Golden Olympic Restaurant

Had a VERY bad experience. A paradox –because they were very busy (Sunday morning) but they were completely overwhelmed.
All aspects of the visit were way below par.
The food took a very long time to appear and when it did, the order was incorrect and the food was cold. Ouch!
Maybe it was a bad day in an otherwise good place? Not sure.
I don’t like posting such negative reviews but they earned this one.

Great food, great service, and great prices! Went for the first time for brunch over the weekend and loved it. Will definitely be returning.

Good food. Quite diner on a weekday morning.

This place isn’t a looker, but don’t let the outside fool you. Golden Olympic is a solid, solid diner. Get big, tasty portion sizes for $ 10 or less. Also a great brunch space for big groups. I love the egg skillets and their chocolate chip pancakes. (I usually hate pancakes, but Golden Olympic perfectly balances fluffy & crispy).

The table was dirty and sticky, the silverware had old dry food on them.
My omelet tasted full of butter, I could only have a few bites.
My son asked for no pickle on the side of his grill cheese (the waitress even repeated to him «no pickle»), when he got his food there was clearly a pickle placed on his grilled cheese, taken off, and the plate and toast were wiped with a napkin (when we asked for a new one, the waitress said «wow, you really don’t like your pickles huh?).
Just an overall dirty greasy experience.

always an open seat. brunch meet up spot. I always get the open faced hot turkey sandwich and I request wheat bread. also get the soup of the day.

So, this is one of the most consistent restaurants I’ve ever been to– the food is always good but often incorrect, the pricing is always opaque, and the service is always terrible.
So let’s start with the food– they do a great job making simple diner food, and quite frankly it’s the best diner food in Evanston. However, you only get what you ask for about 70% of the time. The staff has mentally checked out and sometimes they screw up something simple and sometimes they screw up the whole order. After they screw up, they tend to blame the customer for making a mistake rather than owning up to it.
Oh and these people should all be actresses, because they’ve sure mastered the art of drama. The waitresses fight all the time which leads to tables being forgotten about or having to listen to cat fights and the staff complaining to you while you dine. I guess this can be entertaining sometimes.
The pricing is totally opaque, BUT, it’s cheap. Am I getting nickel and dimed? Probably, but your bill is only $ 15 with tip so who cares if you got up charged without knowin about it. Their hand writing is illegible so you wouldn’t be able to figure it out anyways even if you wanted to.
In all, 5 stars for the food and 1 star for the service. At the end of the day, you know you’re going to go here for the greasy spoon diner food if only because you have no other options in Evanson.

Just went here for the second time, I always walk by this place and keep forgetting how awesome it is! I stopped in for brunch with my boyfriend and we ordered our food. He ordered the Denver omelette and I order a short stack of chocolate chip pancakes with grilled cheese (and fries). We got our food almost immediately and boy was it yummy! His omelette was HUGE and oozing cheese where as my grilled cheese seemed to not have any… until I bit into it! Best grilled cheese I’ve had in a while and the steak fries were soft too. The pancakes were the best! Again, I thought there were no chocolate chips in them and even asked the server and she told me to cut into it and BAM! Chocolatey goodness! Our server was a sweet grey-​haired old lady, could she have asked how our meal was? Sure. Could she have re-​filled our waters? Mhm. Could she have written the bill nicer? Definitely. But folks, this is a DINER. My only recommendation would be to rip the «restaurant» and throw in «diner.» Because this is amazing diner food, diner booths, and diner service!

G.O. used to be a pretty decent diner but their quality has been declining steadily in the last few years. The other day I was running an errand nearby and decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. Slow, unresponsive service (my order for a very simple dish arrived after 45 minutes, as I was about to leave in frustration). As I usually do, I left my tip at the table ($ 3, which was too much for a $ 15 check, considering the service) and as I walked to the register to pay my bill, the server said, loudly: «Hey, are you going to pay the bill or what… you only paid 3 dollars»
Really? Is there a way of giving them zero stars?

I am a fan of a good greasy spoon and this fits the bill. When my now-​husband and I lived in Evanston, this was one of our favorite Sunday-​morning haunts. Every single thing I’ve had here is really good, but the hash browns can’t be beat! No frozen hash browns here! Ask for them with fried onions. There still are Sunday mornings when I tell my husband that I wish we lived near the Golden Olympic again. I’m drooling just thinking about it!

This is my favorite place to go after waking up from a party hungover. Burgers are huge, eggs benedict are really good. Old style American diner, definitely recommend.

The bill.
When you see that the item prices are illegible (unreadable), except for the very legible total price at the bottom, ask immediately for a re-​written bill that is fully legible.
When you get the re-​written and legible bill, look for an over pricing of items as compared to what is posted on the menu and then get that corrected.
When you get the corrected bill, check the addition to confirm that the total price at bottom is correct.
What kind of a service provider can not or will not write legibly until writing an incorrect total at the bottom? And how many times per shift is that done?

