Food review: The Olive Tree, Shrewsbury

Let’s start with the positives. We’d given up on dinner after enduring mediocre and insipid food along with service that was at times plain amateurish. On our table were two-and-a-half left over dishes of food that we’d picked at and rejected, like cast-off partners on Love Island.

My friend was joking about going for a McDonald’s – an idea I was willing to entertain for the first time in about 17 years – when a guy who I presumed to be the restaurant manager came over.

He’d been given our feedback by a waitress who was probably regretting earlier asking the question: ‘Was everything alright with your food?’ – an enquiry that opened the gates to a flood of honest and fair remarks about dreary, tasteless paella and poorly seasoned meatballs.

“I’m so sorry,” said the restaurant manager. “We want our food to have flavour.”

It was a lightbulb moment. For the first time that evening, staff were shocked out of their complacency and started to engage. The restaurant manager apologised profusely and knocked off the cost of the pallid paella. And, in doing so, he saved The Olive Tree from the ignominy of a two-out-of-five review: better late than never, and all that.

But let’s tell the story the way it should be; with a beginning, middle and end.

My friend and I arrived for a midweek supper on one of the hottest weeks of the year. What better than sultry Spanish tapas while the sun was melting railway tracks with its 30 celsisus heat.

While a group of ladies made plenty of noise at a baby shower in the front part of the restaurant, we retreated to a quieter area to the rear. Within a few minutes, the waitress appeared to take our order and then time seemed to s.l.o.w. to a standstill. Tumbleweed billowed. Clocks stopped. Nothing much happened.

The waitress had told us there’d be a wait for food while the chef cooked for the baby shower ladies and so we’d ordered a small bowl of olives to munch on while we passed the time – specifically articulating their purpose to the waitress. The request passed in through her right ear then out through her left without gaining traction with grey matter. Fifteen minutes passed. The waitress walked past to other diners. Half an hour came and went. She carried drinks through to the garden. Our stomachs rumbled. After 45 minutes, we called the waitress over.

“The chef’s really busy,” she told us.

“Too busy to open a jar and pour olives into a bowl? It takes four seconds.”

We’d also ordered a couple of cold starters: manchego and quince and mozzarella with tomato, drizzled with basil oil. Surely he could have spent about 60 of the intervening 2,700 seconds slicing a bit of cheese and cutting a tomato into slices? The waitress looked sheepish. Our food appeared in less than two minutes. Simple, really. Though the service had been awful – and the chef hadn’t thought on his feet – the cold tapas was pleasant enough.

The hot tapas weren’t. My friend had ordered a pea and artichoke risotto. “Taste it,” she told me, gesturing a fork across the table like a cattle prod. It seemed like a punishment. “It tastes of nothing,” she said. And she was right.

Risotto is one of summer’s great dishes, rich with stock, vegetables and herbs. This one tasted like a bucket of Solvite. Two apologetic pieces of artichoke had been scorched and plonked on top, a sort of post-dish garnish, rather than being thoughtfully incorporated. My friend muttered disconsolately. The risotto realised it wasn’t wanted, collected it’s coat and wandered off into the night. Bye risotto. Have a nice life.

A bowl of meatballs weren’t much better. I ate one before giving up. The sauce in which they came was dull and underwhelming. And we’d become so let down by our evening already that it had become difficult to brave-face it. Across town, at a brilliant deli that’s been in business for a zillion years, they serve jars of spicy Brindisa Salsa Brava which has real flavour. It’s brilliant, costs £2.95 a jar and has about 78 billion times more flavour than the stuff in which our unloved meatballs sat.

The calamari was overcooked. Chewy squid is never good and although the batter was crunchy, the tiny white rings had the texture of a Bridgstone tyre. Ba-doing.

What else? Oh yes, bruschetta. The chef had burned the edges of the toast. The tomatoes weren’t up to much. We ate half of it – we were hungry – then left it to go in the anaerobic recycler.

Service was awful. While we ate, there wasn’t a single visit to our table – even though the baby shower ladies had left – and when the inexperienced waitress visited at the end of the evening to be greeted by a groaning table of virtually untouched food, she asked if we’d like to order anymore? The irony lay as heavily as lead on a roof. We weren’t sure whether to laugh or marvel at her chutzpah.

There was naivety throughout the evening: not bringing olives, not bringing cold tapas, not realising that guests who are left hanging for 45 minutes are more likely to pay for their pre-dinner drinks and go and find someplace else to eat. You know the drill. Tapas ought to be a celebration of seasonal flavour. Dishes are generally quick to cook and should be done so with precision – particularly if squid’s involved. Seasonal ingredients ought to feature. When supermarkets – not to mention specialist wholesalers and markets – are groaning with heritage tomatoes that are as sweet as Haribos, why not use them? Isn’t that what seasonal food’s all about: peak condition, seasonal ingredients?

The restaurant manager sensed our dissatisfaction as the evening came to an end and did his best to make amends, gallantly knocking off the cost of the paella. He told us to come back and sought to ameliorate. But it had been an evening mired in mediocrity and there was nothing much to commend it.

I’ve eaten at the Olive Tree on a number of occasions since its launch. Previously, it’s been pretty good. But poorly-seasoned and over-cooked food along with siesta-style service made our recent visit a night to forget. Hasta la vista, baby.

2.5/5 stars