Honeymoon Chicken, at the corner of Upshur, Georgia and 9th Street NW

Sometime around 5am on Thursday, July 7th, a man broke a side window at Honeymoon Chicken (4201 Georgia Avenue NW) and burglarized the restaurant.

The burglar broke a smaller window tucked around a corner off of 9th Street, pulled out to-go boxes that were stored in that area, and crawled into the restaurant.

According to employees, they lost several bottles of alcohol but no money. The burglar did try to get into their locked safe — using a power drill with a Phillips bit, which did nothing but scratch the safe — but wasn’t able to steal anything of too much value. However, once he realized he was on camera, he proceeded to do a lot of damage to the prep kitchen and computers in their basement.

Broken window where the burglar gained access.

The wayward burglar poured bleach on computers and server racks and unplugged computers, perhaps in an attempt to break the computers and hide the recording. According to staff, all recordings go to the cloud and are not kept on premises. (Petworth News did review portions of the video and saw some extremely clear photos of the alleged burglar.) All video was turned over to MPD by the restaurant.

Oddly, perhaps out of his frustration at not being able to steal anything, the man poured bleach and cinnamon on bushels of potatoes and onions in the prep kitchen downstairs, ruining the food. The restaurant had an overnight delivery just a few hours before.

Luckily, the restaurant has enough food safely kept aside to reopen for guests for lunch.

Slim’s Diner, which used to be at the same location a few years ago, also suffered a break-in at one time, with bricks thrown in their front window. It’s a sad cost of doing business, it seems. Luckily no one was injured, and windows and others things can be replaced.