Okay, so I go here often enough when I visit my father that I may as well do a Unilocal review. I would never think it is a place worth eating at, walking by on the way to Peet’s coffee, but what can I say — everything I order here is very good. I personally go for the eggs benedict and eggs florentine, but the other sandwiches I’ve tried and a chop salad or two — it never disappoints. At this point, when he asks me where we should have lunch, I just tell him «G.O.» (that is the real quote)
For the life of me, I will never understand how the tables are sticky, especially on the edges of the tables, all around the sides. Oh well.
– Just read some of the other reviews. I’ve been there about 15 times over the years and never had a bad experience like that.

This place is terrible; tell your friends, family, and everyone else to steer clear of this overrated restaurant. I’ve had two bad experiences at Golden Olympic. I went the second time hoping that it was just a mishap: maybe the waitress was having a bad day, maybe the cook was tired after running long orders for lunch. As it turns out, first impressions can be rather accurate.
The first time I was at Golden Olympic, I was having dinner with a friend, and the restaurant was relatively empty. My friend got these stir-​fried noodles while I had a monte cristo. Her noodles were bland, and my monte cristo was swimming in grease and overly cheesy. Moreover, my friend’s noodles were listed on the menu as having a side of vegetables. They did not come with one, and when she nicely asked as to why that was, the server blew a fuse and refused to get any for her, saying that it did not list that at all on the menu. She only went in to get it when my friend physically pointed it out on the menu for her. Even then, no apology, nothing – just a grumpy lady slamming a bowl of vegetables smaller than the size of my fist on our table. That kind of service is completely unacceptable.
My second visit was again plagued by bad food and even worse service. My chorizo skillet eggs were lathered in grease, and my friend’s garden omelette was bland and overly cheesy. (Sound familiar? This restaurant expects to save its food by covering everything in oil and cheese.) Further, our server did not respond to our requests for water and a box to take home the only edible portion of our meal: two pieces of toast. We asked politely twice, and both times, she disappeared and just never came back to our table. This one star is for the non-​server employee who cleans the restaurant. He took less than a minute to get us what we needed. If only the tip went to him instead of that ridiculous server.
Mindblowingly horrible restaurant.

Golden Olympic strikes me as the type of restaurant that would be featured on Kitchen Nightmares. I’ll be frank: the sooner this place goes out of business the better I’ll feel.
Don’t get me wrong, nothing completely appalling happened — I didn’t have to complain about mysterious hairs or anything — but the food sucked donkey balls. My omelette was bland, overcooked, smothered in cheese while the hash browns were similarly seasoned and parts of it were burned to a crisp, literally something you’d find at the bottom of your grill.
On top of that, service was… well I’ll just say I felt pretty disrespected when I left the restaurant. Our waitress never interacted with us short of taking out orders, didn’t come to see how we were enjoying the food, and when I asked for a take out bag (I was debating whether I should just leave the barely half-​eaten omelette there) she nodded, walked away, and never came back. She even passed our table a few times and didn’t even acknowledge me when I asked about the take out bag. I ended up having to ask a busboy who walked over to the back of house, picked up a box in plain view, and returned within 30 seconds.
I heartily detest this place. Please let it end soon.

This place had very good food. When I was there, there was a few cops inside, so I knew that the place had good food. Good burgers and sandwiches. Hard to find those good, ‘family restaurants’ nowadays.

My friends and I come here every week for breakfast. This place has everything you’re looking for in a diner: good coffee, nice selection of egg, pancake, etc breakfast dishes, pleasant waitstaff, and cheap prices (they also do a Wildcard discount). I’ve been coming here for over a year, and still haven’t gotten tired of the food. Also a great place for any sized group.

I enjoyed it here. The food was very delicious. I ordered the army omelette. I would go back next time im in town

Real talk: Diners should have more sweetener options than just «the pink packet.» With devoted blue and yellow packet people out there, I have to ask how hard it would be for the owners to include a little variety in that sweetener holder? It makes a difference to the serious coffee drinkers out there.
I’m just saying.
I’m also saying that the service is pretty meh. Not that I need to be pampered at a diner, but I’d like refills on my coffee and diet Coke without a sneer.
Aside from that, EXCELLENT Olympic omelet teaming with spinach, tomato, onion and feta. Mmmm hmmm. I also really liked the English muffins.
Prices are good.
Just fix the coffee/​server sitch, okay? Then we can be real good friends.

This IS you father’s diner. Or maybe your grandfather’s. In fact, he may still be eating here.
Golden Olympic is like stepping back into the fifties, in terms of ambiance, service and food. True, there are some Greek (and even a few Asian) items on the menu, but basically it’s a diner.
I went with the Greek theme, since there was a photo of Santorini on the wall, and had the Village Sandwich, which consisted of feta cheese, olives, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and onions with Tzatziki sauce, rolled in a pita.
Good choice. It was refreshing, tasty and yet light like a salad.
It came with a choice of sides, and to offset the healthfulness of the sandwich I chose onion rings.
Bad choice. They were the kind of onion rings you buy in the frozen food department and bake until they’re crunchy, except these hadn’t made it to crunchy.
Service was pleasant in a detached, 50s waitress kind of way.
This is the first restaurant I’ve been in for a decade that had an FM radio station playing. But it was music from the 70s, so I guess they’re going modern.
All in all a fun trip down memory lane, and a good spot for breakfast or a sandwich.