The menu at Principe di Piemonte runs to about four pages, which should be a warning sign. Usually it means a kitchen that can’t commit. Here it means a kitchen that actually trained in northern Italy and wanted to bring the whole thing with them.
You’ll find this place on South Pitt Street, a few blocks below the King Street corridor where most of the foot traffic runs. The neighborhood is residential and quiet — row houses, a dry cleaner, a hardware store. The restaurant occupies a narrow brick storefront that seats maybe forty people on a good night. Walk in without a reservation on a Friday and you’ll probably wait.
Piedmontese cooking isn’t the same thing as the red-sauce Italian most of the region serves. You’ll notice quickly. The pasta is egg-based and hand-rolled — tajarin, a thin ribbon cut, arrives with a brown butter and sage sauce that takes real restraint to pull off without going greasy. They don’t go greasy. The vitello tonnato, cold sliced veal under a tuna-caper sauce, sounds odd if you’ve never had it, but it’s one of those preparations that earns its reputation the first time you try it properly made.
The risotto is on the menu, and unlike a lot of places in the area, they actually finish it correctly — loose enough to spread slowly on the plate, with enough stock in it that the rice doesn’t clump. Order it if the kitchen has truffles that week. They’ll tell you at the table if they do.
Wine skews heavily northern Italian. The Barbera d’Asti by the glass is a reasonable choice if you want something that cuts through the richness of the meat dishes without spending forty dollars. The list goes deeper if you want it to, but the staff won’t push you toward the expensive end without prompting.
Dinner for two with a couple of glasses of wine runs somewhere between $80 and $120 before tip, depending on how far into the menu you go. That’s not cheap, but it’s in line with what you’d pay anywhere along King Street for cooking that’s considerably less careful. Lunch is a better deal — a shorter menu, some of the same pastas, and you’re usually out in under an hour.
The room itself is plain without being cold. The tables are close together, the lighting is decent, and the noise level stays manageable. No exposed ductwork, no Edison bulbs, no chalkboard philosophy on the wall. Just a room that lets the food be the thing.
Go on a Tuesday or Wednesday if you want a relaxed meal. Weekends fill up, and the reservation window tends to be tighter than you’d expect for a street this quiet. Book online a few days out or call ahead — they’re small enough that it makes a difference.
What you’re not going to get here is a performance. No tableside theatrics, no tasting-menu architecture, no cocktail program with house-made bitters. What you do get is a kitchen that understands a specific regional tradition and executes it with enough consistency that you’ll want to come back and work through the rest of the menu. That’s rarer than it sounds.
