Olive Cafe Portland

A beautiful (and bitter cold) day in the Old Port finds Kate and me looking for lunch.  (What's new!?)

At the suggestion of several friends, we found ourselves in Olive Cafe on Commercial St.  If you've never been here before, it is a Mediterranean style restaurant with a heavy influence from the Southern Mediterranean specifically. 

I naturally ordered a glass of wine (to go with my meal) while Kate had a nice cup of hot tea to stave off the cold we were both feeling from the weather outside.

A hot bowl of soup was precisely what I needed too, so I ordered the soup of the day.  Today's soup was a pumpkin soup prepared with apples, onion, cinnamon and cumin.  What a treat and WOW, were my taste buds set to the test.  There was just enough cumin to give it some real pizaz, yet not too much as to drown out the flavors of apple and pumpkin.  Well done!

For our main lunch courses, we chose the Beef Shawarma and the Vegetarian Plate (with an addition of Falafel).   The Shawarma was tightly wrapped in a pita with onions, lettuce, tomato, parsley, sumac, tahini and beef that had been marinated in arabaic spices.  It was truly a perfect blend of textures and flavors and I WILL be back for more of it again.  Kate's Vegetarian plate was beautiful.  Seriously, we took a picture of it and posted it on facebook it was so nice looking!  Hummus, Tabouli, Baba Ganouge, fresh imported olives and pita bread.  Oh, and the extra Falafel.

The entire menu from top to bottom reads like a mouth-watering list of delectable options.

...Can't wait to go back again!

~Joe