Bruno’s New York Style Pizza

Great service and great ambiance. The pizza was ok, good for Hampton Roads, but not the best in the area. Del Vecchio’s is still the king and will forever be king so long as they still offer their $ 1 slices.
But as far as Bruno’s is concerned, I’d come back with friends and/​or family because the service is great and the garlic knots are very good. I suggest eating those knots without the sauce. Trust me on this!
Refills are free and TVs are located at the rear of the restaurant. I’ll be sure to try their stromboli on my next visit. Or you can give it a try and write about it.
What could it hurt…

What is New York Pizza and why isn’t there a Virginia style Pizza? Good questions and I am searching for the answers.
Bruno’s is a nice little Italian restaurant that specializes in pizza. If you dine in, the place is cute and small, with little TVs to watch the game on and a friendly little staff. Their pizza isn’t the best I’ve ever had but it’s definitely good. If you’re not in the mood for pizza, I recommend one of their authentic Italian meals like chicken Parmesan, baked ziti or classic lasagna. Top your meal off with their awesome garlic bread balls (I have no idea why, but they really do taste better shaped as a ball – kind of like cheese balls versus cheese puffs). Finish your meal off right with a tasty cannoli. Mwah! Magnifique!

Three ingredients. Dough. Sauce. Cheese. (Ok, and toppings). That’s all pizza is. But it’s amazing how I have yet to find good pizza in Virginia Beach, despite trying at least a dozen places. Bruno’s, which is actually in VB, not Chesapeake as the Unilocal listing says, was good, but not memorable. It’s a small, locally owned place, which is always a plus. But, it was dirty. Very dirty. Enough so that we asked the waitress to clean the table before we sat down. A small price to pay if the ‘za is good though.
We started off with garlic knots, which were bad. Absolutely swimming in oil and smothered with a mixture of herbs, mostly oregano, that just made them more like oregano knots than garlic knots.
For the pizza, we got sausage, shrooms and onions. Now, back to the three (ok, four) ingredients. The dough was very good. Nice and crispy, but still chewy. The cheese was good and the pie wasn’t overly cheesed. The toppings were very good — fresh and thin slices of each so that they baked nicely in the oven. The sauce however, was not great. Like the garlic knots, it too was overly seasoned with an absurd amount of oregano and was just a bit too thick. It had somewhat of a grainy texture and really took away from what otherwise, was a pretty good pizza.
Bruno’s is good, not great. And the search for a worthy pizza in Virginia Beach continues.