Probably once, rarely twice a year, I find a place that truly gets me as a food-loving person, that understands my tastes buds and cravings and that gets added to my repertoire of places that I turn to regularly when I don’t want to cook, which unfortunately is quite often lately.
Anyway, I’m happy to say that I’m fairly certain that I found my rare diamond of an eatery this week. In fact, a little, selfish part of me didn’t want to share this place with the masses, because the hours are limited (4 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday; Saturday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.) and the seats are limited (I saw six tables inside, but there may have been more off to the side.). But good sense won out, because I can’t support a restaurant entirely on my dollars, and you guys deserve to taste this wonderful breath of freshness, too, so here it goes.
Inside of a brick historical building, the Huhn-Harrison House, in Cape Girardeau at 340 South Lorimer St., very close to the Southeast Missouri University River Campus, lies Olive’s Pitaria, just waiting to blow your mind.
There used to be a Mediterranean restaurant close to the university named Phoenicia, and it was run by an absolutely lovely Lebanese couple. They moved to Canada, I believe, and we lost access to that fresh cooking that combines flavors like nowhere else in the world. Then Zoi’s took that spot in my heart, offering a gyro that was craveable, dependable and delicious. Then that dear woman retired, and I was adrift. I found a satisfying gyro at Grecian Steakhouse, and still, I craved that gyro, falafel and baklava that Phoenica had offered, which somehow felt more homemade than what I currently had available. Well, I found it. Man, did I find it!
At Olive’s Pitaria, I ordered the Mint Lemonade, mostly because of what I had seen people saying about it online. People absolutely were right. A mildly sweet lemonade, this one had the finest specks of fresh mint floating in the golden nectar. This is my summer of 2025 drink: fresh, not too sweet, tangy, refreshing and thirst-quenching. Try it. It is so simple, and so perfect.
Next were the appetizers, and so I tried one old friend and something new. Falafel is delightful little fried patties, consisting of mostly mashed chickpeas, so much parsley that the dough turns green and plenty of cumin, among other spices, fried until dark golden brown and intensely crispy. Olive’s falafel reminded me so intensely of the homemade falafel that I used to get 20 years ago that I almost teared up. If the mint lemonade hadn’t convinced me that I was in for something special, the falafel finished the job.