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Olympia Cafe


The Olympia Café was a fictional greasy spoon featured in a recurring Saturday Night Live sketch. The staff, led by John Belushi as Pete Dionasopoulos, were Greeks. As various guest stars discovered, only three items on the long menu could actually be ordered successfully: the cheeseburger (pronounced "cheeburger" by Belushi), chips (pronounced "cheep"), and Pepsi. Attempts to order Coke were invariably met with the retort, "No Coke! Pepsi!" Likewise, those who ordered french fries got the response, "No fries! Cheeps!" Most famously, if a customer complained about having to order a cheeseburger, 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?"

According to Don Novello, who penned the first Olympia Café sketch, the diner was based on the Billy Goat Tavern on Lower North Michigan Avenue in Chicago, which is still operating (and part of a small chain).

Olympia is a Greek town after which many restaurants were named. John Belushi's father owned a café called the "Olympia" in the 1960s. During the 1970s, there was a real-life Olympia Café on the Upper West Side of Manhattan which was very similar to the diner in the sketch.



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