If you’ve ever wondered what traditional breakfast in Turkey is like, wonder no more. Olympus Caffe & Bakery offers several common breakfast and baked good items that are otherwise difficult to find in the Bay Area. While a majority of their menu includes a wide range of standard American breakfast and lunch foods, it is the smaller “Turkish Breakfast” menu that is far more interesting. It is oddly not part of the regular handout menu, but only shown in color photos on the wall.

Olympus is owned by the same people that opened Ephesus a few doors down a couple years back. Ephesus specializes in Mediterranean lunch and dinner items. At Olympus the focus is breakfast. One commonality between them is simplicity. 

The Turkish Breakfast ($7.95) is a grab bag of items commonly found on a Turkish breakfast table. There’s salami, boiled egg, sigara boregi (a savory pastry), feta cheese, olives, tomato, cucumber, honey, butter and pita. As good as it all is, it’s the scrambles that really steal the show. I tried the menemen ($4.95) which is a veggie scramble with tomatoes, onions and bell peppers, the sucuklu yumurta ($5.95) which is simply eggs and hunks of a Turkish beef sausage that taste like a spicy hot dog, and my personal favorite, the kavurmali yumurta ($6.95), which is eggs and sizable, succulent chunks of lamb. All the scrambles are served in personal-sized skillets, which they were obviously cooked in, and come accompanied with a side of pita bread.

I also ordered the sucuklu tost ($4.95) which uses that same beef sausage from the scramble, but in the context of a grilled cheese sandwich, and with a salad on the side. You can also order the sigara boregi ˆ la carte ($4.95). It is made from scratch and is certainly one of their best items. It almost like a Turkish lasagna, with noodle-like pastry filling, feta cheese and parsley.

Of all the restaurants in downtown Mountain View—and there are a lot—Olympus arguably has the best location, situated at the northern end, with a large, comfortable outdoor patio. You’ll want to stay and sip Turkish tea for hours after your meal and watch people walk by without a care in the world.

Olympus Caffe & Bakery
135 Castro St., Mountain View. 650.336.7613