Olives

For my birthday a friend took me to Olives. The bonus was that she knows the pastry chef there. So for dessert we got the hook up.

For appetizers, she had the crab cake special. The meat was tender and flakey, without being overly oily. It was fantastic and the best crab cake I've ever tasted. I opted for a shaved artichoke salad over a risotto cake. Unfortunately, cheese permeated the entire dish, overpowering the artichoke. The risotto cake was also somewhat hard and dry.

Moving on, my friend ordered a Mediterranean sea bass with lobster vinaigrette. The bass was prepared simply, with salt rubbed on the skin, the lobster was buttery. While the fish was uninspiring, the lobster was good.

I ordered the crispy Long Island duck with chorizo basmati, golden raisin glaze and eggplant puree. The meat was perfectly cooked, the texture was perfect, and the duck very flavorful.

Then it was time for dessert. The pasty chef sent out four. By far the best was the selection of seasonal soberts. Lemon and mango sorbets sat on crisp wafers floating on a pool of tapioca. The sorbets were incredibly refreshing, the fruit ripe on the tongue. Next was the warm chocolate pudding cake. The chocolate pudding was thick and bitter and rich. The warm cake stood in the center, a dollop of chocolate ice cream melting upon its surface. Three bites and I was full.

The caramelized banana bread proved surprisingly light and flakey, rather than dense. The bread was sandwiched between layers of crisp dough. Butter pecan ice cream melted on the side above banana fritters.

Last on the list was the peanut butter molten cake, which came with milk chocolate ice cream and delicious ice milk. The latter was set on top of a thin chocolate wafer supported by chocolate peanut butter columns. The cake was good, but the mixture of peanut butter and chocolate soon proved a little too much. It ended up last on our list, but only because the other desserts were so incredibly fantastic. I'm not eating dessert for at least two weeks.