The restaurant that doesn't serve bread

Image by stu_spivack via Flickr

If you go to Fig & Olive in the Meat Packing District of Manhattan for a $24.07 lunch today, you'll find a bread plate on your table and a server will bring you some nice, crusty olive bread. If you went Sunday and ordered from the same Restaurant Week lunch menu -- as I did -- your bread plate will remain empty and eventually will be taken away.


Why no bread service at Sunday lunch? It's apparently because the restaurant also serves brunch on Sundays, and its brunch menu offers bread for $3.50 or an assortment for $9, with jams and an olive-oil-and-honey mixture. The waiter actually showed me the brunch menu and asked me if I wanted to order bread.

I'm a bread person, and I briefly considered stiffing him with only a 10% tip, but he was careful to explain it's the restaurant's policy, not his.


I also didn't see any figs, one of my favorite fruits, or any dishes with figs. Dessert was strawberries with mascarpone on shortbread "crostinis," made ahead, the waiter said, so I couldn't get it without the triple-cream cheese. So I ate only six small strawberries with micro-basil in 18-year-old balsamic vinegar.

Well, at least my appetizer and entree were good, but I didn't leave the restaurant with the same  full, contented feeling I had on Friday after a $24.07 lunch at Esca, a seafood restaurant where admittedly I went overboard by eating six pieces of bread. (See post, My $24.07 lunch at Esca.)

The bread incident only highlighted the stark contrast with Esca, a smaller, busier place where the food and service excel. Fig & Olive is cavernous and cold, reflected in the bare metal table I was seated at in the lounge and the waiter coming over in less than a minute after I received food to ask if everything was OK.


My starter at Fig & Olive was a tumbler of gazpacho with two very thin, almost cracker-like pieces of toast. For my entree, I had a bowl of vegetables (carrot, onion, artichoke, pea pods and olives) topped with a moist fillet of caramelized cod, served with the skin on. There was a nice broth with extra-virgin olive oil in the bottom of the bowl -- another reason the lack of bread seemed a crime -- so I had to ask for a soup spoon to finish it.


On the way out, I told the manager it made no sense to serve bread with lunch on weekdays, but not on Sundays. He said he would pass on my comment to the chef.

NYC Restaurant Week Information 

(Photo: Olive bread.)

Free samples, bargains at Whole Foods

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Now that we're eating a lot of meat substitutes, a trip to Whole Foods Market in Paramus every couple of weeks is a must. The store has the best selection of products from Original Field Roast Grain Meat Co. -- such as a vegetarian roast or meatloaf, sausage and deli cuts (not Whole Grain Meat Co., as I wrote earlier).


These products are made with wheat gluten, vegetables and spices.


Whole Foods is not big on free samples. You do a lot better in that regard at Costco. But yesterday, I had some romaine salad with feta cheese, and a second small plate of crackers, hummus and olive salad. Three seniors at the cheese counter tipped me off to another sample -- an $11.99-a-pound, semi-soft cheese whose name I don't remember.


There were some good buys, too. Two, 32-ounce bottles of organic lemonade (11% juice) were $3; three pounds of conventional Driscoll strawberries were $5; and conventional sweet corn from Georgia was 25 cents an ear. 

We had the corn for dinner and it surprised us with its sweetness -- all the way from the Deep South. 

Whole Foods Market, 300 Bergen Town Center, Paramus;
201-226-1244. Open seven days.

Original Field Roast Grain Meat Co.

My usual Monday run to Costco

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I usually make my weekly visits to Costco in Hackensack on Mondays. This is what I picked up today:

1. Two pounds of U.S.-grown strawberries, $5.99
2. Three pounds of Amy Lu preservative-free
    andouille chicken sausage, $13.99
3. Three pounds of Kirkland wild sockeye
     salmon fillets, $25.89
4. Two loaves of  Kirkland 100% whole grain bread, $3.99
5. Wild-caught Little Neck clams, $2.99 a pound
6. Six pounds of frozen broccoli, carrots and cauliflower, $6.59
7. Two pounds of Finlandia thin-sliced, lactose-free
    Swiss cheese, $8.99

Last Friday, I again went in search of Kirkland preservative-free smoked wild sockeye salmon from Alaska -- missing from the refrigerated case for two Mondays in a row -- and found some at $14.79 a pound.

Costco Wholesale, 80 S. River St., Hackensack; 
(201) 487-5471; open seven days, www.costco.com

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Still searching for perfect produce

Why is the produce section the first you enter in a supermarket? I've often heard it's the first, because it's the most profitable. So why is it you often get so little good produce for the money?

How many times have I brought home produce, only to find it rotting on the counter the next day? Or it never ripens? Or it's mealy and tasteless? And it doesn't seem to matter how much you pay or where you buy it -- ShopRite, Whole Foods, Fairway.

Lately, I have been relying on Costco, though my wife still buys grapes and strawberries from

the ShopRite in Englewood. At Costco, you have to buy three or four pounds of each, a lot of fruit for three people to consume before it goes bad.

Today, I brought home a dozen large, juicy, sweet peaches from the Northwest. You get a dozen of these beauties for $7.99 at Costco, and they'll be ready to eat tomorrow or the next day. This is my third tray. I also got three large California cantaloupes for $5.99 and another pound of Earthbound Farms organic spring salad mix, $4.49.

Buying fresh fruit has been so frustrating in the past, I have several kinds of dried fruit on hand.