Fig & Olive Comics

This evening after work a friend and I headed out to the meatpacking district to eat dinner at Fig & Olive. I had tried the uptown location once before, and found the experience to be fairly pleasant, but nothing too spectacular. Above all, I remember leaving the place thinking that despite the name, I had not really gotten much in the way of either figs or olives during the course of the dinner. Perhaps my fault for not ordering more carefully, but I left feeling slightly disappointed nonetheless.

I had made reservations beforehand (OpenTable) — I highly recommend it, and no they don't pay me), but when we arrived there was a bit of confusion because apparently I had accidentally booked for the following night. The hostess was very accomodating despite the fact that it was somewhat busy, and I was impressed that they seated us right away anyway.
On a side note, I was just telling my friend about how, as a recent new MacBook user (switching from PC laptop), I was impressed by the array of miscellaneous applications one has available out of the box with OS-X. In particular, I mentioned Comic Life, which I had played with for a few minutes the previous day. So, I decided to throw together a few camera phone pictures with it for this entry.

To continue, I was determined this time to get may fair share of figs and olives, and so I ordered more carefully. I started right off ordering a Niçoise olive martini, but received instead the Arbequina martini. Not a big deal; I am not a picky olive eater, and so a little unpredictability in the order process was not entirely unwelcome. It was definitely the most strongly olive-flavored martini I have ever had, so we were off to a good start. We quickly followed with an appetizer assortment of mixed olives and a Fig & Olive Salad, which containes - you guessed it- both figs and more olives. By the time we finished those items, I felt like I had easily gotten my fair share of both for the evening, particularly after dipping everything in the three varieties of olive oil they provided for the table.

A note about the decor at the meatpacking location. This one is a completely different experience from the uptown one. Unquestionably the more trendy area calls for more attention to the hip-ness of the decor, but still I was impressed by the large open spaces and gleaming walls and shelves filled with all manner of olive-related oils and paraphernalia.