You Only Live Once

It's restaurant week in New York and a small group of us wanted to go out to take advantage of this. Restaurant week offers schlubs like us the chance to sample the cuisine of trendy new places with a reduced prix fixe menu.

We went to the Fig & Olive, one of those sleek and shiny restaurants resting along the cobbled rows of the Meatpacking District. Conveniently placed abreast of Pastis, Spice Market and the other of-the-moment eateries, it was embellished with sweeping shelves of vivid green olive oils, potted rosemary plants and dramatic tree branches. Naturally, the menu was made up of Mediterranean style tasting plates. Figs and olive oil? I am all over that. Everything was bound to be good. It took less than a minute to decide we were chucking the limited Restaurant Week choices for the alluring decadence of the full menu.

Alas, herein lies the complications. The choices were so creative and the company I was with was so indecisive that it took 45 minutes to order. While the trio battled over the smallest detail, I sat back in my chair and sipped one of the house cocktails which was a mixture of chilled blood orange, vodka and orange bitters...which was perfectly fine with me.

Eventually a consensus was reached and we sat back to enjoy the bounty. It was a meal close to perfection in pairing and taste served family style and accented with a smooth Les Dames Huguettes 2004 Pinot Noir. Here's the menu:

-Rosemary toast with a trio of olive oil from Tunisia, France and Spain.

-A trio of crostini: one with manchego, figs and almonds; one with salmon, ricotta, citrus and cilantro; one with prosciutto, ricotta and fig tapenade.

-A plate of fig jamon goat cheese carpaccio

-A platter of seared sea scallops with shaved artichoke

-a bowl of penne funghi tartufo (and this dish was unmatched both in flavor and aroma: it featured penne pasta married with cremini mushrooms, Parmesan, parsley, scallions, olive oil and truffles)

-A entree called the Mediterranean Tasting, which offered three versions of shish kebob--chicken with artichoke tapenade, mushrooms and arugula; lamb with bell peppers, Greek yogurt, honey and couscous; shrimp with leeks, tomato and saffron olive oil

-A grilled vegetable platter with eggplant, zucchini, portabello, tomato, red onion, asparagus finished with a nutty olive oil

-Dessert was a warm bowl of seasonal mixed berries reduced in balsamic vinegar. Sublime.

-A cheese plate which ran the gamut of all cheese genres, all doled out in fingernail sized portions.

Even though these were reasonably small plates and shared among the four of us, I was stuffed like a Christmas goose at the end of the meal. I daresay, there was not one misstep in execution or taste among any of the plates. And despite the economies we had planned to exercise by dining at this highbrow joint, we couldn't help exploiting the full breadth of the menu.

It certainly wasn't cheap but I look at it this way: Anything that can transport you from the usual pedestrian fare is well worth the occasional splurge.