Nubar Cafe in Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood had barely made it a year when someone broke in, shattered its storefront windows and stole the cash register — on the same day the shop had planned its first-anniversary celebration. Staff cleaned up the glass and got the party started anyway.
The break-in happened overnight this past weekend, according to CBS News Chicago, which reported that Nubar Cafe owners ensured the anniversary celebration continued despite the damage. The cafe, at the corner of Lawrence and Kedzie avenues, is an immigrant- and women-owned Mediterranean and Kurdish spot known for specialty coffee, tea, brunch and house-made pastries, according to entity background cited by WTTW Chicago. The shop opened in late 2025 in a sunlit corner space that has since become something of a neighborhood fixture.
Video and statement updates posted to the cafe's Instagram confirmed intruders shattered the glass windows and made off with the register overnight before staff scrambled to clean the storefront in time to keep the scheduled anniversary event going.
A Cafe Corridor Built in Just a Year
The timing stings because Nubar helped anchor what has become one of Albany Park's fastest-growing commercial strips. WTTW Chicago's reporting notes that Nubar opened along a stretch of Kedzie Avenue that has emerged as a hub for Middle Eastern-style cafes, with four such businesses opening within a single mile over roughly a year following a local Starbucks closure in September 2025. The corridor now features a mix of Yemeni, Kurdish and other Middle Eastern coffee concepts drawing customers from across the neighborhood.
The district has faced business break-ins before. Hoodline previously reported that the department issued a community alert in June 2024 after a series of nighttime commercial break-ins hit the same district.
Whether investigators have identified surveillance footage or a suspect description tied to the Nubar break-in remains an open question.
For now, Nubar Cafe's broken windows stand as a reminder of the tension between the corridor's cultural rise and the risks its small businesses face overnight.
