Situated on the corner of Herzl and Lilenblum is Olive. It reminds me a little bit of an American Diner, where patrons can sit on it's long bar. There is place to sit outside on the sidewalk as well. This eatery is opened 24/7 to cater for anyone, who after a long night of partying, can come and satisfy their hunger. The menu is not kosher, but is vast, with choices of salads, sandwiches (both meat and dairy) and pasta. It caters to all sorts of tastes and possibly musical preferences, this is Tel Aviv afterall. Have you ever gone into a restaurant and ordered a salad and got 3 sad looking lettuce leaves, wet droopy tomatoes, some cucumber and garnished with a few slices of red peppers? Like a butchers attempt to cater for a party of vegeterians. Well the great news, the fantastic news , the stupendious news, is that will not happen here.
I shared their vegetarian house salad and it was excellent, a wide variety of ingredients, including beets, chickpeas, red cabbage, nuts, roasted vegetables and garnished with tomatoe and cucumber. A pure explotion of flavours. The best part about Olive is the value for money. A large salad costs NIS 30 (equivalent to only 3 billion Zim dollars) and it was enough for 2 people.
In Israel the requirement for being a waiter is you have to have at least 40 tattoes. The Liverpool Dockworkers and Coal Mining Association came here one year for their annual convention and even they were taken a back by the amount of tattoed people they saw. There are basically 2 people working behind the counter (tattoed), so service can be a bit slow, maybe these were AM:PM employees who took pride in their work and left ,because they did not fit into the AM:PM culture, not sure, but on the whole I had a good experience. My conclusion is great value for money, great food, quality fresh ingredients and an understandable slow service.
