The Olive House — Restaurant in Basingstoke and Deane

My children decided to give their mum a different Mother’s Day treat this year by choosing the Turkish cuisine offered by the Olive Tree. There were seven in our party so we made a reservation well in advance but on arrival the head waiter said ‘your reservation was for 3pm and it’s now 3:30 but don’t worry we’ve kept the table’. This would have been a nice gesture except my daughter showed me a confirmation email from the restaurant showing 3:30, not 3pm. Not a great start but after we were seated the waiting team were friendly enough but not very fast.

Several of our party ordered the cold mezze which was delicious but only a small amount of pitta bread was provided so we kept having to ask for more which was irritating. The drinks were relatively expensive and took a long time to arrive. I ordered a draught Effe which weirdly arrived in a bottle! My wife just wanted a glass of red wine but only two of the wines on offer were served by the glass. Both wines were quite heavy so she ended up having a beer because of the limited choice.

For main course 4 of us had Lamb Guvec which is diced lamb cooked in a clay pot with potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers, aubergines, onion and garlic served with rice. We all felt it was okay but lacked the depth of flavour we were expecting from a house speciality. The lamb was tender but the whole dish was fairly tasteless and very much under-seasoned. My youngest son ordered Iskender Kebab which was described as thinly cut grilled lamb topped with hot tomato sauce over pieces of Turkish bread and generously slathered with butter and yoghurt. He was disappointed that the lamb came as chunks, not thinly cut and the sauce just tasted of normal passata. My daughter had the chicken shish which she described as dry. My eldest son had grilled lamb chops which he enjoyed.

We’ve been to Turkey many times on holiday so I would say the standard of the food we had in the Olive Tree was only average. We were hoping that their dishes would be refined and tasty, but sadly we were...

We found this place after coming out of a gig at the Anvil, what a find. The staff when we entered were really friendly. The decor is lovely and really reflects the Turkish/ Mediterranean style. We had feta cheese in filo pastry which were delicious and Turkish pizza which I was told was also delicious for starters, the portions were a great size and if you wanted a mix of starters I think you would be satisfied. And for the main we had halloumi and garlic mushrooms burger with fries and lamb stew with rice, the halloumi was the best halloumi I've ever had and I didn't try the lamb stew because of the meat but it smelled divine, the rice was perfectly cooked. We ordered some humus which I love when you have it in a restaurant with herbs and oil drizzled over the top. We asked for beer and the waiter recommended a Turkish beer which was lovely and crisp and cut through the rich food superbly. The whole place had great ambiance and I would definitely go back to try more stuff off the menu I'd I am ever in the area again. The service was fast and friendly. Top class...

Very nice restaurant. Pros : polite staff, quite clean compared with other places, decent food quality , decent portion sizes. Cons : menus quite expensive 20£+, and even if portion food is big, mostly is the veggies or sides that's alot, not meats, regarding atmosphere, is nice and decent until someone is celebrating their birthday which is totally cool but when you have 5 birthdays and for the next 15-20 mins they singing to each one and loud aswell kinda disrupts other customers, I get they want to treat customers well but I don't think it needs a charade , also while at topic the waitresses hover close to you too much, I like to eat my food in peace and if I need something I will ask, not being "harassed" all the time if I need other stuff, nice though and works for some people, but I bet there's alot of people that don't like that. Overall it's not a bad restaurant. I would definitely recommend it to try it out, they have interesting...