Orange County Restaurant week continues with lunch at the Fig & Olive in Newport Beach. Fig & Olive is a chain of high-end restaurants founded by Laurent Halasz. The restaurant has done very well catering to the fine-dining foodies, and has grown to four locations in New york, one in Chicago, one in LA, and one in Newport Beach, which was the location we had lunch at.
Unlike fine-dinging restaurants in Vancouver, the high-end restaurants in Orange Country are huge. Fig & Olive has over 12,000 square and can seat 330 diners. Unlike Scott’s restaurant, Fig & Olive does a good job hiding its size. The rooms are divided up nicely to create a sense of warmth and closeness that is normally missing in such a big restaurant.
Masters of The Upsell
Internet marketers can learn a lot by dining at the Fig & Olive. The OC Restaurant Week menus are $20 per person for three courses. However, Fig & Olive will skillfully make you spend at least twice that amount if you dine there, and you’ll still walk away happy.
The upsell starts with the menu itself. Serval dishes have optional extras, like adding lobster meat to the lobster bisque, or sea scallops to the truffle risotto. Taking the extras mean adding $6 to $16 to your $20 lunch. That means the OC Restaurant Week lunch can cost more than Fig & Olives’ $28 prix fixe lunch that is available year round (but not during Restaurant Week).
Lunch starts off with complimentary bread with three types of olive oil for dipping. Sally ate most of it because she loves dipping bread in oil.
If you ever wonder what a $16 Bloody Mary looks like, this is it. Now, you might think drinking at lunch time should be a no no, but I live the Dot Com Lifestyle. Besides, it’s five o’clock somewhere.
For the appetizers, we went with Maine Lobster Bisque with the optional lobster meat, and the Truffle Mushroom Croquette. They were pretty amazing.
The appetizers were a great start, but the entrees blew us away. The Rosemary lamb was perfectly cooked, and had none of the gamely after taste. The Truffle Risotto, made from Arborio rice, was cook just right and full of flavor, and the optional sea scallops were among the best I’ve tasted.
The Restaurant Week menu offered two desserts, a Crostini and Chocolate Pot De Creme. We tried both of them, and preferred the Pot De Creme.
Making It Easier For You To Pay More
When all was set and done, the lunch bill came to almost $100. Fig & Olive removed $16.50 from bill because there was a longer than usual wait between the appetizers and entrees. With the credit, the final bill came to $82.62.
Notice how Fig & Olive conveniently calculated the tips for you at various percentages? The easier you make it for the customer, the more money you make. Also, the way the amounts are presented, most customers will end up checking the 20% or 22% box. This is text book Internet marketing!
Even though I spent more than twice the average OC Restaurant Week bill, I’m still extremely happy with Fig & Olive. They continue to be among my favorite OC restaurants.