Nestled in between Starbucks and Simply It, near the corner of Lincoln and Belden, sits NightHawk AM, an all-day breakfast restaurant that exudes warmth and comfort. When you enter through the glass door, the smell of butter and salt immediately hits. You can hear the sizzling of the flat top grill as you watch your order being made. Along with the sound of food atop the grill, brothers and owners of NightHawk AM Colin and George Foy can be heard talking to one another in a way that further amplifies the homestyle atmosphere.

Inside the space is decorated with contrasting colors and materials. Interior brick walls surround the space along with a cartoon skeleton etched on the walls and faint lettering from vanilla extract company “Arnett’s Extracts,” which has been there since 1900. “We started breaking through the drywall while renovating,” Colin said. “We figured we’d either hit brick or end up in the Starbucks next door.”

The floor is lined with old ads for Spam, Tang, Kellogg’s, Nutella, and various other breakfast foods. The countertop facing Lincoln is lined with ads for Cocoa Puffs, Fruity Pebbles, and many other cereals. “We wanted the restaurant to have a distinctive style,” George said, “and I believe we achieved that.”

The restaurant features an open kitchen that allows customers to watch as their food is made and, occasionally, as George cracks and whisks six-dozen eggs in an absurdly large bowl for later use in another dish.

Aside from the colorful floor and brick walls, NightHawk AM’s food sets it apart from other breakfast restaurants. NightHawk AM serves breakfast items all day alongside a variety of unique drinks including “Cereal Milk Covfefe,” a coffee made with housemade cereal milk—and alluding to Donald Trump’s infamous “covfefe” tweet—and “Cup O’ Coffee,” served in a custom-made cup resembling an instant noodles cup.

One of the most distinctive items on the menu is the three flavors of edible cookie dough: “Yabba Dabba Dough,” made with Fruity Pebbles cereal milk cookie dough and lime zest; “Just Jacked,” made with apple pie cookie dough, Apple Jacks, cinnamon sugar, and topped with whipped cream; and “Cookie Monster,” a chocolate chip cookie dough with cookie crisps and blue M&M’s.

“I was walking to Chipotle when I passed NightHawk AM and noticed the cool interior and unusual menu,” sophomore Micah Derringer said. “I decided to give it a try, and I loved it. I’ve been back many times since.”

The restaurant’s unconventional menu and unique space attracts customers walking by, or scrolling through social media. “We are visiting Chicago for the food, and we found NightHawk AM through social media,” Jack Le, a man from Shanghai, China visiting with his girlfriend, said. “We decided to come for the unconventional menu and the one of a kind interior design.”

Even though NightHawk AM gets orders out quick, it does not sacrifice quality. Each day much preparation goes into preparing food prior to order. “We make all of our sauces in-store, we make the biscuits ourselves, we braise our own beef cheeks, we roll our own beef patties, and so on,” Colin said. “It’s not a scratch kitchen, but it’s pretty close.” This preparation prior to ordering allows NightHawk AM’s good quality food to reach the customer in a timely manner.

Each dish is made to order. While George does the cooking, Colin greets customers and takes orders over various delivery services, emailing their business partners in Venice, California about plans.

The two brothers acquired the space back in 2015 when it was a fast food restaurant. “We bought Fat Sandwich Company because we liked the space,” Colin said. “We knew we would renovate and change the restaurant. I wouldn’t eat anything off of that menu–it was all frozen and fried.” (The menu featured 27 items that began with “Fat,” including the “Fat Cowboy” and the “Fat Mess.”)

The brothers ran Fat Sandwich Company for a year while waiting to get plans for their renovation. Once they were ready to renovate, they became Campus Dogs and Deli, and after coming into contact with the J. Fall Group, a hospitality group based in Los Angeles, and executing further renovations, they became NightHawk AM in November of 2017.

Nighthawk AM is a companion restaurant of NightHawk Breakfast Bar in Los Angeles. “Our eldest sister went to school with Henry Costa, who subsequently moved to Venice, California and opened up NightHawk Breakfast Bar,” Colin said. “He’s from Philadelphia and was interested in opening up something closer to home, so we got to talking, and we decided to bring his concept here to Chicago.”

Although the restaurants share an executive chef, Wes Lieberher, and the theme of all-day breakfast, the menus are not the same. “They have a full service bar there that they use to make cocktails with their cereal milk, whereas we use our cereal milks for coffee,” Colin said. “We also serve cookie dough, which sets us apart from not only NightHawk Breakfast Bar, but also most other restaurants.”

Since 2015, when Colin and George bought Fat Sandwich Company, they have achieved their goal of serving “food that they would eat.”