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The fight to save Gaithersburg’s Olde Towne Cafe Bar & Grille

Restaurant has encountered financial hurdles after serving customers for more than 25 years For more than 100 years, the business at the corner of East Diamond and Summit avenues in Gaithersburg has served its community, previously as Diamond Drugs...

Dan Murphy • •4 min read
The fight to save Gaithersburg’s Olde Towne Cafe Bar & Grille
Food & Drink

The fight to save Gaithersburg’s Olde Towne Cafe Bar & Grille 

Restaurant has encountered financial hurdles after serving customers for more than 25 years

By

Danny Chung-A-Fung

July 23, 2026 11:14 a.m.

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    The Olde Towne Cafe Bar and Grille in Gaithersburg has been a community staple for over 25 years, but is facing financial challenges to keep the business alive. Credit: Danny Chung-A-Fung

    For more than 100 years, the business at the corner of East Diamond and Summit avenues in Gaithersburg has served its community, previously as Diamond Drugs and more recently as the Olde Towne Cafe Bar & Grille (OTC).

    The Aliakbar family, who have run the OTC for more than 25 years, has been facing financial hurdles and is on the brink of closing its doors.  

    The building that OTC operates in is under contract to be sold to new ownership according to Shahab “Sean” Aliakbar, the owner and head chef. While the sale has not gone through yet, Aliakbar, 38, told Bethesda Today that the new landlords are threatening to make significant changes to their lease terms.

    “We’re in the middle of negotiation, and they’ve literally doubled our rent,” he said. “And for the area that we’re in, I know we’re a landmark staple, but it’s kind of a slower area.” 

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    The current landlord of the property, Diamond Tak, declined Bethesda Today’s request for comment.

    OTC has set up a GoFundMe to help with rent and other costs necessary to help the restaurant survive, preferably in its current location. As of Thursday morning, they have raised a little less than $3,600 of their $75,000 goal.

    Aliakbar said they do not have the funds to stay at East Diamond and Summit or move. Even if they do stay, there is still equipment that needs to be upgraded and other costs to maintain the upkeep of the restaurant. Moving to a new location would impact the close-knit relationships with their customers that Aliakbar said makes the OTC community so special.

    From left to right: Shahab “Sean”, Afi and Ali Aliakbar: the family that has run OTC since 2000 when it was a breakfast counter inside Diamond Drugs. Credit: Danny Chung-A-Fung

    “We’ve cried, laughed, we’ve had fun together, and it’s a warm feeling,” he said. “It’s kind of heartbreaking if we have to let that go because it took so long to put that together, build the relationships, bring the guests back. It’s not easy.”

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    Those regular customers include James Alderman III. The 82-year-old has been coming to OTC for more than 50 years – and even has his own section on the menu.

    “I hope they don’t do nothing with this place,” Alderman told Bethesda Today.

    Alderman, who lives in the attached apartment complex above the restaurant, used to come to OTC regularly with his wife, Wonda, who passed away about six years ago. A mural in the back of the restaurant shows the Aldermans, along with Sean Aliakbar’s parents, Ali and Afi Aliakbar.

    Ali, 76, and Afi, 66, started the cafe in 2000 as a breakfast counter inside Diamond Drugs. The couple ran the breakfast counter until Diamond Drugs closed in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

    This created an opportunity for them to take over the drug store, converting the counter space into a full kitchen and adding a dining room and bar. Sean Aliakbar has fond memories growing up in the cafe. 

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    “It was kind of like a duty,” he told Bethesda Today. “I was washing dishes here as a sixth grader before my dad even got the place.”

    Sean Aliakbar, a Gaithersburg High School graduate, has been working with his parents full-time since 2018. 

    The cafe, which has a staff of about twelve workers, continues to serve a breakfast menu and has expanded their hours late into the weekend, but foot traffic has recently been hard to come by. On a recent Wednesday in July when Bethesda Today visited, only a handful of customers showed up for breakfast.

    “You’ll find you’re like two or three people trickling in every hour,” he said. “You might get a slow lunch rush at about 11, but it’s pretty slow.”

    Regardless of what the future of OTC holds, Sean Aliakbar said he wants it to be an example of his parents’ desire to follow their American dreams.

    “I want it to be remembered as my parents’” dream, he said. “The seed that they [planted], the plant that they grew. And hopefully it can be something that when I have kids, I can pass it down to [continue] my legacy.”

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    Originally published at Bethesdamagazine