From art school to kitchen confidential

You don't need a reason to revisit Olive. Here's one anyway. Chef Saby has a new menu

You don't need a reason to revisit Olive. Here's one anyway. Chef Saby has a new menu

Take an Indian out of India and he will go looking for Indian food everywhere. The same Indian in India would go looking for food from everywhere. Which is why Chef Saby, executive chef at Olive (everywhere), knows his job is no mean feat. He has to please an Indian with food from everywhere, be it salmon from Norway, basa from Vietnam or mushrooms from Portobello. And this art school graduate has been doing so for more than 15 years with sweeping brushstrokes.


Olive is as much about the food as its interiors

Which is why I, a diehard Indian food fan, keep going back to Olive (the wife's snooty Mediterranean
preferences notwithstanding). While I have never had to complain about the food, Saby tries innovating the menu constantly, and that is a rather rare and very encouraging sign in any restaurant.

But that does not mean I am not skeptical about what is served to me. And it is with this frame of mind I approached the Reconstructed Minestrone, which Saby informed me "had been broken down and put back together". Okay, not quite appealing to someone who does not particularly like the soup in its original form
anyway. But Saby's version has tomatoes, onions, pasta, and truffle oil, reinvented as a mousse with the help of a pacojet (that processes purees into creamy textures). I cannot tell you any further about the technology or the recipe because the surprisingly refreshing taste drowned Saby out (That is a compliment!). This is by far the most interesting start to a meal in quite a while.

What a start!
For starters, we had the pork belly with honey mustard relish, which the wife insists even on its own is to absolutely die for. Hmm, hmm, I know for sure it goes very well with pork belly and is highly recommended. After clearing the palate with some melon sorbet (refreshing on a humid night), we had the goat cheese souffle, as perfect as the mould it came from, with the added delight of caramelised walnuts. But the piece de resistance for me, especially given my mild allergy to seafood, was the crispy soft shell crab in N2o batter with deviled quail eggs.

An aside: Olive has a wood-fired oven, eat something, anything that comes out of there. We had room only for freshly baked bread served with herbs and olive oil in a mortar and pestle (cute idea but I made the wife do all the work) but I hear the paper pizzas are a must-have. For the main course (could I eat any I wondered), I had the Cajun and toasted pecan nut crusted basa in caper sauce. Apparently, I could eat more, and proceeded to eat the tiger prawn, calamari and green mussel off the Black and White Linguini that the wife was having.

Not 'dessert'ed
And I even had room for dessert (only a fool will give the desserts at Olive a miss). The chocolate fondant with
in-house vanilla bean gelato and berry coulis lived up to my anticipation. If you are ready to give up chocolate (I cannot), you must have the maple glazed pecan pie and the signature tiramisu. I am glad Saby choose food as his art form. I hear canvas is unhealthy.

Olive
Food: Very good
Service: Attentive
Ambience: Great
AT: One Style Mile, Mehrauli
TIMINGS: 7.30pm to midnight
RING: 29574444
MEAL FOR TWO: Rs 2,500 (excluding drinks)