TARY ★9.5

Most cafés that open in River North are trying to be a slightly better version of something Chicago already has. TARY is not. It is the first American outpost of a Kazakh café brand, and what it brought across the ocean is less a recipe than a ritual — şai dästüri, the tea tradition, which in Kazakh terms means a table, a long sit, and food that keeps arriving until nobody is hungry anymore.

Highlights

• The first U.S. location of a Kazakh café brand, open in Chicago since the fall of 2023.
• Millet — tary in Kazakh, and the reason for the name — is toasted and folded into the drinks: the house cappuccino is espresso, toasted millet and textured milk, served with a house-made wafer.
• A second signature that exists almost nowhere else in the city — the irimshik latte, built on Kazakh roasted milk curd.
• A working kitchen that runs from breakfast through dinner, not a pastry case pretending to be one.
• Roughly a quarter to a third of the pantry comes in directly from Kazakhstan; the rest is sourced locally, with an organic bias.
• An interior that mixes high-end café minimalism with steppe furnishings: woven carpets, a tiled stove, industrial fittings.
• Mocktails and milk teas that give the non-coffee half of the table something real to order.

What’s in the cup

Start with the drink the place is named after. Tary is millet, the grain that has fed the Kazakh steppe for centuries, and here it is toasted and worked into an espresso drink — the house cappuccino arrives with a nutty, almost cereal depth under the milk, and a thin house-made wafer balanced alongside. It sounds like a gimmick until you drink it, at which point it reads as a straightforward answer to the question of what a Kazakh café would put in a cup if it were not copying Milan or Melbourne.

The second thing to try is the irimshik latte. Irimshik is a roasted milk curd, slowly cooked down until it caramelizes; folded into a latte it produces something closer to a dessert than a coffee, sweet in a dairy way rather than a syrup way. Between those two, the menu behaves like a normal espresso bar — flat whites, cortados, iced lattes with a vanilla shot — and the espresso underneath is strong and clean enough to carry a plain order without embarrassment.

Tea, though, is the older half of the story. The whole concept is built on the Kazakh tea table, which means milk tea rather than a bag on a string, served with the expectation that you will still be sitting there in an hour. Alongside it sits a list of mocktails — pear purée with cinnamon and soda is the one regulars point at — plus nabat, the crystal rock sugar that traditionally goes with the tea instead of into it. Order tea here and you are ordering the point of the place, not the compromise.

Who’s behind it

TARY was opened in October 2023 by Сымбат Жарқынқызы, who had lived in Chicago before and chose River North with that knowledge in hand rather than off a map. Her stated aim was narrow and clear: to bring back Kazakh recipes that had fallen out of everyday use, and to cook them with modern technique instead of museum reverence. Before this, she has said, there simply were no cafés built around what Kazakh families actually eat at home.

That explains the sourcing discipline. Somewhere between a quarter and a third of what the kitchen uses is imported directly from Kazakhstan — the ingredients that cannot be faked, like the millet, the curd and the dried fermented milk — while everything that can be bought fresh is bought locally and, where possible, organic. It is an expensive way to run a café menu and a deliberate one. The Chicago room is also meant to be the first of several: New York, Washington and Seattle have all been named as targets, which makes this the proving ground rather than a one-off.

What it’s for

A long sit-down meal with people you like. This is the strongest reason to come and the one the whole room is designed around. The tea tradition assumes company, the kitchen sends out dishes meant to be shared, and nobody hurries the table. Two people work; four work better.

A first encounter with Kazakh food. If you have never eaten it, this is an unusually gentle place to start — the staff will walk you through the menu, and the dishes are plated for a Chicago audience without being watered down for one. Come hungry and order across the menu rather than safely.

Brunch. The morning end of the menu is genuinely good and is where a lot of the regular traffic comes from: soft scrambled eggs on brioche, cottage-cheese pancakes with balkaimak cream, eggs Benedict with salmon, porridge with jam. It functions as a proper brunch room, not a coffee shop that also has eggs.

Sitting alone. Better than you would expect. The room has corners, the playlists are quiet, and a single person with a book and a pot of tea is not a strange sight here.

Laptop work — with limits. You can open a laptop and nobody will object, but be honest about what this is: a restaurant-paced café in a busy downtown neighborhood, where tables turn and the room fills fast on a rainy afternoon. It is a fine place to work for an hour between things. It is not the room to plan a full working day around, and power at every seat is not something to count on.

The space

The room reads as two ideas layered on top of each other. Underneath is a contemporary, high-specification café — clean lines, good lighting, some industrial hardware on show. Over the top of it sits Kazakhstan: brightly patterned woven carpets, an old tiled stove, textiles and objects that would look at home in a house on the steppe and look deliberately out of place here, in the best way. The effect is warm rather than themed, and it is one of the few interiors downtown that does not resemble any of its neighbors.

