 Olive Beach offers a flight of three different wines to its guests- compliments from the house before ordering any food. Each glass is served about 30mL, the standard tasting portion. There is a wine mat spread on the table with the name of the producer, grape varietal, vintage and tasting notes. The sommelier serving the tasting portion is competent enough to talk about the wines and suggest the food pairing if the customer so desires.
‘There is no pressure on the customer to order wine after tasting ,’ says Shailesh Jha, Restaurant Manager, who adds, ’but our sales have gone up significantly since we introduced this scheme recently.’
‘We keep changing the theme of the flights regularly,’ says Karuna Ram, GM Materials and Purchase. ‘We may offer at times, a red, white, rose or a sparkling while the other times it may be 3 wines from the same producer. Sometimes we also offer 3 wines from the same grape varietal for the client to appreciate the difference between the regions.’
The restaurant has always been passionate about promoting wine as a part of food. A D Singh, owner, Director of the chain of Olive restaurants is quite excited about the programme. ‘We have always taken wines very seriously from the start and try to keep the margins on wines low too. We felt that many customers are still hesitant to delve into wine. We thought this might be a good way of making them loosen up and enjoy wine with food. Though we practically sell a bottle of wine on each table, we would like wine to be a staple accompaniment with any dish in all our restaurants since our cuisine is very wine friendly.’
 At the tasting of summer menu on Monday, one saw the welcome tasting mats showing three wines from the Sicilian winery Cusumano- distributed by Mohan Bros- Alcamo Bianco DOC 2007; ‘A blend of Grecanico and Cataratto, light straw in colour with a fresh and balanced taste, intense perfume, combined with typical aromas of the Mediterranean’ said the tasting notes. The other two were an Insolia IGT 2007 and Angimbe Insolia Chardonnay IGT 2007.
‘The tasting notes help the customer in final selection of the wine’, says Karuna.
‘One reason we can promote wine in this fashion is also because importers have been very co-operative in supporting the scheme,’ she added.
Summer Menu at Olive Beach
The summer menu at Olive Beach has many new additions which are inviting and suitable for the hot weather. Most of the new dishes may not be light on the pocket but are light on the palate. With a wide choice for vegetarians, they continue to get a special treatment. Timbale of mushroom with asparagus and cheese sauce and the tomato and basil terrine with rocket, goat cheese and pear salad as starters would make any vegetarian salivate. But there was also dill marinated salmon with spinach and mascarpone praline as well as cold chicken with ricotta pudding for the carnivores.
 I found the avocado, grapefruit and rocket salad dressed with honey and lemon particularly refreshing whereas the potato cream soup was yummy as was the cauliflower and cheddar cheese soup. Vegetable lasagne, made with fresh tomato and cheese cream is always a favourite dish here but tagliatelle with sausage and rocket was simply delicious and went well with the accompanying Torres Viña Sol. I reckon the Cusumano Angimbe would have been quite an enticing match too.
Tallegio stuffed artichoke with caponata, mashed potato, sautéed spinach, asparagus and cheese sauce is a really exotic dish for vegetarians whereas he Prawn stuffed chicken made in a slightly different style really made my evening.
If you are a dessert person, the Lava mud cake with gelato and the mango delight with mango cheese cake and mango sorbet would be the absolute favourite for the mango lovers, though there is a wide choice available in their special summer menu.
 Any time is a good time to head towards Olive Beach. Their Summer Special menu brings in fresh taste, new flavours and colourful presentation. The fragrance and magic of the Mediterranean beachside is captured on your palate with the typical rustic charm of the ‘ Olive’ and may make you want to go there once too often. But the next time you go there, check out the complimentary wine tasting portions and let us know if it made you order a bottle of wine and made the meal more enjoyable. If you order the red wine, make sure it is served between 16-18 ºC. Whites would be served chilled from 6-10º C anyway.
And while you are thinking about it remember the Mother’s Day is this Sunday and you might want to consider your mother or your kids’ mother for a delicious and cool gastronomical experience.
Subhash Arora |