Buttermilk putting finishing touches on Wilmette location

If it looks to you like a new breakfast place is open in Wilmette, you’re not the only one.

Proprietor Danny Shamoon, of Glenview, said several hungry people come through the doors of the nearly complete Buttermilk Café at 200 Skokie Blvd. every day.

“So many people walk in and ask when we’re going to open,” Shamoon said. “It’s the greatest feeling. If it’s like that now with an unfinished product, I can’t imagine what it’ll be like when they see cars in the parking lot.”

Shamoon and his team are “weeks away” from opening Buttermilk and completing a comeback for the long-vacant commercial property in Wilmette.

He been rehabbing the property at 200 Skokie Blvd. since acquiring it in 2025, six years after Baker’s Square closed and left the site vacant.

Shamoon hopes to announce a specific opening date soon, as the final pieces — from parking lot striping to equipment delivery — are put in place.

“We want to extremly apologize about the wait but we want to deliver a finished product,” said Shamoon, who added rain has disrupted the buildout. “Everyone has a sentimental attachment to this location and I don’t want to bring something that is not 100% to everybody.

“There’s a lot of excitement right now. We’re on the tail end of everything.”

According to its website, Buttermilk is a breakfast and lunch eatery founded in 2014 with a location in Geneva, a western suburb. Other locations have since opened in Downers Grove, Naperville and Vernon Hills, and all current locations operate between 7 a.m.-2:30 p.m. seven days a week.

Online menus show Buttermilk breakfast features everything from omelets and skillets to pancakes and French toast plates — as well as Buttermilk’s trademark biscuit offerings. During lunch hours, Buttermilk also serves sandwiches, burgers and salads.

Shamoon is opening the fifth Buttermilk location and the first franchise location. According to previous Record reporting, the Wilmette location will seat approximately 180 guests, including more than 100 in the main dining room, 38 in a sun room and 16 on a patio.

Wilmette trustees in 2025 unanimously approved an economic incentive agreement with Shamoon and Buttermilk and includes up to $150,000 in sales tax revenue remittance over a maximum of 10 years. In accordance with the agreement, the Village will receive the first $20,000 in sales-tax dollars, Buttermilk the next $30,000, and then the sales-tax revenue will be split, documents show.

A vacant building has sat at 200 Skokie Blvd. since 2019, and two public attempts to rebuild on the site — McDonald’s in 2023-’24 and Murray Bros. Caddyshack in 2021-’22) — failed.

With his family behind him, and set to work at the new Buttermilk location, Shamoon is excited to show it off to local families.

“[Buttermilk] really developed something warm, welcoming and family oriented,” he said. “We don’t want to be a stuffy restaurant. … We want to be a restaurant where your kids can come in pajamas, parents are comfortable and you don’t feel swindled walking out the door.”

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