Cafe Teresa - Shiela's review

Let's start off with one of my favorite restaurants in Londonderry... Cafe Teresa.

Now Cafe Teresa is a little unusual as they provide both Italian and Mexican fare under one roof. Now I have to admit that I am not a huge fan of Italian food. I prefer more spice in my food so I choose to peruse the Mexican part of Cafe Teresa. I will let Megan review the Italian side of Cafe Teresa.

Cafe Teresa is a restaurant and bar. When you walk in, you will find the bar to the right. Again, I will leave the bar part of the review to Megan as I not much of a drinker. The restaurant's seating area is located to the left. The decor is very basic yet clean. Typical cafe setting - wooden tables and wooden chairs.

Once seated, a waitress will bring over tortilla chips and a nice homemade salsa. With that, I will segue into the wait staff. I have to admit that they aren't the friendliest bunch. I have had better service at other restaurants. I will give you an example. One time, I went to Cafe Teresa with my husband for his birthday. We were seated at a small table in the corner. Our waitress brought over our dinners but failed to pick up the salsa and chips. We didn't have enough room on our table for all of the food. We decided to put the chips and salsa at an empty table near us. Our waitress popped by at that moment. Instead of apologizing for not picking up the chips/salsa, we got reprimanded for putting our leftovers on a clean table.

Now for the food. One of my favorite appetizers is the Chipotle Shrimp. Eight succulent shrimp in a spicy chipotle cream sauce. Not for someone that doesn't like spicy food. The Chipotle Shrimp is served with hot bread for dipping. I actually think this dish should be an entree instead of an appetizer. Sometimes I order this dish as my entree and I prefer to eat it with Mexican rice instead of the bread. The bread doesn't do the dish justice. The Mexican Rice enhances the flavors of the chipotle, vermouth and cream. Some of the other finger lickin' good appetizers to try - The Barbados Fingers and Asian BBQ Chicken Wings!

Now for entrees: If you look around when seated at Cafe Teresa, you will notice a lot of people eating the Fajita salad. This is also a favorite of mine. It is a fried tortilla bowl filled with fresh greens, shredded cheese, black olives, scallions, tomatoes, peppers, and your choice of char grilled chicken breast or char grilled marinated flank steak. Garnished with guacamole, sour cream and a choice of salad dressing or salsa. I prefer to get the steak and have it with salad dressing. A must try is the cilantro ranch dressing. Other entrees that I have tried are the Vegetarian Quesadilla (yummy!!),the Enchiladas (rather common tasting) and the Combo #3. Let's start with the Vegetarian Quesadilla. Normally, I could care less for Mexican vegetarian food because most places substitute refried beans for meat. I also find most places don't cook the veggies enough for me. Cafe Teresa has the perfect combination of onions, peppers, tomatoes, olives and no beans in their vegetarian quesadilla!! The Enchiladas are also good but nothing unusually different. Combo #3, is another vegetarian dish that surprises me. They offer a guacamole soft taco that is the perfectly tangy and flavorful.

The one thing that Cafe Teresa lacks are desserts. When we first started dining there 4 years ago, they used to make their own desserts. One of the desserts they used to offer was flan. Megan and I used to love going there for their flan. A few years back they stopped making flan. As far as I know, they have stopped making their own desserts. Instead they offer baked goods from Blackberry Bakery located in Derry. I will review Blackberry Bakery for another time.

Cafe Teresa is located at 103 Nashua Road(Route 102),Londonderry, NH 03053. Phone number - 603.432.8850. Their website is http://www.cafeteresa.com/

Who we are... (in Shiela's words)

We are two friends that grew up in Long Island, New York. Friends that share a common bond - our love for food! In life, there are two types of people: those who eat to live,(not us!!) and those who live to eat (so us!!).

Our friendship is an interesting one because it remained in tact even though we went our separate ways at various points in our life. After high school, Megan went to Potsdam, NY and Shiela went to Stony Brook, NY. We kept in touch throughout college but never saw each other. We both graduated college. Then one day Megan called me up and told me she was getting married. She asked me to be a bridesmaid which I happilly accepted. It was funny because even though we didn't speak much we knew we were still close. Her husband-to-be thought I was a figmant of her imagination as he had never heard about me. She got married and again we went our separate ways. She moved to Derry, NH and I moved to Manhattan living the single life.

Seven years later I was setup on a blind date. I told my date right away that there was no way in hell I was going to like him because he was from DERRY, NH. I wasn't going to lose my New York City lifestyle. Boy was I wrong. Next thing I knew, I eloped with my date after knowing him for 2 months!! Guess where I moved to??? Yup... I gave up my New York single life to live in Derry, NH. After we eloped, I realized that Derry, NH sounded very familiar. I realized Megan lived there. I called her up and she was so happy to know that I would be living near her.

We decided to have dinner to catch up. What started off as a dinner to rekindle our friendship ended up being a once a week "girls night out". Our bonding over food helped us to talk about life, love, and family. As we started visiting more and more restaurants in NH, we started critiquing the food. One time we went to a restaurant and had the worst service ever. If only we were food critics! That restaurant would get a bad review! Well here we are today... blogging our reviews for restaurants that we have visited in the past 4 years.