Olive’s

Loved the outside seating and the triple salad combo.
A nice choice if want a quick lunch at the Main Quad.
So much healthier than Thai!

Update: Busy lunch hour, pretty fresh and unique daily specials and plates. Got a falafel plate in just a few minutes. Generous portion and nice variety of ingredients. Relatively fast service today, and friendly. Made my day.
A standard selection of salads, sandwiches, and drinks in the fridge section, and some chips and energy bars placed around the shop. Olive’s is a popular study spot with interior and outdoor patio seating (rainy day today, so pretty packed inside). Didn’t get a chance to try their hot to-​go boxes today but got myself an interesting bai5 drink ($ 2 not bad) and a Kevita for $ 4.25 (a bit pricier).
tldr: has potential. Nice study place.

Great place to eat when you’re on campus. «simple» food. delicious. and reasonably priced.
They gyro is yummy… Salmon is also good.

Most of the times they don’t have anything veggie except for their three salad option, but there are better places for salads on campus. I once had the Mediterranean plate, which could have been a great win. However… Their humus had too much cilantro, their pita bread is hard and the veggies and olives are dry. I also tried the chicken sandwich which was ok.

I used to work in a nursing home kitchen. This was disappointing, by those standards. Boiled rice is not pilaf. It’s just boiled rice. Mashing a can of chickpeas does not make hummus. There’s salt, lemon, tahini, cumin and garlic in hummus. At least some salt. Gyro meat should be sliced thin, not in fist sized chunks. Sour cream is not tzaziki sauce. Terrible. Never again.

I got the salmon plate which came with lettuce and rice for $ 8.75. The portion size was reasonable but it was still a bit pricey. Texture was great but the food is a bit bland to be honest. The compostable utensils and boxes are a plus! They do have Peet’s Coffee, pre make to go sandwiches and a variety of other snacks for sale too.
Tip #1: I got the last salmon and this was before the lunch traffic that starts around 12:15pm. Beware of food shortages!
Tip #2: Get there before the lunch traffic because it gets packed really fast!
Tip #3: Use Cardinal dollars here!
Overall, I probably won’t be back unless I need to eat and don’t have the time to eat elsewhere. The price just simply does not warrant the quality of the food I’m getting. It’s location is extremely convenient though given that there are no other dining options nearby.

I never really understood the hype around Olives when I went to school at Stanford. Yeah it was good, sometimes great. But a lot of times it wasn’t. And I could never really tell which one it would be on any given day.
I tended to stick with the most basic, classic Greek things that I knew they do well. Hummus, falafel, vegetarian plate with both of these things, etc. These are super super delicious and I would highly recommend them.
The rest I have found to be a bit hit or miss. Sometimes bland, sometimes a bit overcooked, just generally underwhelming.
Coffee is meh. Seriously, they need to work on this. It tastes kind of a stale and old and is a last resort for when I can’t make it over to formerly Moonbeans now Coupa Café outside of Green Library. Or Starbucks but that didn’t exist when I was an undergrad so it wasn’t an option back then haha.
Service however is great. I loved the people working there when I was an undergrad. They alone make me almost want to give an extra star. But alas, I am obsessed with good food and will Unilocal accordingly.

Not very interesting food.
Unfriendly service.
Paid my first visit to this place today.
It wasn’t busy at all.
But somehow the guy who helped me still managed to mess up my order.
And when I went back to ask him.
It says ‘WHATEVER! I DON’T CARE!’ on that guy’s face!
A manager looking guy was trying to help. But it didn’t do any good.
I feel sad for him, because it seems like all the others don’t care that much.
I would never go back again.

I just had my birthday there, last Thursday. I love the food, everything was so good. The environment was just perfect. The owner Kavier was really friendly too. All of my friends and family member loved it. Loved the basil Salmon and Beef kabab.

I had a number of classes in Building 160, and I stopped by Olive’s pretty often. For the most part, I treated it like a convenience store, where I could pick up a Yoplait or a fruit cup or a soda on my way in or out of class.
This is a very outdated post, so take it as you will, but I remember exactly what the place looks like, down to the placement of the furniture and soda fountains. At one point, I must have been stopping by Olive’s two or three times a week. I rarely took meals here — I think I had a salad once, maybe some skewers one other time — but the food was passable, and affordable enough. For basement cooking, I definitely preferred Thai Café.
Anyway, Stanford is a big place, and it’s nice to have food options right by the classrooms. Olive’s was great for the mid-​afternoon calorie bump, and I feel some nostalgia for the place now that my college days are long gone.

Stopped by here accidentally when I was scoping out the Thai place. The food tasted… not real? Tons of rice, though fast and it’s a campus lunch place, so what can one expect?