Service is part of the atmosphere and is consistently the thing guests mention: attentive without hovering, and willing to explain a menu that most people cannot read without help. Drinks come out plated — a cup on a small wooden board, a wafer alongside — which tells you how the room thinks about presentation. Sound levels are moderate; there are quiet corners toward the edges and a livelier feel near the counter.

Beyond coffee

Yes, emphatically — the kitchen is the larger half of this business. Breakfast runs to eggs, pancakes and porridge; the middle of the day brings soups (chicken noodle, truffle mushroom), salads, burgers and full plates like braised beef with young potatoes or baked eggplant with kurt, the dried fermented milk that gives Central Asian cooking its sour edge.

The dish to order at least once is baursak — pillowy fried dough, served with irimshik — which is the Kazakh equivalent of bread on the table and the fastest way to understand the cuisine. Kuyrdak, a fried meat dish, is the heavier classic. The pastry and dessert case is strong and not an afterthought, and the sweets carry the house name for a reason. There are vegetarian options, and the kitchen is used to being asked.

When to come

Weekday mornings are the calmest and the best window if what you want is a quiet table, a pot of tea and an unhurried conversation with the staff about what to eat. From late morning the neighborhood arrives — River North runs on offices, hotels and visitors, and all three use this room.

Weekend brunch is the busy peak, and on a cold or rainy afternoon the place fills to the walls; the kitchen keeps up, but you may wait for a table. Evenings are quieter and better suited to the long tea-table version of a visit. Current opening times are in the schedule block on this page — in prose they go stale too quickly.

Getting there

You are in River North, a few blocks north of the river and a short walk from the northern edge of the Loop, in the dense band of restaurants and hotels between the shopping district and the water. The Red Line stop at Grand is the closest rail option and leaves you a couple of blocks away; several bus routes cross the neighborhood, and there are garages nearby if you drive, though parking here is a downtown problem like any other.

If you are walking in from the lakefront or the museum campus side, allow more time than the map suggests — this part of downtown is busier on foot than it looks. The storefront itself is easy to miss among its neighbors, which is worth knowing before you walk past it.

Good to know

Three things that make the visit better. First, ask what has millet in it. The toasted grain runs through the drinks and the baking, and it is the single clearest expression of what makes this café different from the ten others within a five-minute walk. Second, do not treat it as a coffee stop — the kitchen is the main event, and a visit built around a plate of food with tea afterward gets far more out of the place than a takeaway cup. Third, if you are with someone who does not drink coffee, the tea and mocktail lists here are unusually well developed, so nobody ends up with a sad hot chocolate.

One honest caveat: this is a full-service café-restaurant in one of the busiest neighborhoods in the city, and at peak times it behaves like one. If you are picturing a sleepy corner where you can spread out for four hours, adjust the picture. Come for the food, the tea and an hour of somewhere genuinely different, and it delivers all three.

Questions and answers

What does “tary” actually mean?

Millet. It is a staple grain of the Kazakh steppe, naturally gluten-free, and here it is toasted and used in drinks and baking — including the house cappuccino, which is the café’s signature.

Is this a coffee shop or a restaurant?

Both, but the kitchen is the bigger half. There is a full menu from breakfast through dinner — soups, salads, mains, pastries — alongside a proper espresso bar. Come hungry.

I have never eaten Kazakh food. What should I order first?

Baursak with irimshik to start, then something substantial like braised beef with young potatoes or a soup. To drink, the millet cappuccino or the irimshik latte. Ask the staff — they are used to guiding first-timers through the menu.

Can I work here with a laptop?

For an hour or two, yes, and nobody will rush you. For a full working day, no — this is a restaurant-paced room in a busy downtown neighborhood, tables turn, and power at every seat is not something to rely on.

Is there anything for vegetarians?

Yes. Baked eggplant, spinach- and cheese-based dishes, the pancake and porridge side of breakfast, and a substantial pastry case. Flag it when you order and the kitchen will point you.

Is the coffee good on its own, or only the novelty drinks?

The espresso is strong and well pulled, and a plain latte or flat white holds up. The millet and irimshik drinks are the reason to make a special trip, but you will not be stuck with a bad cup if you order conventionally.

Does it work for a group?

Yes — better than most cafés in the area, because the whole concept assumes a shared table. Larger groups are worth planning around the weekend brunch peak.

What is the easiest way to get here?

Red Line to Grand and walk a couple of blocks. It is also an easy walk from the northern edge of the Loop or from anywhere in the River North hotel district.

Opening hours