Inside the 108-year-old Mumbai cafe that had Christopher Nolan, Tom Holland and Matt Damon pausing for chai

Christopher Nolan, Matt Damon and Tom Holland were in Mumbai this week for The Odyssey's premiere, and before the red carpet, the cameras, and Emma Thomas trailing behind them, they made a pit stop that had nothing to do with the film.

The trio, joined by their producer, walked into Olympia Coffee House in Colaba and ordered what every Mumbaikar orders: cutting chai and bun maska. Universal Pictures India posted the moment on Instagram with the caption "Quick tea stop before 'The Odyssey' Mumbai Premiere. A big night awaits, but chai comes first," and the internet, predictably, lost its mind over three of Hollywood's biggest names raising glasses of milk tea like they were toasting champagne.

But Olympia doesn't need Hollywood to be famous. It's been feeding Mumbai since 1918.

A hundred and eight years of kheema pav

Olympia Coffee House and Stores was opened by Syed Mohammed Merab, an Irani businessman, who later sold his stake to a group of his employees before returning to Iran. By the late 1980s and '90s, the restaurant had passed to the next generation, whose families still run it today. That kind of continuity is rare in a city that tends to knock down its history and put up a mall.

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Olympia belongs to a dwindling species: the Irani cafe. These establishments were built by Zoroastrian and Shia Muslim immigrants who arrived in Bombay from the late nineteenth century onward, fleeing persecution and building something distinctly their own: marble-topped communal tables, mirrored walls, ceiling fans that have been spinning since before Independence. At their peak, there were more than 400 of these cafes across the city. Fewer than 40 remain.

Located on Shahid Bhagat Singh Marg, a few minutes' walk from the Gateway of India and the Taj Mahal Palace, Olympia has spent over a century serving Colaba's office workers, taxi drivers, tourists and late-night stragglers off the same menu of Irani and Mughlai staples: mutton kheema pav, chicken and mutton biryani, omelettes, bheja masala, and a caramel custard that regulars will tell you not to skip. The kheema — spiced with green peas and green chillies, served with butter-slicked pav — is the dish people specifically travel for. It's cash-only, unless you ask nicely for UPI, and it opens at 7 am and doesn't stop until midnight.

An Olympia kind of encounter

Olympia has built a habit of hosting people who don't need to eat cheap kheema for breakfast but choose to anyway. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has stopped at Mumbai's old-school institutions on past visits.

According to cafe manager Inayat Maredia, the group showed up outside Olympia around 2:30 pm, and staff had no idea who they were waiting for. Nolan, Holland and Damon didn't actually walk in until 6 pm, by which point the crowd gathering outside had already tipped everyone off that something was up.

It was only after the trio left, Maredia told Hindustan Times, that someone at the cafe Googled the names and realised Tom was "Spider-Man wale actor." The three stayed about 10 to 15 minutes, ordered chai and bun maska, and left before the bodyguards and police could turn it into more of a scene than it already was.

The director of a film about Homer's Odyssey, itself a story about time, memory and the meals eaten along the way, sat down for bun maska in a room that has looked more or less the same since before his grandparents were born. Olympia's owners didn't plan the metaphor, or even have a clue. They were just doing what they've done every morning since 1918: pouring chai, buttering buns, and letting Colaba walk in off the street.