This restaurant has been shut down.
Wild Olives is one of the many new restaurants to have opened up in the Cyberabad area. Unlike most other restaurants in Hyderabad, the kitchen doesn’t close after 3 PM, hence this is actually a fantastic spot for a late weekend lunch. The restaurant’s décor projects a cozy, laid back mood that would please folks looking for a quiet, pleasant meal.
The cuisine served in Wild Olives is Italian and European. However, I never got around to ordering the Italian dishes – Pizza, Pasta, Risotto, in my two visits. Instead, I focused on the other specialties. From the starters, I tried Baked Paprika Mushroom and Spicy Chicken Wings. The mushrooms had a delicious cheesy stuffing with crushed almond pieces. I am not a big fan of mushrooms, but I became a fan of the dish. The wings were an absolute delight thanks to the brilliant BBQ sauce. The sweetness of the BBQ sauce was perfectly balanced by its heat. The pieces of chicken were a lot meatier than what you’d expect in a typical serving of wings.
The star dish of the main course is Navarin of Lamb – a French stew served with rice. The rice itself was pretty average, but the gravy made from small, soft pieces of lamb along with mushrooms, potatoes, and a red wine fused brown sauce was brilliant. I also ordered fillet mignon, which is a beef steak served with mashed potatoes and veggies. I wanted my steak to be medium-rare, but what was served was a bit more cooked than that. It still had enough juices to make the steak enjoyable, if not brilliant. The Grilled Pork Chops, our final main course order, was also served with mashed potato and veggies. The wonderful BBQ sauce did its magic here once again. This was another dish that I loved.
The desserts are perhaps the biggest weakness of Wild Olives. It might be a good idea to walk across the street and finish off your meal at one of the many options available in Indira Nagar. I ordered a Dark Chocolate Mud Pie, and was astoundingly served a Choco Lava cake with a scoop of Ice Cream! The tiramisu was good and had the alcoholic flavour that I love. The Pan Cake didn’t have any brilliance to it, but was enjoyable. However, the Panna Cotta was pretty disappointing. The dish might have worked better if the quantity of the berry compote wasn’t so meagre. The best dishes in the desserts were the cheese cakes – we opted for mango and lime flavours, and both were good.
Talking about quantities, once thing to keep in mind while ordering at Wild Olives is the portion sizes. The dishes are priced very reasonably, and a three course a la carte meal will set you back by only about a thousand bucks. However, the portion sizes are a lot smaller than in most places in Hyderabad. I don’t necessarily see this as a negative. In fact, the humongous portion sizes often frustrate me. They made is very difficult to eat out alone or in small groups, and encourage food wastage.
The other issue is that if you are a vegetarian and are not in the mood for Italian, you’ll find your choices to be very limited. A lot of continental dishes like Navarin are meant to be made with mutton. But, if restaurants can come up with vegetarian versions of Haleem and Biryani, I’m sure that the chefs at Wild Olives can come up with more dishes for the vegetarians.
Wild Olives impressed me enough that I revisited it just two days after my original visit. I’m looking forward to going back again and trying out their burgers and Italian offerings. But, purely based on the food I tried, Wild Olives is a delightful experience. It proves that good European food doesn’t have to cost a bomb.
