OLIVE LOVER ALERT

For you olive lovers out there, I'll throw the Gauntlet down right now and dare you to find a better place than Harvestime Foods (Mexican/Latino gorcer on Lawrence and Talman in Lincol Square) for fresh, wide-selection, fabulous, tasty, cheap-as-hell olives in the Greater-Lincoln Square vacinity, or hell, anywhere within a few miles of the place for that matter at a similar price point. Not Sams Wine & Spirits, not Jewel, not Dominicks (stunner), not Provenance (formerly Bouffee(sp?)), not any of the other Mexican/Latinos grocers in the area, no specialty shop, not The Cheese Stands Alone, nowhere can you get better non-jarred or non-pre-packaged olives. Nowhere. You gotta go a few miles outside of LS to a Whole Foods and take out a mortgage to find anything near the quality and variety of olives at Harvestime.

You must try the Kalamata olives (awesome) or the Green Garlic-stuffed variety for the outlandishly low price of $3.99/lb. The one downer is that they do not have Blue Cheese-stuffed olives - that really pisses me off.

Bster

I agree, but I wish they had the anchovy-stuffed green olives you can get at Cheese Stands Alone (but cheaper). What about over on Kedzie? Andy's Fruit Ranch and the various other middle-eastern vendors are bound to have good selections of olives, no?

As is the answer to so many shopping related inquiries on the Northwest Side, the answer is Lincolnwood Produce. They have a selection of 8 - 9 varieties, mostly Mediterranean/Greek in nature.

As is the answer to so many shopping related inquiries on the Northwest Side, the answer is Lincolnwood Produce. They have a selection of 8 - 9 varieties, mostly Mediterranean/Greek in nature.

Is Lincolnwood Produce the place on Peterson and Lincoln? If so, I could have sworn getting some olives there last year which I don't remember being memorable for one reason or another. If this is the place, perhaps I need give them a current look-see.

Bster

Lincolnwood Produce is situated at the SE corner of Touhy Ave. and Kostner Ave. (bordered on one side by Lincoln Ave. and on another by Kostner Ave.)

Lincolnwood Produce
7175 N. Lincoln Ave.
Lincolnwood, IL 60712
(847) 329-0600

Bster wrote:Is Lincolnwood Produce the place on Peterson and Lincoln?

Lincolnwood Produce is just South of Touhy in Lincolnwood.

Lincolnwood Produce.
7175 N Lincoln Ave
Lincolnwood, Il
847-329-0600.

Bster wrote:

As is the answer to so many shopping related inquiries on the Northwest Side, the answer is Lincolnwood Produce. They have a selection of 8 - 9 varieties, mostly Mediterranean/Greek in nature.

Is Lincolnwood Produce the place on Peterson and Lincoln? If so, I could have sworn getting some olives there last year which I don't remember being memorable for one reason or another. If this is the place, perhaps I need give them a current look-see.

Bster

As others have noted, Lincolnwood Produce is a bit farther north on Lincoln. I believe the one at Lincoln and Peterson is Northeastern Fruit and Garden. For the longest time, whenever Lincolnwood Produce got mentioned on LTH, I thought it was this place as well.

Bster wrote:Is Lincolnwood Produce the place on Peterson and Lincoln?

No. It's on Lincoln and Touhy

Lincolnwood Produce
7175 N Lincoln Ave
Lincolnwood, IL
847-329-0600

Bster wrote: they do not have Blue Cheese-stuffed olives - that really pisses me off.

Life is hard. Have some of their chicharron and deal. ':wink:'

I hate to dash cold water on anyone's "find," but I've had specific issues with Harvest Time on Lawrence, one relating directly to the olives.

I'd gone in a few times and liked the whole mix of non-mainstream items available and the somewhat Devon Market feel of the place. Decided to try some olives and as I went to point to the jar with the type I wanted I noticed and enormous, long-dead fly floating on the surface. This may be more likely to happen there because instead of proper fitting lids to the olive jars, they use plastic wrap, which is always pulled back about half way for convenience. In know that if I was wandering through Maxwell Street, or a market in Latin America or Asia I might find that dead fly exotic and colorful. Could happen to anyone, but I haven't been able to go back the olive bar, and have remained leary of things like the house-made ceviche and guac. that I normally would try. (On a side note, there were also some serious human hair issues in the spinach pies I got at Middle East bakery last weekend. Just not good shopping karma for me this week, I guess.)

The 2nd issue I had was more general: the time before last that I was in, I picked up abou t6-8 items. Of those, every single one that was not produce, i.e. something weighed, rang up incorrectly at the register. Some as little as a 10-cent difference, others up to .99 cents on a $2.99 item. So, I was about about $3. I was half-way home before I looked over the receipt, so didn't go back.
Next time I was back, I brought the receipt with me and purchased some of the same items. They were still wrong, so I asked the checker to check the price and gave her both receipts to refund the difference on. She was perfeclty polite about it, but came back and handed me some money, which I later realized covered the latest but not the first wrongly charged items.
Certainly could be an innocent glitch, but it has kind of soured me on the place. I don't think I've ever had a mispricing issue at, say Devon Market, or Edgewater Produce---places I think of as somewhat similar.

As far as olives of consistently high quality at decent prices, I still have found no place in the area that surpasses -- and few that come close to --Athens Market on Halsted in Greektown :
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=9943#9943

Antonius

Bster, I haven't managed to upload and write about the Pgh Strip district yet - but there are two places there where I get my olive fix. The prices may be a tad higher than Harvestime (which I've never been to), but the quality and selection are swell:

1. Penn Mac (Pennsylvania Macaroni Company)
In one part of the store, to the right of the cheese section


are the olives


2. Stamoolis Brothers (next door to PennMac and has more Greek than Italian offerings)

Stamoolis Bros. Olive bar


where I'm reminded of LTH…


Someday, I'll get to posting at length about these places and post addresses - in the meantime, you'll have to drive to Pgh:evil:

Those two places are GREAT not only for olives but for every other kind of Mediterranean food. Every time we visit out daughter in Pbgh we spend about half our time on the Strip.

Next trip we're going to try Lydia's Pittsburgh, the restaurant on the Strip. She has a good cooking show on "Create", the PBS cable channel.

Hey mrbarolo,

Pretty brutal experience with the dead fly in the olives. Would definitely take me awhile to regroup after that. And, I never check my bill at Harvestime either because it's so ridiculously cheap compared with Jewel, Doiminick's, etc. I'll start taking a look at it.

But you gotta do yourself a favor and get a small portion of the Green-garlic stuffed olives and Kalamatas. Go home, make a strong martini, plop two of the Green Garlic babies in there, relax...let the alcohol help summon up the courage and open up the Kalamata olives and take a bite. Now, not too hard or too quickly, remember, they have a pit. Don't get too many of the Kalamata's either because you'll eat every single solitary one you bought - they are that good!

Bster

mrbarolo wrote:a mispricing issue

you know what? this almost always happens to me when I shop at Whole Foods in Lakeview! I never noticed it at Harvestime, but that's probably because, as Bster pointed out, it's always ridiculously cheap. I should probably pay closer attention.