Update: Habana went out of business some time recently, but there are still plenty of yummy Cuban restaurants to enjoy in San Francisco!
Went to dinner at Habana the other night. We had reservations for four at 8:00, but we got stuck in the dreaded Bay Bridge traffic and at 7:30 I could forsee us being very late for our dinner. Fortunately, I’d made reservations through OpenTable and had printed out a confirmation which had the restaurant’s phone number on it, so I called them to see if we could delay our reservation. They were very gracious, saved our table for us for an extra half hour, and were extremely friendly to us when we finally arrived.
Our evening began with a round of drinks. One of the other members of our party and I both got mojitos, which came with plenty of mint and a fresh stick of sugar cane, while another ordered a Hemingway cocktail, and the fourth person ordered a rum and coke. The rum was apparently very good, non-abrasive, and tasty. Drinks were served with fresh french bread and a really great pesto garlic tapenade. Very garlicky, but fortunately we were all eating it. For appetizers, I had one of the day’s special salads, which was so good I duplicated it at home the following night. It was a bed of baby greens (not sure exactly what kind, but I used spinach and red leaf lettuce when I made it), with slices of really sweet grapefruit, avocados, crumbled goat cheese, and sliced toasted almonds, topped with a lime vinegarette. So good and refreshing, I’m sure I’ll be having this salad more than a few times this summer. Someone else in our party ordered a Caesar salad, which arrived, like a lot of trendy restaurants like to serve their Caesars, with entact heads of romaine lettuce. I’m personally against this method of presentation, as it makes eating the salad a complete disaster and doesn’t put the dressing everywhere you want it to be. Also, the salad came with three whole anchovies laid over it. Needless to say, no one wanted anything to do with them.
The entrees were tasty and varied. I usually order fish dishes when they’re offered, but for some reason had a hankering for the stuffed chicken as soon as I read about it. It didn’t disappoint. It was a large breast of chicken, skin on, stuffed with goat cheese and basil, and served on a bed of spaghetti squash with fried plantain rounds and an “angry orange” sauce. Perhaps it was the feistiness that drew me to it. It was all very tasty; not divine, but definitely good. The other members of our party ordered halibut over some sort of lentil salad, salmon with spiced green beans and a mango-mustard sauce, and marinated skirt steak with mashed sweet potatoes. I tasted the skirt steak and it was quite good. I would say that it falls into the same category as my chicken, a stepped up version of really good comfort food. Apparently the fish dishes were also good. By the time we’d finished our respective entrees, we were so full that we decided to forgo dessert (despite a scrumptious looking chocolate strawberry mousse that was delivered to a neighboring table), however one person did order a tequilla shot to cap off his meal. He ordered a shot of Patron tequilla (not cheap), but said that when he drank it, it was very harsh and probably not what he’d ordered. Not sure if that was an intentional move by the bartender or an error. Guess you should always order your shots at the bar, where you can see what’s going on.
Anyway, the final word is: tasty food, worth a trip if you’re craving mojitoes and some Cuban hospitality.
