Olive
One saturday afternoon we made our way to Olive in Soho because we were craving something middle eastern. The last time I was here was some 2.5 years ago when I brought mom to dinner when she came to visit. It wasn’t a pleasant experience and I crossed it out of my list.
This time it was much better. I rememberd being turned off by aloof service the last time, but this around the staff were very accomodating.
The lunch deals are pretty good especially because of the hefty portions. We took one each of the set meals.
C choose to go with a falafel of lamb in mint and yogurt sauce. We almost missed out on this because I thought C didn’t like mint, but thankfully we didn’t. The best part about this is the freshly baked pita bread. To be honest, I haven’t had such good pita in a while – the supermarket and chain restaurant varieties just don’t cut it.
Lamb and mint + yogurt is always a killer combination. The lamb at Olive was pretty tender and any lambiness (as usual, for lack of better word) was well covered by the sauce. I’ll heartily recommend this dish.
The other set meal came with a choice of appetizers and we chose to go with a traditional bread salad, which neither of us had tried before. It was an interesting choice of cucumber and beet (which I didn’t touch), fried bread (which was very good) and a citrus dressing of sorts. It was perhaps much healthier than if I had gone with greek salad.
I went for a pistachio crusted lamb, which C raved about. But then, C’s a lamb fanatic and will devour anything put in front of her. It was good, but perhaps not great. I thought it was a little too well-done for my tastes, which made it slightly tough, but then the pistachio crust made up for it.
It came with a side of salad with what resembled greek salad dressing. And so, I did get to sooth my cravings for good feta cheese. I enjoyed the whole meal and no more hestitations about coming back.
One thing to note though. The meal comes with a free drink and when I was done with my coke, they asked if I wanted a refill. I stupidly said yes, and that was HK$30 for fizzed out pop. So don’t repeat my mistake.
