Olive Tree Restaurant, West Perth

Last week, we had a pseudo-farewell dinner with my friends from high school at the Olive Tree Restaurant. The dinner was initially organised for us all to meet each other's partners, but this proved difficult with all of our busy schedules, and it kept being postponed until we finally did it!

The Olive Tree Restaurant specialises in set menus, which is not so good for small eaters like me especially when the minimum they serve for dinner is a four course meal ($40). The website says that they are flexible and can do a-la-carte, but in reality they actually don't make it easy to go for a-la-carte. I'm glad that Rob was there to help me with the food.

The interior of the restaurant was quite nice. There is a function room out the back for bigger groups. Service was professional (I'll give the waiter credit for trying his best) and prompt. The food itself? It wasn't bad, but not really anything wow. They certainly like using cream in most of their dishes, so for someone like me who dislike cream and creamy things in general, there wasn't really much variety to choose from. Fortunately for the restaurant, the majority of diners out there are not like me and I can safely say that the food will be enjoyable for you. Serving sizes are quite generous, and it's good value for money if you have the Entertainment Card, and can eat everything.

Garlic bread

What can I say? Garlic bread is... garlic bread. Nice, warm and freshly toasted.



Entree

Fettucine with Chicken and Saffron Cream Sauce - Rob selected this dish, and it didn't even occur to me until just now while editing the photo that penne pasta was served instead of fettucine as described in the menu. Ah well, pasta is pasta, and Rob really liked this one. A few of us ordered other pasta entrees, and they all commented that the serving sizes were pretty generous for entrees.



Prawn Cocktail - this was nice and light, but I felt something was lacking. Perhaps the prawns weren't as fresh as they could be? Perhaps it was too plain and I kinda expected something more flash?



Mains

Chicken Involtini with a Spinach, Almond and Rice Filling & Veloute Cream Sauce - veloute is just a fancy name for a white sauce. Rob loves his stuffed chicken dishes. I thought this was only okay. The taste didn't really hit it for me. The chicken meat itself had an odd taste different to the sauce and I could not figure if it was meant to taste like that but I didn't really enjoy it. Other than that it wasn't too bad.



Catch of the day (red emperor), Potato Mash and Lemon Butter Sauce - I was kinda disappointed with this actually. The lemon butter sauce was made with cream and the texture of the fish was kinda rubbery - a sign that it was probably overcooked. Rob thought it was yummy though.



Dessert

Generally the desserts were okay - nothing too "wow" about them.

Profiterole - This was nice, but tasted like any other profiteroles. The custard was quite nice and the pastry wasn't soggy.



Mango, Apple and Coconut Crumble - this one tasted like any apple crumble. We couldn't taste any mango at all. It was nice and hot though.




All in all, the food was pleasant and we had a good time catching up and getting to know our significant others better. Would I come back to Olive Tree Restaurant? Honestly, probably not.