Last Wednesday night B and I had the pleasure of dining with the Atlanta Food Blogger’s Society at Princi Italia – Midtown. Having lived in Italy during college, I’m pretty picky when it comes to Italian food, but Princi Italia definitely measures up.
We started the evening with a tasty tomato and basil flatbread straight from the wood brick oven. It could have used a little more tomatoes and flavor but the crust was cooked to perfection.
The hardest thing about reviewing restaurants in the evening is the lack of natural light, so excuse my poor quality photos. Next up we tried this tortellini fondue. Fresh homemade pasta smothered in parmesan and herbs. So dreamy.
Now this dish was pretty interesting, this is Princi’s take on shrimp n’ grits called Shrimp Almafi. Honestly, I wasn’t a huge fan. I felt like everything was just piled up on top of a polenta cake. I actually preferred the polenta cake over everything else.
And this dish I wasn’t much of a fan of either. Chicken meatballs and pork/beef meatballs. The meatballs were honestly pretty dry and the dish was loaded with sodium. Plus, I’m a huge fan of keeping a dish super simple and really good and I felt they had over compensated this dish with the amount of toppings layered on the meatballs.
But they won me back over with this fresh caprese salad. I mean LOOK AT THE MOZZARELLA CHEESE! They source their cheese from a local cheese shop and you can tell it’s fresh.
Next up was the burrata and it was just as tasty. Served with fresh arugula over chopped heirloom tomatoes. The freshly cracked pepper and olive oil just top it all off. Simple dishes really do speak the Italian food love language.
Next up we started sampling the entrees. The chianti braised short ribs were out. of. this. world. I love anything braised in chianti honestly.
And another star of the night, the grilled salmon served over the cauliflower gratin is INSANE. I MUST remake this gratin. It’s like perfectly compacted cauliflower baked into crispy on the outside, chewy in the inside, squares.
Then we get into the pasta. Boy oh boy lots of pasta! There was this fettucine del mare served with fresh crab meat, fresh asparagus and shrimp.
Then this pepper pasta where they add the paper flakes right into the pasta dough as they’re making it. This was served with a spicy sausage on top. And they weren’t kidding when they said spicy. B LOVED this dish.
This was a fun pasta dish that was a bit deceiving. It doesn’t look spicy but that ground beef is loaded with flavor. This pasta is called orecchiette for little ears. I actually love pasta that you can eat with a fork and not have to cut and slop all over like spaghetti. Because I am definitely a messy eater. Sorry mom, things haven’t changed.
Now we get on to obviously the sweetest and best part of the night. The dessert. However, this first dessert we tried, I wasn’t a fan. It’s chocolate tiramisu cake. B and I are big fans of tiramisu done right and we believe this just doesn’t do tiramisu justice. Again, it’s best not to overcomplicate things and stick with doing a really good, really simple tiramisu.
And we ended the night PERFECTLY. I don’t even know any other way to describe these beautiful chocolate bars to you other than calling them super fancy kit-kat bars. Which they were. And they were so incredibly delicious I want to go back right now solely to order those.
Overall, B and I had great time and really enjoyed Princi Italia. There were a few things I’d recommend changing, keeping the classic Italian dishes simple, using less sodium, and using less toppings. Other than that, I loved that they made many of their ingredients in-house and what they couldn’t make in house they sourced from local Atlanta shops. That’s farm to table if you ask me!
Have you had a chance to try Princi Italia? What’d you think?
