American next to old US general store serving meatballs (4)

'store serving meatballs' is the definition.
'IKEA' can be an answer for 'store' (furniture shop). I'm unsure of the 'serving meatballs' bit.

'american next to old us general' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'american' could be 'a' (common abbreviation - e.g. in organisation names) and 'a' is located in the answer.
'general' could be 'ike' (nickname of Dwight Eisenhower) and 'ike' is found within the answer.
No letters remain.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).

Can you help me to learn more?