Brelundi

Authentic Italian and Sicilian foods served for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We are in Tewksbury, Massachusetts at the brand new location of Brelundi restaurant, where they're known for serving made from scratch red sauce favorites fast and affordably. The original Brelundi restaurant is in Waltham, Massachusetts, and that's more of a full service kind of restaurant. This time around, owner Michael Colomba wanted to do something more family friendly, where the food can be served really quick and the price tag will not be very high.

So here's how things work here in Tewksbury. You just step up and you can see the food that they have prepared for the day or you can order a quick sandwich, a pasta, a pizza. The food is prepared in literally just minutes. You grab it, you can sit here and eat or take it to go. They also have some cool retail stuff. So you grab some Italian imports, olive oils, you have different kinds of spreads and coffee.

The owner Michael, he actually grew up in Sicily. You can see a picture of him and his family up on the wall from back in the old country, so he takes his food seriously. So you know everything is going to be made fresh, made from scratch, made by hand, using very high quality often imported ingredients.

Breakfast is actually the most popular meal of the day here. If you'd like to start your day with a nice bacon, egg, and cheese. You can get that here, but they're going to do it Italian style because it's coming on fresh ciabatta bread.

I have definitely been known to eat pizza for breakfast, the Brelundi breakfast pizza is just a thing of beauty. You have their homemade dough, they throw on some bechamel sauce, some scrambled eggs, mozzarella cheese, whatever breakfast meat you like. I like some sausage and some bacon on there. When it comes out of the oven, it’s just gooey, it smells incredible. Here's the breakfast pizza taste test I've been wanting to do my whole life. The cheese and the egg have this incredible creaminess. Dough is nice and light, the combination of the bacon and the sausage gives you the savory and the smokiness and the saltiness. The top reason to wake up in the morning is to watch Phantom Gourmet. The second reason is to eat this breakfast pizza.

If there's one dish Brelundi is really famous for it is arancini. And I gotta tell you, this is the only restaurant I've ever been to that serves arancini for breakfast. You have a ham, egg, and cheese arancini, and you also have a spinach, egg, and cheese. Now the ham, egg, and cheese that one comes out looking sort of like a disc, so it gets crispy on the outside, inside super soft and fluffy with just that little bit of that savory ham, perfect hint of cheese just to hold the whole thing together. If you'd like a ham and cheese sandwich in the afternoon, you will positively love a ham egg and cheese arancini for breakfast.

When you move into lunch and dinner time, you'll still see arancini flying out of this place. I mean they make hundreds if not thousands of these every single day. And the arancini come in several different flavors and different shapes. You can actually tell what's inside just by the way they look on the outside. The wild mushroom arancini is super popular. There's also a great ham and cheese arancini that is super popular. The number one arancini you gotta get is definitely the traditional- the meat and peas. This one has sort of a conical shape inside you have that super savory, perfectly seasoned beef. It’s got a little bit of a sweetness coming through from those peas. The rice itself has a lot of flavor too. They actually cook it in some beef stock, crispy crunchy exterior, creamy soft rice and that ground beef inside I'm telling you right now put it all together. It's super good.

There's always something interesting coming out of the kitchen here for lasagna at Brelundi is legendary. It is big. It is filling and it is made the right way. Pasta, meat, cheese, everything you love about Italian food served piping hot and you get it in seconds.