And though quail has more flavor than most farm-raised feathered game, the dish would be better if the kitchen exercised a bit of restraint in seasoning it with rosemary and black pepper. The best beginnings to a meal at Olives are to be found among the pasta courses, which are offered in both half and full portions. And skip the pasta with a disappointingly dull sauce of roasted tomatoes and herbed ricotta. By way of contrast, there is the unabashedly rustic agnolotti, not the penitent, Lenten version, filled with ricotta and spinach, but the festive, Piedmontese version, stuffed with braised veal and generously sauced with tomato and cream-thinned ricotta cheese. It's a dish with boisterous flavors that are more than a match for Olives' noisy setting.
Main courses are uneven.
An overcooked filet of red snapper garnished with prawns and presented on a spinach-topped potato cake was served in a pool of bouillabaisse sauce. The dish lacked a unifying thread to tie its elements together. A crisp-crusted, beautifully moist slab of salmon served in a soup plate half filled with clam chowder was a combination that just didn't work. A couple of dishes were undone by their sheer richness. Smoked braised lamb shank was suffused with a degree of smokiness that masked the meat's natural flavor, and its sauce was as dark and syrupy as Bovril beef extract.