The Blue Olive in Southwark

We've been here a few times and enjoyed it. But last night we went with about 12 of our family and were disappointed. One of the waitresses didn't want to bring us clean plates for one of the courses, explaining that that wasn't the restaurant's policy. Then we showed her that we had beetroot and messy dips all over our plates and didn't want to put meat from the next course on top of that. "We don't do that," she said, "It's extra work for us and we have to make too many trips to the kitchen.! (I guess if I ordered a bottle of wine, the extra trip to the kitchen area would have been OK?) We didn't think that was a very good customer experience and we sort of soured on the night after that and we aren't going to go there again. We felt like we were on a conveyor belt -- get us in there, give us meze and get us out with the fewest number of plates used as possible.

The Blue Olive, on our visit, offered fairly good, authentic Greek food at a reasonable price. The food wasn't breathtaking, however, and the atmosphere was a little too loud for my liking. Worth a look, though!

This place is noisy and a bit crowded. The food is very average with the occasional good/great meal.Do not eat before you go there as you will probably order too much and have trouble eating it. The starters are the best part of the meal. They are fresh. The main is difficult to come by depending on what you order last time I ordered the kleftiko, I could not eat all of it due to the amount of fat which was quite sickening and also that I had eaten too much of the starters. The dessert is average and most are chilled and are given to you from the display when you walk in. Overall not too bad a restaurant.

Booked the blue olive for a joint birthday celebration. We booked it for a Tuesday night, the resturant was quiet and was shown to a table immediately. We ordered a Meze for 4 and the starters were faultless. They were fresh and plentiful. The fish was nice but the only fault was the lamb in the meat part of the Meze. It was very dry but the chicken and pork was delicous and so were the shefdalia. The staff were very friendly and helpful and would definately be back.