Newly opened in Traverse City on Sept. 3rd, 2024, Olga’s Mediterranean Kitchen serves Greek-American fusion and is located inside Big Boy as a ‘host’ restaurant. Olga’s only offers carry-out and delivery through third-party delivery apps like Doordash or Grubhub. Their partnership with Big Boy marks Olga’s expansion into northern Michigan, its first being Traverse City.
Olga’s serves seven varieties of olgas, their signature sandwiches. These olgas consist of a fluffy pita bread which wraps a variety of fillings such as lamb, beef, tomatoes, raw white onions, and a signature Olga’s Sauce. They also offer three sides: Olga’s Seasoned Curly Fries, Olga Bread, and Small Olga Snackers. In total, there are a mere ten items on Olga’s menu.
When ordering on their website, Big Boy drinks, salads and desserts are offered as a menu extension as a part of their partnership.
For the olgas, we tried The Original Olga, Grilled Chicken Olga, and Three Cheese Olga. The Original has seasoned beef, lamb, vine-ripened tomatoes, sweet onion, and Olga’s Sauce. I was extremely unimpressed. The ‘sweet’ onion was so overpowering and abundant that I couldn’t taste anything else. I took the onion off, but the taste wasn’t much better. The best part was the wrap, the fluffy pita bread. The Grilled Chicken Olga, which had grilled chicken, lettuce, tomato and honey mustard, was better than the Original Olga, but still wasn’t the best. The overall flavor wasn’t satisfactory and the chicken was cold.
The Three Cheese Olga, which had lettuce, tomato, cheese, and sauce, was very delicious. I do think that the tomato did make it a bit sweeter than I would’ve liked, but it was very enjoyable nonetheless.
As a side, we ordered Olga’s Seasoned Curly Fries and Olga’s Famous Bread. I ended up trying out the pita bread with nutella to enhance the flavor.
In total, we ordered three different olgas, curly fries with a side of honey mustard, and Olga’s Basket of Bread. For two olgas and a side of fries with honey mustard, my total came to just over $42.
Since Olga’s Kitchen only offers carryout and third-party delivery, it’s unaffordable with all the additional fees when ordering through apps and online. There is no atmosphere to compliment and the menu items are extremely limited, even for a host kitchen. With a more expanded menu, cheaper prices and more advertising Olga’s experience would be more authentic.