Olives at the Ludlow Garage

Thursday October 11

Brian was in town to give a talk at the Taft Museum, and we were thrown into the usual confusion about where to go for dinner. We'd be getting out at around 8:30, and Cincinnati restaurants tend to close their kitchens and start vacuuming under the chairs (and sometimes under the guests) by 9 PM on weeknights. But a new place, Olives, advertised that they were open until 10 PM Monday through Thursday, so the four of us (Brian, Liz, H&B) thought we'd give them a try.

Going to a brand-new restaurant is always sort of a crapshoot, but Olives has been open since August 1, so you'd think they'd have had some time to settle into a professional routine. Unfortunately, more thought seems to have been devoted to decor (and that kinda ditzy) than to training a waitstaff. Despite the fact that only three other parties were in the restaurant, the bussers were too busy smoothing the sea of empty tablecloths to even bring us water.

When our waitron finally appeared, she was friendly but had no idea of how to actually wait on a table. Our wine came to us with the cork already removed and re-stuffed into the bottle, and she poured out full servings without giving it to anyone to taste. For appetizers, we ordered two servings of calamari to share among the four of us; she brought them with only two sets of chopsticks. Similarly, our dinners arrived and were steaming in front of us before she thought of getting us proper silverware and steak knives to eat them with. She was pleasant in that Midwestern way, smiling, but acting as if she had never been, much less served, in a restaurant before.

That said, the food was competent, if not inspired. The calamari was a mite tough, but not bad, and attractively presented in a Chinese takeaway box; though the "sriracha sauce and remoulade" that decorated the plate tasted like good old prepared chili ketchup and mustard. The "roasted frenched half-rack of pork" was a single thick pork chop, but nicely au point, and had good parsnip-potato mash and mushroom-and-onion topping. We asked for the "bluefin crab cake" of the appetizer menu to be brought as a dinner portion (a concept new to our waitron; until we explained that that meant two crab cakes, I think she was going to bring out the single appetizer portion on a larger plate); the coating was okay, but the innards were the fluffy stuff instead of high-quality lump crabmeat.

All in all, the place seems to be modeling itself on Tinks, around the corner; but Tinks does better food and FAR better service, in nicer surroundings, for around the same price. And the people Tinks would have been so happy to see Brian, who ate almost every other meal there for years. Ah well - you pay for experimenting, but at least you find out what's good in the end.

And P.S.: Not an olive in sight.