Couple’s Coffee Education Journey Across The Americas Leads Them To Open Cafe Tabeeb

SOUTH LOOP — When Tahani Hassan and Mohammed Awad met at a coffee shop for their first date, little did they know how significant the setting would become in their lives.

Sixteen years and three children later, the married couple is opening a cafe in the South Loop.

Cafe Tabeeb will open in late August at 720 S. Wells St. on the ground floor of The Cooper, a high-rise apartment building on the South Branch of the Chicago River. The cafe held a soft opening last weekend and has another scheduled Saturday and Sunday before a formal opening later this month. Tentative hours are 7 a.m.-7 p.m. daily.

The cafe will offer hot and cold coffee drinks using primarily single-origin beans from Jamaica, Panama, Guatemala, Colombia, Ethiopia and Costa Rica. Eventually, matcha, teas and refreshers will be added to the beverage menu, along with pour-over tastings of specialty and seasonal coffees from around the world. There will be baked goods from a yet-to-be-determined local vendor, and coffee education classes are also in the works.

Initially, coffee was simply transactional for Awad, who is an orthopedic surgeon. He relied on it to wake up in the morning after a long night of studying when he was in medical school.

“I always liked drinking coffee but there was no depth to it for me,” he said.

But intrigued by other people’s interest in coffee and its rich history, Awad began to dig deeper to understand things like flavor notes and roast levels. Hassan, previously a social worker, joined her husband in the coffee rabbit hole journey, which revved up during the pandemic when they bought a fancy home espresso machine and coffee bean roaster.

In 2022, once the travel restrictions were lifted, the couple began thinking about a coffee-focused trip. At a Chicago specialty coffee convention, they met a Jamaican coffee farm owner. He greeted them in Arabic, noticing Hassan’s headscarf. Hassan is Palestinian and Awad is Palestinian Syrian; both were born and raised in Chicago.

The farmer invited them to visit his farm high up in the Jamaican mountains. The couple made the trip, calling it an “emotional” and “spiritual” experience.

They later went on coffee education trips to Colombia, Dominican Republic and Hawaii, and they’ve since invested in that coffee estate in Jamaica, helping to replant trees destroyed by a hurricane.

Hassan and Awad began gifting bags of their roasted beans to friends, who quickly asked for more.

“That’s when we decided to take it seriously and take it to next level,” said Hassan.

They moved their roasting operation from home to a facility in suburban Naperville and created a website to sell their beans. They plan to move to a Chicago shared roaster, with the goal of eventually having their own brick-and-mortar roasting facility.

Awad and Hassan called their bean business Tabeeb Roasters.

“Tabeeb means healer or doctor in Arabic,” says Awad. “Our motto is ‘Coffee is medicine for the soul.”

That philosophy applies to the attention to detail the couple took in designing their cafe. Behind the marble counter is a custom La Marzocco Strade espresso machine. On top are double-insulated glasses of various sizes in soft earth tones.

“When you invite someone into your home as a guest, you bring out the good glassware,” says Awad.

The cafe measures just shy of 1,000 square feet with seating for 25. On one end of the long space is a rose-colored swivel chair and a bench, with a low marble table between them and more low seating throughout. Like Goldilocks, the couple tested multiple rounds of chairs before finding the perfect ones. A pair of colorful poufs sit next to the window, globe light fixtures adding a warm glow and a gently faded Persian rug brings additional color to the mainly earth-toned room.

Perhaps the most important feature at Cafe Tabeeb besides the espresso machine is the 12-seat communal table. Made of walnut, the oval table was handcrafted by a friend of the couple.

“We really hope the cafe can be not just a coffee shop, but a place for people to gather and have events in the evenings,” Hassan said.

Hani Mahfouz, another friend of the couple, has partnered with them as Cafe Tabeeb’s operational manager.

“Historically, coffee shops have been an integral part of the development of society from connecting people and are a community within themselves,” Awad said. “They’re so deeply rooted in the development of civilization and society that it’s only natural to continue that tradition.”