You never really know what to expect at a chai cafe open until 4 a.m. on a busier-than-usual street in Lombard during Ramadan when Muslims in need of both caffeine and something to munch on are hopping from place to place, almost on stolen time in between Isha and Fajr prayers.
At Cafe Bethak, there’s the hurried owner, feeling the pressure of being short-staffed, wiping tables and adjusting her decorative pillows. There’s a group of women, dressed in traditional South Asian shalwar kameez, who decided to get together at 1:30 a.m. And there are a lot of men.
“There have never been this many guys at my cafe,” laughed Nimra Irfan, as she settled down on a couch to speak with me.
Irfan opened Cafe Bethak with her husband Ibad Ali just over a month ago and extended the cafe’s hours to 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays during the month of Ramadan for the early morning meal known as suhoor, or as it’s referred to in Urdu, sehri. She said the crowds are expected on weekends, but sometimes it’s families with children and older adults and other times, it’s largely young men in prayer thobes prolonging their evening before suhoor.
During the few hours I spent at the Pakistani chai cafe on a recent Saturday night, I watched these scenes unfold and heard conversations I thought were lost to social media scrolling.
“Sehri scenes at Cafe Bethak,” Irfan likes to call it.
1:41 a.m.
Forty minutes after I grabbed the only wobbly table near the back, a group of seven guys walked in and started playing Jenga. The cafe has a shelf near the entrance stocked with several board games, playing cards and UNO. The kitchen is clanking away and the smell of saffron fills the space.
2:18 a.m.
Six more people walk in — this time it’s a family. A small child clutches his toy truck while squeezing in next to his dad on a yellow accent chair. Another group — men and women — comes in shortly after and immediately eyes the Turkish seating in the back, which is the hot ticket in this town. I caught several people holding up their drinks to the neon Cafe Bethak sign above the turquoise-colored floor seating to snap photos. There’s a tiny, curated clothing and trinkets shop right next to it.
2:20 a.m.
The group of guys who were playing Jenga moved on to UNO, but even when they’re not playing, they’re talking to each other. None of them seem to be on their phones and are having real conversations. I don’t know why this surprised me so much, or why it made me smile. Maybe because you don’t see this so often anymore, especially in a group of 20-something-year-olds.
As the night grows and suhoor time inches closer, more and more tables are filled as customers order samosa chaat, beef haleem, chicken salad sandwiches, mango lassis and pots of chai. Instead of creating a separate menu for suhoor and complicating service, Irfan said she wanted to focus on providing customers the same hospitality as if they’d come by in the afternoon. However, the menu does have a banana date shake to fulfill a more conventional breakfast need. While dates are traditionally used to break fast, they are also a nutritious choice for suhoor.
Suhoor at this time of year ends around 5:30 a.m., when it’s time for the morning prayer. A lot of customers came to Cafe Bethak after an iftar party, where they likely ate an assortment of fried food and fruit, among other things, as part of the evening meal Muslims eat after a dayslong fast
Irfan told me she and her husband have yet to have iftar at home this Ramadan. They’ve been at Cafe Bethak around the clock because even Thursday through Sunday they’re open until 11:30 p.m., later than the usual restaurant or cafe in the Chicago area. So far, the passion project has been worth the late nights, she said.
“What you see right now is typical, it’s a good mix of every type of crowd and a bunch of friends,” Irfan noted. “They are just having a good time.”
The couple’s first branded venture was a one-night pop-up chai event in October 2023. Irfan said sometime after the pop-up, one day while out at a coffee shop with her husband, she casually thought out loud: “What if we had our own actual chai shop?” Her husband agreed to the dream, but wondered if it was too out of reach for them, neither with generational wealth or a family history of business owners.
In May 2024, they signed the lease to what used to be a Weight Watchers office and started building the cafe from scratch. The idea was to create a cozy, culturally immersive experience that serves halal bites and traditional drinks.
“My husband wanted proper, desi chai,” Irfan said, referring to chai from the South Asian subregion, significantly different from Middle Eastern chai. The doodh pathi, or “milk and black tea,” incorporates the only ingredients, plus water, needed to make the kind of chai the couple grew up drinking.
Also served individually or in festive tea kettles is a variety of chai, such as a rose-infused chai, sona chai with saffron and gold leaf flakes, coffee chai, jaggery chai, cinnamon chai and a light red tea.
“He is from Pakistan, and he hasn’t been to the country for 15 years, but every single day he talks about Pakistan,” Irfan said. “One day he said: Can you imagine if we have a cute cafe where people could come in and they just felt at home?”
