Olea Mediterranean Kitchen — Restaurant in Fayetteville

So, they have some growing pains to work through it seems. I ate there on a Tuesday for lunch around 11:15 am, which was just 15 minutes after opening. There was one other customer in the restaurant at the time.

ORDERING/SERVICE: You order at the counter and then your food is brought to your table. There is no table service, otherwise. For being the only customers in the place, the time to prepare the food took a bit longer than expected.

You bus your own tea and water from a counter. You must get your own utensils from the same counter. There seems to be no way to refill if you get a soda, in fact, I think they only offer bottled sodas.

We chose to have just regular tap water. We were given a cup with no ice. There was a pitcher of water at room temperature on the counter along with containers full of tea. Two gentlemen who came after us were also given a single plastic cup without ice for their tea. I did see they they requested some ice and were given it. Not having ice for your customers is not acceptable.

MEAL: I had the kabobs or souvlaki. The lamb, beef, and chicken were great, although one piece of chicken had a really rubbery texture that was off-putting. It was served with yellow rice that I am assuming was supposed to be saffron, but I couldn't taste any saffron. The tzatziki sauce was EXCELLENT. Very strong flavor, I loved it, although we didn't get much of it, maybe an ounce. My husband gyro was served a little differently that we are used it because it had some sort of cucumber relish on it. It was good to me, but he doesn't like cucumber.

PRICE: It was very pricey to eat here for lunch. It cost $26 between my husband and I with no additional drinks. As it turned out, the employee didn't bother to let me know that if I had chosen a single meat, I could've gotten the $9.99 lunch special for the souvlaki. The regular price for the souvlaki is $11.95. There was no lunch menu that we could find.

ATMOSPHERE: They have done a great job renovating the restaurant since Sabrosos closed, changing the colors, opening the space, and allowing more light to come in. Some of the booth tables along the outer wall are gigantic, I mean WIDE. I usually like to sit in a booth, but I was discouraged because it felt like it would be so far across the booth! The women's bathroom is creepy. The lighting going into the bathroom area is slightly green and reminds me of a horror film. Then you get into the bathroom and the lighting is additionally terrible, some lights with a pinkish hue and others with a blue or green hue. It will remind you a horror movie based in a bathroom.

OVERALL: They need to produce a lunch menu. This is a lunch area with people coming from post and all the competition in the Skibo area. The food was good, the portions are fine (except the tzatziki sauce), but the price is excessive. Please make all the lights in the bathroom a single color, 4000K color temperature...

I came to the Fayetteville location for lunch on Saturday, with my family. The place was quiet- plenty of room. At first glance it seemed nice but nothing spectacular. The food options are typical Greek Mediterranean and middle eastern choices. My sister and I got the chicken shwarma and a Greek salad that came with it (I could have chosen fries or other type of side salad). We got fried calamari as an appetizer. The food was outstanding. Literally one of the best meals I have ever eaten. The meat was very tender and seasoned with so much flavor, including tzatziki sauce. The pita was soft, fresh and warm- tasted homemade. I snagged a few of my sister's fries which were lightly seasoned, crispy on the outside and soft inside- very good.

Both of my nephews are picky eaters, but my older nephew loved the kefta and the younger one got a pizza made on pita bread with sauce and cheese- I don't even think this was on the menu, but he kept saying he wanted pizza. He then fussed that it had too much sauce and the staff made him one with less sauce and more cheese, which made him happy. I think my brother-in law had a lamb platter with rice and vegetables, which he said was very good.

I was not planning on dessert, but the food was so good that I had to try the baklava and "Turkish" coffee. Again, just blown away by how good it was. I have sampled a lot of baklava, and this was the best. It was accented with pistachios, served warm, with just the right combination of sweet and tender/slightly chewy phyllo and honey nutty goodness. The coffee was scented with cardamon- something my Moroccan brother-in-law taught me to make with freshly ground cardamom pods. Just add it to the coffee grounds before brewing. I have had Turkish / Greek coffee that tasted like pine sludge, but this was actually excellent coffee, even without milk or cream, not harsh or bitter at all.

I got an order of moussaka to go- also just as delicious.

Overall, I highly recommend it, 10 out of 10, hidden gem of a place with the most amazing food! I do not write a lot of reviews, but this place really deserves...

Not super impressed. I lived in Turkey for 2 years and I eat Greek food on a regular basis. If you want Mediterranean food and not simply Greek food, this is the place for you. There are places in town that serve WAY better Greek food. The atmosphere and decor of the place are beautiful. I ordered the lamb gyro platter and baklava. It took 25 minutes to get our salads and another 25 minutes to get our entrées. The salad was great and the ingredients were fresh (the olive oil they used was very high quality) but they were stingy with the salad toppings and dressing so it was like eating dry romaine. The platters came out and it was beautifully plated. Everything had a good flavor but like with the salad, they stingy with the gyro toppings. When we ordered, the guy taking our order asked if we wanted pita bread, as if a gyro is not served on pita. 15 minutes after we got the platters, our pita arrived albeit cut into triangles instead of the lamb being served in the pita itself. My baklava was forgotten about until about 5 minutes before we left and when I got it, I was not happy. It was simultaneously undercooked and doughy and tough. Next time they need to cook it longer at a lower temperature. But the baklava had a pistachio filling so props to them. I also saw moussaka on the menu which even in a town full of Greek restaurants, I've never seen it on their menu. However if it was anything else like they tried to pass off as Greek, it's probably not that great either. All of the servers and workers I came into contact with were really nice. Bathrooms were gross and the toilet barely flushed. I'll probably...