Dinner at the Wild Olive

So D and I had dinner at Wild Olive.  Among my favorite places in town...

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The entrees were good.  Pastas, all around.  Orichietti with game bolognese, linguine with shrimp, tomato, greens, and chile, and garganelli with guanciale and mushrooms.  All great, but nothing educational.  However, we had 3 appetizers, and each one contained a lesson.

App 1- Charred, Braised Octopus with Creamer Potatoes, Capers, Spring Onions, some kind of spiced mayo dressing.  The lesson here was simple.  If you take the world's best, most exciting potato salad, and top it with octopus, you have a pretty solid app.  The dish was a lot like the octopus/potato salad dish that name makes, but using the little creamer potatoes gave it a textural appeal that was incredible.  (Also, I haven't made 5000 6-pans of the Wild Olive's potato salad, so maybe I could enjoy it a little more).

App 2- Fennel Sformato with Lump Crab Meat, Fennel Pesto, and Chile-  This was good, but not great, and it carried 2 major textural lessons.  Lesson one is that sometimes you need a crunch.  I am not a believer that it is always required, but there are times when it is.  The sformato was yielding and delicate, and the crab meat was really tender, so it was almost like eating a soup that held it's shape.  A dusting of Nate's tiny croutons would have saved the day.  The second lesson was that I don't really like fennel fronds.  They were the only thing on the plate that had any texture, and they were just like eating hair.  Their flavor was redundant, there was already fennel sformato and fennel pesto.  I wouldn't have noticed the texture if everything else in the dish wasn't so soft, but I won't ever use them for soup garnish again.

App 3- Bruschetta with broccoli rabe, grana padano cheese, and purple cape beans: The lesson here is that purple cape beans are really great.  They are small and dark red, almost like a dried red bean, but I think they are fresh.  One thing that Lowcountry cuisine has figured out is that fresh field peas and beans are fantastic.  I've never had cape beans before, but I will favor them the next time I see them on a menu.  I imagine they would make an absolutely fantastic red beans and rice.

Well, that's all for today.  I went fishing for sheep'shead again, and all I got was blowfish.  Lots and lots of blowfish.  (No sign of Hootie.)  Oh well.