Trendy, Upscale Fig & Olive Restaurant Accused Of Serving Reheated Dishes

WEST HOLLYWOOD (CBSLA.com) — A trendy restaurant known for its ambiance, food and celebrity sightings is being accused of serving reheated dishes.

Fig & Olive is being accused of making some of its dishes at a commissary in New York, then shipping them to LA and reheating the food before serving to their customers.

"It's definitely shocking," said Matthew Kang. "Fig & Olive is a high-end, gourmet, expensive restaurant."

Kang is an editor and writer for Eater Los Angeles and has been writing about the story since it broke after the restaurant chain was allegedly linked to dozens of cases of salmonella poisoning.

Kang says the restaurant reheats certain dishes on the stove that have been made by someone else in a commissary.

The swanky restaurant has eight locations throughout the country, including locations in West Hollywood and Newport Beach.

"From a diner point of view, that's not what we want to see. When you go into a place and you're spending $100 a person, you want to get the sense that, 'Hey, real people are making this food. It's real food that's made from local farms or from high quality ingredients,' " he said.

But Kang says more restaurants operate in a similar fashion. It cuts costs and helps when serving hundreds of people nightly.

Fig & Olive provided CBS Los Angeles with the following statement:

"We had a commissary that was utilized for specific items by our New York outposts and selectively nationwide, which we closed in September 2015. The vast majority of ingredients served at our restaurants are locally sourced from vendors and farms. Currently all of our dishes are prepared in house at each location."