The Mighty Olive

Picture it: you strolling thru a store that has over 50 different kinds of olive oil and balsamic vinegars and sampling as many as you want to on pieces of fresh french bread.
Lovely staff explains how you can create different combinations for meats, fish, salads and even dessert. They highly recommended the Blueberry Balsamic over berries or vanilla ice cream-​YUM!
They host parties for small groups. They don’t serve alcohol but you’re welcome to bring your own.
Prices are moderate but worth every penny.
You can order online at

I received a message through Unilocal inviting me to return our defective olive oil sprayer, and I barely pulled it out of my bag in the store before being pounced on by an employee (owner?), told that it’s the only product they’ve had any issues with, and promptly offered a new one (different brand). I was also assured that if I don’t like that one, just bring it back for a refund, no questions asked. Nice recovery, Mighty Olive.

First of all, the store is beautiful and the people working there are very friendly and helpful. I was shopping for a housewarming gift and decided to buy the blood orange olive oil and a pear and cranberry white balsamic vinegar and left paying only about $ 20. I priced similar items at whole foods and saved myself about $ 10 by going to The Mighty Olive. The bottles they put the oils and vinegars in are attractive. As to the quality of the ingredients, I don’t know since I bought them as gifts. They offered to let me try the oils and vinegars, but I declined because oil on its own does not agree with my stomach. I did smell them and they aroma was quite good.

While I didn’t have the same nearly life changing experience that Kyle had, I did enjoy my brief stop in the Mighty Olive. I was encouraged to sample the oils, but I wasn’t offered a whole lot of direction as to which ones to sample. They told me I could either drink the oil, or use their bread samples. Because the thought of drinking olive oil seems weird to me, I used the bread. The two that I tasted, the Tuscan Herb and the Cilantro. something, were really good. The others were a little intimidating, and I didn’t want to fill up on bread and oil. If were more of an adventurous person, I’d probably try some of the other combinations. I can see this being a great place to shop if you want to prepare a special meal at home.
I took home a bottle of the Tuscan Herb and a loaf of their bread. My husband couldn’t taste the difference between the stuff we normally buy at Kroger and the new good stuff, but that’s not saying much. A small bottle of their oil will run you around $ 10– $ 12 dollars. They also offer additional items like pastas, cheeses, and a few desserts.
The staff is very friendly, and the store is beautiful inside. I hope they do well in this location.

The Mighty Olive just left a mighty big impression on me. At first, I was concerned that a specialty store selling only olive oil and vinegar would have a difficult go of things in a city that clings tenaciously to it’s aura of blue collar grittiness.
Honestly, the store did little to assuage my fears. The store is beautiful on the inside, sporting shiny, metal drums filled with various flavors of olive oil and vinegar resting comfortably on a meticulously polished granite counter top. In the back is a bar/​seating area where the owners plan on having demonstrations (I’m unsure about whether the demonstrations will be actual cooking demonstrations or simply mixing demonstrations). The register wall would probably be considered miscellaneous. There are flavored pastas, bottles of whole olives, some cookbooks, and other various items. The store was organized, clean, and smelled incredible.
While none of the elegant decorating designs scream grit or grind, there is one aspect of the store that will ensure that it remains a Memphis staple for a long time: the products. Just so you know, olive oil sold commercially can be as little as 1% olives. All the oil sold at Mighty Olive is organic and made with actual olives. The owners were kind enough to give me a brief lesson on olive oil and how to taste it. Apparently, you rub the ramekin in your hands to heat it and release the bouquet, at which point you can actually sip the olive oil to taste it. If you’re a heathen (like me) you fatfist a hunk of bread, soak up the olive oil with that, and then try to pretend like you can decipher the hint of lemon grass. You can work your way down the line «tasting» all the versions of olive oil, the Mighty Olive encourages sampling. This isn’t just your momma’s olive oil, though. There are a number of variants you can get: red pepper, lemon, orange, even chocolate! I tried a strawberry olive oil and balsamic vinegar that actually did something i thought was impossible: it made me look forward to the next time I make a salad. (Some steak, blue cheese, mixed greens, fresh strawberries and spicy walnuts with this dressing?! Watch out, body fat, I’m coming for you!)
While Memphis is proud of our gritty heritage, I think we’re also refined enough to know a great idea when we taste one. And while it may be too «oily» to tell (see what i did there?!), I think the Mighty Olive is mighty fine.