Food: ☆☆ ½          

 Service: ☆☆☆

Ambiance: ☆☆          

Cost: $$

Dishes not to miss:  Pork Meatball Panini ,  Deviled Eggs with basil pesto 

The Bruschetteria is a tiny little eatery on the Lower East Side in New York City. It specializes in bruschetta, paninis and a smattering of other Italian fare.

This cute little space can accommodate about 20 people at a time and has a sizable collection of wines, which are displayed along the walls of the restaurant.

The food was decent but not remarkable. One would expect that the bruschetta here should have been the star of the show (considering the name) but I found it rather disappointing. I wasn’t impressed by the bread they used and was surprised that they didn’t load the topping on top of the slices of bread but rather served the toppings as dips. For me this just didn’t work. I tried one of the more classic topping, which was tomatoes, and grana padana cheese, which was really lacking in any kind of flavor. The tomatoes were tasteless – one could really see that they had used really poor quality tomatoes for this dish.

I thought the paninis were much better than the bruschetta. They used the same bread to make the paninis, which actually worked really well. Their Pork Meatball Panini is a real winner.

One of my favorite dishes of the evening was the Deviled Eggs with basil pesto and a prosciutto crisp which is a must try.

All in all, Bruschetteria is a decent place to grab a quick bite at a great price point with really perky and friendly service. However it is not worthy enough to warrant a revisit.

Here is some of what we ate:

Deviled Eggs with basil pesto and a prosciutto crisp

Tomato And Grana Padano Cheese, Hot Artichoke Dip, Smoked Salmon Tartar, Bruschetta

Basil, Pesto, Grilled Chicken, Parmigiano And Pignoli Nuts Panini

Portobello Mushroom, Steamed Spinach Panini

Pork Meatball Panini