Irfan, who settled a bit deeper into the couch while her sister Amena jumped in to handle the counter, said to me: “That was the vision all along.”
“Bethak” in Urdu means a shared space for small gatherings and interactions, often where people sit and chat leisurely.
“Our tagline is chai aur dost (chai and friends). Yes it’s a place to hang out and chill, but it’s also a place to feel the culture — you’re bombarded with colors, prints, textures — even the smell, it’s how the chai smells at home,” Irfan said. “We’re family-owned and operated — my sister-in-law makes the bun kabob, actually.”
Irfan said timing the opening around the Ramadan season was a massive undertaking. But what better time to serve her new customers than during a month of connection, community and gratitude?
2:40 a.m.
Conversations are flowing easily, the spiritual folksong playing in the space is a little loud for eavesdropping, but the customers seem to be getting by. I swung by the table with the 20-somethings.
Danish Mohiuddin, a 27-year-old analyst from Des Plaines said none of them had ever been to Cafe Bethak but figured they “might as well stay up until suhoor” after leaving a friend’s iftar party. I told them how it’s neat that no one is scrolling through their phones and everyone seemed present. Hassan Javed, a field technician, joked that his phone died. But he’s charging it in his car.
They tend to hang out later in the night during Ramadan, sometimes after praying taraveeh at their local mosque.
“I do want Ramadan to rehabilitate me to some extent — fasting all day for sure just naturally, subconsciously, kind of changes you a bit,” Javed said.
It’s hard to miss what time it is — a few minutes past 3 a.m, which is prime time for good conversation. They tell me that before they joined the “working class” and had little money to spend at a cafe like this, they’d just drive around aimlessly as an activity.
“It came up earlier tonight too, we were like we should do what we did back in the old days when we’d just drive out to Cuba Road,” Mohiuddin laughed. Local legend has it that Cuba Road is a haunted roadway that passes through a secluded cemetery in Barrington, subject to apparent paranormal activity and strange eerie anomalies.
“Want to play?” one of the friends, Maaz Kasiri, asked, deciding between Blackjack and UNO. We decided on UNO Express, which absurdly comes without plus 4’s.
The friends chatted about how they spent their formative years together, and how often they see each other now. They teased one of the friends about temporarily being taken off the group chat.
“I actually never really thought of the group chat as the thing that holds us together,” Javed said. “We’re really close friends individually.”
The chitchat ensues, touching on personal routines during Ramadan, such as sleep schedules and a humorous quip about the spelling of “Ramadan” versus “Ramzan,” a more common term in South Asian languages such as Urdu and Hindi, while Ramadan is the Arabic pronunciation. There was a divide at the table on which version is superior.
3:31 a.m.
A group of women sitting at the table next to the guys were deep in conversation and thoroughly enjoying mango mojitos and chana chaat, a sweet and tangy chickpea dish with fresh cut onions, tomatoes, tamarind chutney and lots of spices. One of them, Neha Khan, was actually Mohiuddin’s neighbor, who also drove out from Des Plaines to meet her friends for suhoor.
There’s something undeniable about conversations that take place in the deep hours of the night. Usual time constraints don’t exist anymore so there’s a sense of freedom and closeness with those who are awake too.
Much like the young men, the group of women brought me into their safe space within minutes, pondering the speed at which life moves, especially if you have small children.
“With the kind of life we live, we really have to try to stop and cherish those moments but sometimes it feels like it’s not possible because we’re always on the go,” said Dina Syed, who lives in Addison. “But then we also have to make sure we have some ‘me time’ too.”
The friend to her right agreed — “even though we are sleep deprived and it’s 3 a.m., this is the time that we get!’’
Khan offered a tip to stay more hydrated —“eat cardamom seeds with plain yogurt and a little bit of salt, I’m telling you — I don’t feel thirsty the whole day.”
3:43 a.m.
The cafe is closing in 15 minutes, but there are still people in line to order. Meanwhile, the guys playing games are still lingering.
The server at the counter shyly flicked the switch to lower the light a few minutes past 4, signaling that the staff needed to close up shop.
I had to start thinking about my own meal for suhoor, and make sure I’d have enough time to gulp down at least 16 ounces of water before a little light starts showing through the horizon, signaling dawn and when Muslim observers begin fasting until the sun sets.
I opted for a bowl of plain yogurt and a sprinkle of crushed cardamom.
Cafe Bethak, 471 E. Roosevelt Road, Lombard. Regular business hours are Mondays-Thursdays 11 a.m to 11 p.m., Fridays 11 a.m. to 12 a.m., Saturdays-Sundays 1 p.m. to 12 a.m.; 630-656-1481, instagram.com/cafe.bethak
