The Mod Olive — Restaurant in Suffolk

We walk in and it takes a second for us to get seated which is fine. The hostess happened to also be our server and she was very nice and professional. Sat us down and immediately took our drink orders. We just get waters then take a look at the menu. Y'all, good lord. The amount of items on the menu is insane. HUGE red flag. That immediately told me nothing they make is homemade. Not possible with all that on the menu. With that said I ordered the Mac and Cheese Balls and Chicken Pot Pie with a side of waffle fries, my wife ordered the Chicken Parmesan with a side Caesar Salad. I remember saying something about wondering if the Mac and Cheese Balls being bite-sized and the waitress said "oh no they're quite large, but still good". The bit about the size is an understatement. They were hilariously large. Huge even. I took a picture of them next to my hand, I'm not a small person. Unfortunately they were stone cold in the center. This tells me they were frozen, breaded and thrown in the fryer. Obviously they wouldn't get to temp before they burn due to their size. I send it back. My wife's salad came around the same time and it's just 2 pieces of whole romaine stalks lazily thrown onto a plate with some Caesar dressing and cheese. She said it was ok. Our entrees come and, yea....the portion sizes are insane. Our 2 entrees could feed 4 people easily. We unfortunately discovered they go for quantity, not quality. My wife's chicken parm was overcooked so the breading just fell right off and was mush. She said the pasta was ok though. My pot pie however was disgusting. They basically just put random veggies with a flavorless gelatinous soup in a bowl and throw some precooked puff pasty on top. It was bizarre, I've never seen a pot pie disrespected like that before. And I say random because it was filled with corn, peas, carrots and long green beans. Your typical pot pie is just peas and carrots. I understand everyone does it differently, which would've fine if it tasted good. But it was just warm snot with veggies and some bread on top. I sent it back. The waffle fries were fine, kinda hard to mess those up though. Remember when I mentioned in the beginning the size of the menu and that nothing would be homemade? That was confirmed with 2 things. One, I heard from the kitchen and I quote "hey (name missing), can you open up a can of marinara? ". Second every 5 ish minutes I would hear the distinct sounds of a microwave opening and closing with the beep beep beep to follow. Lastly, they have a decorative fish tank ON THE BAR. Honestly to me, that's nasty. If they were eating fish like at a sushi place that's understandable, but they were pets. We will not...

The food and selections of food is massive. We saw a couple who had ordered the chicken and waffles and I'm telling you it was so large it could have fed a starving country. With the amount of food you get compared to the prices...very much worth it. Not to mention it was very good. You will not be disappointed with the serving size or the taste/flavor. The service on the other hand was not great from the moment we walked in the door. The woman behind the bar looked at us several times and never said a word to us, another waitress looked straight at me and again never said a word. I wasn't sure if we should just seat ourselves or not. The lady who sat us was very nice. Our server was very very nice and helpful with suggestions, however her get up and go had long been gone. She very much sauntered around and we waited long times to receive drinks and our food and even boxes. We had to ask for refills on our drinks, even though she was always by our table with other guests. The food took a very long time to get to us and it wasn't particularly hot when it came to us. This is a place I would go back to because the food was that good and I'm really just hoping the service was just off on this day. I highly recommend the fried olives! Sounds weird, tastes amazing. The only other issue that I had was watching a table get sat that had never been cleaned off. I only know this because we were sitting next to the table and watched the dishes get removed but never wiped down. The person who sat the table just brushed off a large crumb still on the table and still sat the people instead of saying give me a moment and I will wipe this down for you.

Overall, the food really is worth it and speaks for this entire establishment. The place is very busy with take out and dine in customers and you can...

Traveling home from vacation in Sandbridge, VA, I thought that it would be nice to go off of my main path and stop in quaint downtown Suffolk for lunch.

My wife and I arrived at The Mod Olive (formerly The Plaid Turnip) at post-peak lunch time on a Saturday. We were told by the host that the wait would be 10 min. Looking across the restaurant it wasn't crowded, a bunch of tables were empty.

The decor was retro 70's and earlier. There are a lot of cool artifacts on display. A cool feature was the original Star Trek playing in a loop on the tv in the bar area.

We waited for 20 min before we asked if we could be seated. Finally, after 30 min of waiting we were seated and given one menu. I now know what it is like to be invisible, we finally were acknowledged and served water after 5 minutes of servers passing by without even a look or wave. We already committed a good deal of time so we placed our orders with the friendly server. During the time that we waited, we couldn't help but notice that the restaurant was far from clean. Cobwebs on most of the decorations and the tables were rustic with chipped paint, and sticky. The host and bus-person used the same rag to wipe multiple tables off and replaced the same rag on the top of the host station(without rinsing). The fish tank in the bar area was in desperate need of a cleaning.

The Philly Cheesesteak sub was on the greasy side, but had great flavor. Broccoli was fresh and cooked properly. The chicken avacado sandwich had great flavor, the beans were from a can, soft and super salty.

The Mod Olive has a lot of potential, but it needs a good cleaning from top to bottom along with staff training and updated sanitation procedures. I will choose a different place next time I...