Food: 2
Décor: 3
Service: 4
Grabbed the falafel plate, 7 from here for lunch. Overall, pretty mediocre.
They also had beef and lamb gyros, as well as chicken skewers. Chicken skewers were pre-​cooked, and they didn’t look too appetizing.

Selection is decent. Tasty

I never came to Olive’s much in undergrad but now that all my classes are in Wallenberg or McClatchy, this is the most convenient eatery to grab a quick snack or lunch. I usually love falafels but man this place was very underwhelming. I like that the meal comes with lettuce and diced tomatoes and two types of hummus. I don’t like that the falafels are not crispy on the outside. They taste kind of stale in fact. Actually, the falafels I had weren’t even warm. Maybe I went on an off day but after having great Mediterranean food elsewhere I have trouble justifying spending hard earned money here (not to mention having more calories when it’s not that enjoyable!!). Two stars for very convenient location, long pre-​dinner hours unlike Thai Café, and delicious greek yogurt with different fruit toppings.

I will no longer get hungry smelling this place in my Turkish classroom from 11 am to noon every single day, and that’s saying a lot.
My boyfriend and I went here for a quick lunch to go. I got the Mediterranean black bean burger, which tasted fine, although it came with mayo. You should warn someone about something like that! The takeout box was also filled like a down pillow with undressed lettuce and spinach leaves. So strange.
My boyfriend ordered the falafel plate, which at first they completely forgot to make. We waited a solid 15 minutes for them to put it together. In the end, he got his three falafels, lettuce, tomato, (dressed!) lettuce and spinach leaves, stale pita, and reddish hummus that tasted just like unrinsed, aluminum-​permeated chickpeas. And it’s not cheap either… $ 7 for lunches we had to wait forever to choke down.

Came here for lunch today. In addition to the pre-​packaged sandwiches, there are daily specials and a few dishes that are always available, including gyros and a falafel plate. I had the falafel plate ($ 6.50) and my fiancé had the beef & lamb gyro ($ 6.50). Except for the different meat and the fact that his had some yogurt slopped on it, they had the same ingredients — pita bread, tahini sauce, huge salad (covered in chopped tomatoes). The food was ok, but not particularly great. The falafal balls were tough and way too chewy and everything was just a little flavorless. The meat in the gyros looked like fake overprocessed meat — the ‘beef’ and ‘lamb’ were completely indistinguishable. They also had salmon filets that looked really bad. I didn’t think the prices are that bad, but the portions of everything except salad is on the small side.
The food was really more 2 – 2.5 stars but I rounded up because they are one of the most unique food options on a campus where everything is burgers & sandwiches. They take credit cards too, which is nice, and the food came out very promptly. I would normally prefer to go to most of the other eateries on campus, but once in awhile this is ok just for some variety.

So long as you know what you’re getting into, I have no complaints against Olives.
Olives is an on-​campus eatery in the basement of an academic building, so they’re really only open during breakfast lunch time (I think 8am-​4pm). If you’re looking for breakfast, you can get mediocre espresso drinks, bagels, muffins, yogurt, or granola bars.
At lunch, the selection consists of pre-​made sandwiches and Greek food, with a fairly limited selection. The «pizza» always looks underdone, but the Greek entrees are consistently pretty good, even if they’re a little overpriced. I get the beef and lamb gyros about once a week, which come with a pita, side salad, rice or couscous, and hummus and yogurt sauce. Nothing extraordinary, but definitely good and the portions are large enough to keep me going all afternoon.
My only complaints are that sometimes it takes an exceptionally long time to get food, even though there don’t seem to be that many people in line, and the staff isn’t wholly consistent in their assembly of dishes.
Extra bonus points for using all compostable plates, to go containers and silverware (and having compost bins readily available at their outdoor seating).

greek

The thing about Olives is… it’s just not that good. I go there when I’m feeling too lazy to walk all the way to Fraiche or Coupa for coffee. But seriously, NOT a great place to grab a snack.
If you go there for lunch, fine – the falafel, hummus, etc., are decent. But if you go there any other time of day, expect to wait in line for a «meh» cup of coffee or an overpriced pre-​made sandwich. (And can I just mention that there are tomatoes in EVERY kind of sandwich, EVEN the egg salad? Yuck!) The pre-​packaged fresh rolls are so-​so, and also overpriced.
I suspect this place wouldn’t do great business if it wasn’t so conveniently located.

The smells of garlic emanate from Olive’s in the early morning as I walk to work through the citrus courtyard. They are getting ready for the lunchtime rush, and it helps to start well ahead of time. This is classic, if somewhat uninspired, Mediterranean food: humus, tabouli, baba ganoush, roasted red pepper salad, and lots of little dishes. The outdoor dining options are really great here, located as they are in the Serra Mall inner courtyard with lovely landscaping and nice opportunities for people watching. This is a good, above-​average option for dining at Stanford.