Giant Chalkidiki Olives

I saw this jar of Chalkidiki Olives arrive at Trader Joe’s displayed near the holiday items.  

These olives are the pits.  :)  Not really.  Actually, these olives HAVE pits...

The sight of them reminded me of David’s great find last year – the Giant Greek Olives (review here ) which he adored so much that he stocked up on huge ass jars of them as if he were an end of the world prepper.  He still has one jar left!  The jar of Giant Chalkidikis (do you think if I type that word enough times I might actually learn how to spell it?) that I picked up this year is 17.6 oz (as opposed to David’s favorites last year which are 21.16 oz).  The olives DO have pits (which is how we like them, but I feel the need to warn you of this fact cuz I don’t want you to eagerly bite into one and bust your tooth J ). 

David hoarding olives - December 2015

When I saw these Giant Chalkidikis in the store, I thought they they might be the same olives as David’s beloveds and that just the packaging might have changed, but when I got them home and compared them I see that they are a different color.  The size of the olives and pits are about the same, so perhaps they are the same variety of olive, just processed differently?  Being only an olive FAN and not an olive EXPERT I cannot know for sure. 

A tale of two olives

To me, both varieties have the same “meaty” quality, but the Giant Chalkidikis seem to have a bit more FLAVOR.  I also prefer the color of these new ones, as the Giant Greek Olives are always a bit of a scary green hue to me…  Overall, I like these Giant Chalkidikis just as much as I like the Giant Greeks.  They are certainly priced right – the jar is only $2.29, which is really cheap compared to the olives that we often buy at the “olive bars” at other grocery stores.

David:  “These are very good.  I think they are almost as good as the GIANT COLOSSAL GREEK OLIVES.  I mean, I still say those big round jar ones are the “king”, but these guys are great.  They are an excellent green olive.  They are colossal…  I think the flesh comes away from the pit a little bit more easily than the kind of colossal green olives you get at other grocery stores.  They are fleshy.  They are well behaved.  And they are tasty!  What’s not to like??!”

New year, new olives.  Same discerning palate.

 David and I had a big debate over what to SCORE these olives.  For me, I decided I would give them a tying score to last year’s Giant Greek Olives.  David was unsure if he should also make his numbers a tie, or if these olives should get a teeny tiny bit lower number…  Rating things is hard work, folks!!!  It is an awesome responsibility!!  After trying several more olives (which I do believe was a ploy to be able to gorge on olives…) David decide that he would give these Giant Chalkidikis the same score he gave the Giant Greek Olives.

In the end, this olive is a big winner.

Overall, we recommend you get some.  And eat ‘em.

Price:  $2.29

Rating:  5

Day 346 - Giant Greek Green Olives

So MO, a Trader Joe’s Bailey’s Crossroads employee, has really caused a problem in our house.

Mo was working at the sample station the other night when we were in the store.  He was serving something, I can’t even remember what, but in talking to him he asked if we had tried the new olives yet.  Nope, we hadn’t.  We had looked at them, but the jar is SO LARGE that it just seemed like too big of a commitment to get one. 

So Mo opens a jar.  And David eats an olive.

 

At our store these are on an end cap - a section of "new products".  Looks like they are also a Flyer Item this month.

Thanks Mo, we now have FOUR BIG JARS of these huge ass green olives at our house J. 

This is David after Mo gave him a taste of these olives.  Yeah, he was excited.
And look - he has new glasses!

We bought one jar that night.  We stopped and talked to another employee after the olives were in our cart already and he saw them and said something about having bought MULTIPLE jars to save them (they are seasonal and TJ’s won’t have them for long).  Well, that got David to thinking…  So when we were shopping tonight, 3 more jars were purchased.

I mean heck, they are OLIVES.  They are SEALED.  It is not like they are gonna go off!  We will store the unopened ones in the basement where it stays pretty cool.  And David will be a happy man while he has these “in stock” at home. 

Here is David when we went back and he purchased THREE MORE JARS...

The label says “Gigantic, meaty, fresh tasting olives (with pits)”.  That is a good summary. 

Here is my review – these olives are HUGE.  The jar itself is big (1 lb 5 oz), but really the jar has to be big because the olives inside are so large.  The first thing you notice (after you get over the size of these suckers) is the color.  They almost seem an unnatural shade of green.  They have sea salt, but they are some of the least salty olives I have ever had.  The least salty, but the most meaty.  These are seriously meaty, folks. 

They are soft but not at all mushy.  They are very good, but not my favorite olives in the entire world.  I like them, but would I stock up on 4 jars if it was just me I was feeding?  Probably not.  I would get one jar, maybe 2.  I would rate them a 4.25.

I served them (in my fancy olive dishes) the other night at a birthday party dinner.

Now here is what David, who is in love with these olives and might just marry them if he were not already hooked up with me, says about them:  “Soft.  Fleshy.  Ample.  Delicious.  Only slightly salty, and yet still very flavorful.  This was advertised by the guy at TJ’s (editor’s note:  see above, it was Mo) as the best olive he had ever tasted, and I would have to concur. 

Each olive is, of course, different and delightful in its own way, like children.  But when eating this olive one is filled only with the impression that one is eating the best olive ever made.  And, that can’t be true, because there is a whole jar full of olives just like it!!!   I GIVE THESE A 5.”

See??  I told you he loves these.  He actually tricked me into bringing him the open jars of olives before he would give me his reviewing, saying he “needed” to eat another one to be able to tell me his opinion.  Yeah, right, you just wanted another olive, dude.

Price - $6.99 (which at first seemed pricey to us, but when you consider how many olives you get and compare the price to other olives it is actually cheap)

Rating – oh hell…  I was going to average the two ratings together, but David loves these so much I think I should just use HIS rating – THEY GET A 5 J

P.S. – Thanks Mo!!!  You are a super employee.  Your smile, chat with us, and willingness to give us a taste let us discover something we wouldn’t have otherwise bought.  And David is certainly thankful to have found these olives.