, to each his own,” Fontana, 34, told The Post.
“You know, some people don’t understand the concept of non pink and blue gender reveals.”
The video has so far gotten half a million views. “As soon as it hit 100,000 and one day it hit 200,000, I was thinking, ‘It’s probably going to slow down,’ but now we’re almost at half a million. People have been tagging their friends telling them, ‘Hey, you should try this.’”
Fontana, a lawyer from Orlando, Fla., said her friends got the idea from Italian-themed gender reveal videos on TikTok which incorporated meatballs — but she wanted hers to stand out.
“They didn’t see anyone pour sauce into a pan, and I was like, ‘Let’s go ahead and do something different.’”
The gathering was also complete with a cake topped with a sugary replica of spaghetti and meatballs and a magnetic chalkboard where guests could cast their vote on the gender using a spaghetti and meatball magnet.
Her husband, Christopher, is from Rochester, NY and his family hails from Palermo, Sicily and Calabria, so the Italian theme was a no-brainer.
“Marrying into his family, I’m immersed into this New York Italian culture,” said Fontana, who is of West Indian descent.
“I guess I became a pseudo Italian.”
Christopher, 38, went to law school in Florida, and met Rosanna, who is also a belly dancer, while she was performing at a Middle Eastern restaurant.
Six months later, they traveled to Sicily, where he popped the question at Mount Etna.
The couple even purchased a home in Letojanni, Sicily, and travel there three to four times a year.
“We are actually going to Sicily for my babymoon in April and then returning there sometime in October to christen the baby,” she said.
“My husband thought it was funny because his whole family has spent years to get visas to get out of Italy, and we’re going back.”
The pair already has an Italian name picked out for their little girl, Apollonia, which is the name of Al Pacino’s character Michael’s Sicilian wife in “The Godfather.”
“When I first watched ‘The Godfather’ with my husband, and heard the name, I fell in love with it and always said, ‘If I ever have a daughter, I’m going to name her Apollonia.’”
