Date Night: Olea Restaurant
Ok, so a slight fabrication. It was more of a “Date Lunch” for us, but we imagine it could translate.
After being away all summer, Scott and I took a walk through Old Town last weekend so I could relish in the history and enjoy the slight bustle that King Street often provides. We had plans for dinner that evening, but could feel our stomachs rumble as we passed several of our favorite Old Town spots. We opted to step into Olea Restaurant, as the samples of pizza they were offering was enough to get us through the door.
Unfortunately, now they’ll have to really work on getting us to go back.
Scott and I maintain the “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” approach when it comes to restaurants. – but occasionally here and there we have an experience that we feel compelled to share in the hopes that the restaurant will use it as constructive criticism and use the feedback to improve in the future. We hope this holds true for Olea.
I’ll be honest – I had high expectations with the addition of “Mediterranean” in their menu, and was pleased to see that their brunch menu contained the traditional Mediterranean platter that I grew to love when I lived in Istanbul. However, it was the pizza that brought us in for lunch, so we ordered one to split. Scott is not a fan of mushrooms and is slightly dicey about olives, so we got the Greek Pizza (diced beef, red onion, green pepper, olives and mushrooms) and asked to hold the mushrooms and olives to half the pie, as I love them.
What came to our table was definitely not that.
The mushrooms were diced finely and covered the whole thing, and there were no olives and green peppers to be found. Additionally, the beef was on half and slightly overcooked.
All that being said, we know orders go wrong and things happen, but we were one of two tables in the entire restaurant at the time. It was very quiet, and when the server started to set the pizza down, he realized the mishap and pulled up short, saying “I don’t know what the chef was doing”. We flushed, and being in a rush we kept the order and decided better not send it back at that point.
Olea opened a few months ago, and in this we are offering a slight bit of leeway. It takes a little time to train staff and work out kinks, but the pizza was very greasy and and the bruschetta was no better than average. Not to mention, when an order is THAT wrong, as a new establishment we expected either an apology or even a discount. (Le Diplomate comped our cocktail order when they were FIVE minutes late getting to our table – talk about customer service and high standards). Olea has a great deal of competition on King Street, especially when it comes to pizza, and needs to make a better effort at clientele goodwill.
The atmosphere was indeed tranquil and nicely designed, but that was the high note of the experience.
Olea, we do hope you stick around and are able to work out the kinks soon. Has anyone else been? How was your experience?
-Al
