Fig & Olive (VivoCity)

I myself had just had a late lunch at Fig & Olive at the Vivocity branch yesterday. I guess the 1 for 1 main courses are pretty worth it. The portion was good and they have a good variety of chicken, fish and pasta to choose from. I would agree that the service was not much, but i guess they made up for it by their very reasonably priced promotions.

We had a Maghribi Chicken w Olive Rice which is Herbs grilled chicken with Mediterranean style sauce served with olive rice and fresh greens ($16.10) and a Chicken Pesto Carbonara which is a Herb grilled chicken topped with tomato sauce and melted cheese, potato cilantro and served with choice pasta carbonara ($16.10). Both dishes are yummy. The Maghribi Chicken has got an exotic spanish sauce and I simply love the herbed infused taste to it, coupled with a colourful heap of vegetables which is tantalizing to me. The olive rice in comparison is not so yummy, i perfer it a little softer with more olives as it does appear to be too dry and hard.

The chicken pesto carbonara is great too, melted cheese and tomato sauce goes well with the grilled chicken and i would say a great dish to share with children as it is not too spicy yet has got everything a kid loves.

Service I should say could be better and was better last time. Perhaps there is a change in management, however i kinda feel that the service industry in Singapore is somewhat underperformed... I won't use the word deteriorated because it was not really good before. Rather our culture has been transformed. Service standards has been improving vastly globally and people's expectations for service has been soaring, time for yourself is limited, stress is high, patience is like a thinly spread butter on an already dried up toast, money is like 'Now you see it Now its GONE!'

So sometimes when we meet some bad services or bad food or bad attitude, we just remind ourselves.... of the many hungry children in Africa and start planning in your mind how you are going to review this restaurant......

I've eaten at Fig & Olive a couple of times, once at the Downtown East branch and once at this VivoCity branch. Both times, the food, while not fantastic, was good enough to satisfy the hungry tummy. However, my meal last night was a HUGE disappointment.

My friend & I had just gotten out of a movie premiere were starving since we couldn't grab a bite before then. We scouted around for dinner and decided on Fig & Olive, based on my previous experience & the price. This was around 9pm, and the restaurant had only one other table with a party of 3 before we came in (we were the last customers for the day). The restaurant was having a set meal offer which we settled for, consisting of 2 mains, 2 drinks, 2 soups and a plate for bruschettas (4 pieces). The mains were the cheesy fish & grilled chicken with spaghetti.

The soups came first and were TERRIBLE. It was like drinking a soup of salt! I couldn't tell what soup it was although I would've guess it's Mushroom but all I got was just creamy salt. 2 spoonfuls later, I was done with that. Moving on to the mains, the cheesy fish was edible but not outstanding or fantastic. It was breaded fish (slightly overdone) with a bed of unevenly distributed cheese. The fries, on the otherhand, were better. The Grilled Chicken & Pasta was a sad disappointment as well. Chicken was not juicy or tender (read: dry & hard) and the pasta was tasteless, although it was only meant to be a simple tomato based pasta with chunks of tomatos. The only winner of it all were the bruschettas which was very simply done with a slight garlic butter spread, tomato cubes & onions with thousand island dressing on the side. The bread was soft enough but again, nothing to rave about.

However, seeing that we were starving & the food is already in front of us, we dug in anyway but note that we weren't satisfied at all after that.

The only thing they got right were the 2 glasses of coke (a no brainer) and the bruschettas which were child's play.

Maybe it was because we were the last customer's of the day so the food was compromised a great deal but that's no excuse. A business is a business. So to sum it up, the entire dinner was a great DISAPPOINTMENT.

I won't recommend this to anyone. Not only was it unsatisfactory, both my friend and I got home to down a gallon water because we were just too thirsty from all that salt/MSG.