"A Palate's Trip to the Mediterranean"
A lot of people don’t realize that Mediterranean food is extensive and has many different outlets. When thinking about what the Mediterranean resembles, the Mediterranean represents the sea, the Mediterranean Sea. Countries along the Mediterranean input and blend their individual tastes and cultures to create a single and unique food culture. This includes Italian, French, Turkish, Greek, and even Middle Eastern influences. While many acclaimed Mediterranean restaurants do a solid job at touching on a single influence, the Bleu Olive does a fantastic job at developing a Mediterranean concept that embraces all of these cultures and pairs them to create a single cuisine! As a diner takes in all the different options and tries the various dishes, the Bleu Olive takes their palate across a fantastic journey unlike any other.
Our first appetizer ordered was a Baked Saganaki cheese dip. This is a traditional Greek pan-fried-cheese dish. The dish was a small pan of melted cheese that was garnished with Kefalograviera, a Greek goat cheese, manouri, a Greek sheep’s milk cheese, feta, tomatoes and olives. The cheese was paired with toasted bread brushed with olive oil. The dish was rich, creamy and had many different layers of flavor that stacked together nicely. The tomato cut into the richness with its acidity, the olives had a bitterness to it that also cut into the richness, and the different cheeses on top give it a nice salty flavor(Deepak, Muziah, Justin). Eating everything together gave your mouth an explosion of different flavors that blended super nicely.
Another appetizer we had was a Caesar salad, traditionally an Italian salad. Bleu Olive kept many of the elements of the dish in its traditional format. The fresh, crisp, romaine lettuce, grated parmesan, and the anchovy based Caesar dressing were some of the elements, but what shocked us the most were the croutons. Usually the croutons would be crunchy, but in this case they was soft, creating a new play on the textures with the crunchy lettuce and soft croutons(Justin). Simply based on the croutons, you could understand that Bleu Olive looked to keep each individual ingredient to the highest standard and exceeded our expectations(Deepak).
The other Italian dish that we sampled was a pasta dish, a Lamb Bolognese, which was suggested by the chef. The basic anatomy of the dish consisted of braised lamb, and a linguine pasta served with a tomato sauce, topped with grana Padano, or parmesan for short. The pasta was cooked just perfectly and the lamb itself was so tender that it melted in your mouth. It was clearly the star of the dish and it was enhanced with the cheese that gave the dish a subtle creaminess (Deepak, Muziah).
Representing a French and Italian fusion was the stuffed free-range chicken breast with a side of mushroom risotto. The techniques incorporated in the dish is what carries France. The stuffing of the chicken is a common French technique used in other French dishes such as Chicken Cordon Bleu. In this case, the chicken was stuffed with a blend of spinach and feta. Lastly, the dish was served with a chicken demi, which is a French reference to a sauce(Justin). The chicken was cooked perfectly, it was juicy and tender on the inside while maintaining the crunchy exterior with the breading. The spinach and feta worked perfectly with the chicken, it gave the dish a nice richness. The risotto was also cooked perfectly and complimented the dish (Deepak, Muziah, Justin). This is definitely one we would recommend.
To finish the meal we had a couple of different desserts that represented both Turkey and the Middle East! We had a baklava, which is a Middle Eastern dessert with pistachios, walnuts, raisins and syrup wrapped in phyllo pastry. We also had a pistachio crusted goat cheese cheesecake. We found the presentation of the baklava to be stunning. The baklava was served standing up with a dab of whipped cream, a blackberry, and a mint leaf with each (Muziah). The baklava itself was warm and the ratio of nuts to pastry was perfect, giving it a soft crunch(Deepak). The cheesecake was awesome, there was a pistachio crust instead of graham cracker which gave the crust a more distinguished flavor and helped to balance out the rich goat cheese(Justin). These were both incredible ways to end the meal.
When looking back on the experience, we realized we were able to experience different parts of Mediterranean food that all complimented each other well. We had both a warm and cold appetizer, a poultry, a red meat, different pastas, different desserts, all different kinds of dishes that ultimately represented a single food culture. Bleu Olive truly gave us a balanced Mediterranean experience that took our palates to many different wonderful directions and provided us an unforgettable experience!
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