After basking my taste buds in the spicy and exotic tastes of gourmet Mexican cuisine for a week in Cabo San Lucas during spring break, I came back to the College still craving an exotic taste. In search of a restaurant that would satiate this craving, I stopped in the still bitterly cold Princeton, and, after walking around in the cold for several minutes, the warm glow of the Teresa Caffe lured me in.
The Italian-filled menu consisted of antipasti, pastas, gourmet pizzas and entrées that included lamb, fish and chicken dishes. Being on a college budget, the delicious sounding salmon and lamb osso bucco entrèes were out of reach at $25 and $26, respectively.
Instead, I split an antipasto, the mozzarella di bufala and a pizza, the perfetta fontina, for $12 and $15, respectively. The mozzarella di bufala, antipasto featured delicious mozzarella and red peppers with oregano and olives. The ingredients were of very high quality, which is probably a result of Teresa’s produce being produced at their own Canal Farm located three miles away from the restaurant, according to their website.
The pizza, which featured prosciutto, arugula and grana padano as the cheese, consisted of high quality ingredients as well. The pizza had a distinct taste and possessed the sophistication that I was looking for, but not the spice. The pizza provided subtle tastes that left me, a hot sauce-grabbing pizza eater to begin with, looking to do just that.
While the simple but high quality dishes of Teresa Caffe provided subtle but sophisticated taste, the pizza lacked the flavor fullness of nearby Piccolo Traittoria, let alone the Mexican dishes that were in my taste buds’ memory.
