As I was looking through past columns, trying to gain inspiration, I realized I never wrote about a cute little restaurant on Prospect Avenue called Café Brucke.

You know that moment when you cannot find your keys as soon as you are about to leave the apartment? Driving yourself crazy, you start swearing at no one and angrily yell at the cat.

You are just about to fall to the floor in tears when you realize that you had them in your hand the entire time. Don’t deny it; you know you’ve done that at least twice in your life.

That’s the way I felt when I was trying to find a place to review this week. I’ve been writing my column for more than a year now and I feel like I’ve written about every place one the East Side and downtown that you, my hungry reader, may want to try.

I thought about maybe venturing out into the (gasp!) Shorewood area, but I need to invest in a quality pair of ear plugs before I step foot into a family-ridden restaurant where crayons accompany every menu.

As I was looking through past columns, trying to gain inspiration, I realized I never wrote about a cute little restaurant on Prospect Avenue called Café Brucke.

You may think that you have never heard of it before, but I know you’ve seen it before. When you’re driving up Prospect at night in the summer and right before you hit the small foot bridge you see adorable tables with glimmering candles on top of them to your left. That’s the place, Café Brucke.

Its menu is simple, its charm is dynamite. The walls are reminiscent of an old Italian villa and the overall décor looks like it was bought from my Polish grandmother’s estate sale. Old flowered placemats and tons of dusty ethnic cookbooks line the walls made up of large windows. The bar is short and there are about 10 tables in the place, but the lack of seating is made up in the intense beer menu.

I gathered our server that evening was somewhat of a beer aficionado. After she told me Riverwest Stein was not on the menu, she recommended a similar beer, Einbecker Ur-Bock Dunkel ($4.50). It has the same bitter and dark taste as the Lakefront brew.

I loved it and it was the perfect accompaniment to our first appetizer of pretzel sticks and mustard ($2.00). The stand-out mustard was the yellow jalapeño. The pretzel sticks weren’t anything to brag about. Being an ethnic restaurant with European flair, I was expecting them to be warm and homemade, but they weren’t.

The spanikopita ($8.00) was truly divine. Spanikopita, what is known to many as spinach pie, is layers of filo dough, spinach, feta cheese and in some cases, oregano. In Café Brucke’s case, a lot of oregano.

But the overdose of the herb didn’t stop me from finishing every last bite. The layers of filo were crispy and perfectly golden brown and the spinach filling was not soggy (something that is hard to accomplish considering the amount of water spinach naturally carries within its leaves).

For dinner, I ordered the green and bleu ($7.00) which was a thick and crusty French baguette layered with a massive amount of bleu cheese and sliced Granny Smith apples. It was topped off with walnuts and a side salad. It was simple food done really nicely. The cheese wasn’t anything to rave about, but I wasn’t expecting it to be.

My dining companion ordered the Mediterranean sandwich ($8.00) that had grilled chicken, an olive tapenade, sun-dried tomatoes and mozzarella cheese. This was amazing. The flavor compound was to die for and the bread stood up really well to the pungent tapenade and the fiery tomatoes.

Café Brucke is a nice place to walk to if you live on the Lower East Side or take the bus if you live anywhere else. It’s also in close proximity to your favorite weekend hangouts on North Avenue.

This chic café is perfect for a quick and tasty dinner any night of the week.

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