Fig & Olive (Photo by Leslie Duss via the Creative Commons on Flickr)
If you’re paying $26 for a truffle risotto from a menu that brags about its “carefully-selected farmers and ingredients,” you might expect that your food would be prepared in the kitchen—not pre-made and then frozen at a location hours away. But that’s not the case at Fig & Olive, a nation chain that has been under scrutiny since a major salmonella outbreak that hit locations in West Hollywood as well as D.C.
Washington City Paper published details from a D.C. Department of Health report about the outbreak. It was revealing: the documents show that nearly 200 dish components—soups, sauces, purees, dressings, desserts, breads, ratatouille, ravioli, crab cakes, pre-cooked chicken tagine and pre-cooked paella—were made in a commissary in Long Island, New York before being shipped off to different locations, including Chicago, Fifth Avenue in New York and Newport Beach. That truffle risotto? It was merely reheated, topped with cheese and garnished (it’s now no longer served).
Though the response on social media has been merciless, Eater points out that most restaurants use some sort of pre-made ingredients, and chains like Applebee’s and Olive Garden do it a whole lot.
But even health inspectors were surprised to learn about Fig & Olive’s methods. Probably because it’s a spendier place than Olive Garden! When someone from the D.C. Department of Health found out that the chef used Hellmann’s to make aioli, a CDC epidemiologist thought that was funny: “Ha. So I guess even fancy restaurants use name brand mayo for their aioli.”
