TheOlympia Café is a fictionalgreasy spoon that was featured in a recurringSaturday Night Live sketch. The staff, led byJohn Belushi as Pete Dionisopoulos, wereGreeks. Staff also includedBill Murray as Nico, a busboy who speaks very little English (and not in complete sentences),Dan Aykroyd as short-order cook George, and Sandy, a waitress played byLaraine Newman. Series regularsGarrett Morris,Gilda Radner, andJane Curtin had recurring roles as regular customers.
As variousguest stars discovered (with a few exceptions), only three items on the long menu could actually be ordered successfully: thecheeseburger (pronounced "cheeburger" by Belushi),chips (pronounced "cheeps"), andPepsi (pronounced "Petsi"). Attempts to orderCoke (later Pepsi) were invariably met with the retort, "No Coke! Petsi!" (or later on, "No Petsi! Coke!") Likewise, those who orderedfrench fries got the response, "No fries! Cheeps!" Most famously, if a customer complained about having to order a cheeseburger for breakfast saying it was too early for one, Pete would point out all the other customers enjoying said dish, e.g. "Too early for cheeburger? Look![pointing around restaurant] Cheeburger, cheeburger, cheeburger, cheeburger, cheeburger, cheeburger, cheeburger, cheeburger, cheeburger! Eh?" The short-order cook (usually played byDan Aykroyd) would mistake the retort as an order for more cheeseburgers, loading up an absurd number of patties onto the grill.
According toDon Novello, who penned the first Olympia Café sketch, the diner was based on theBilly Goat Tavern on Lower North Michigan Avenue inChicago, which is still operating (and part of a small chain).[1] According to his brotherJim Belushi, John based the character on their Albanian uncle, who at one time owned a hot dog stand on Chicago's Northwest Side.[2] In a 2024 interview,[3] Aykroyd said that the diner was not based on the Billy Goat Tavern, but rather on the café John Belushi's father owned in the 1960s, called the "Olympia."[4]Olympia is a Greek town after which manyrestaurants have been named.
List of episodes featuring the Olympia Café:
