Review: Casual Habana Cafe

Restaurant Name: Casual Habana Cafe
Cuisine: Cuban
Location: Hackensack, NJ
Price Range: $6.00 - $12.00
Info:
125 Main Street
Hackensack, NJ
07601
(201)880-9844

During my ongoing quest to find a great, cheap Cuban restaurant in Bergen County, I found Casual Habana Cafe in Hackensack. Let me tell you, if you're in the mood for some good food for the same price as eating at a diner, this is the place to go...


Casual Habana Cafe is a quaint little Cuban joint. From the outside, it doesn't really look like a restaurant, but like we all learned as kids, it's what's on the inside that counts. The decor is simple, and the high ceilings make it restaurant look very roomy. Overall, it has a very welcoming atmosphere to it.

Now let's dive right into the important part: the food. Casual Habana Cafe offers a wide variety of Cuban cuisine. They have everything from salads, Cuban sandwiches, tapas, to entrees with beef, pork, chicken, and fish. What's more, their prices are beyond reasonable. They offer daily specials which consist of an entree, with a side of rice and beans for only $6-$8, and nothing on their menu is over $12. What's more, their serving sizes are large enough to fill people up.

When I first visited the restaurant, I was upset that they didn't have any plain roasted chicken, but I was quickly consoled by their two best entrees; the ropa vieja (a classic Cuban beef dish) and the bistek de pollo encebollado (pan-seared chicken breast with onions). Both dishes were full of flavor, with the chicken being particularly tender and moist. I would have expected to pay a whole lot more for the quality of food I ate.

One meal that was not satisfied with, however, was their chicken cutlet in creamy garlic sauce (which, ironically, was recommended by our waitress). The sauce was watery and really didn't taste that great compared to the rest of their food.

Their rice and beans were ideal and their sweet plantains were pretty good (but not great).

On the sweet side of the palate, Casual Habana offers fruit smoothies, creme brulee, and flan. The smoothie wasn't great. The strawberry smoothie we ordered was very milky and had a weird sweetness to it, but it could have been that my Americanized tongue just wasn't used to the flavor. Their creme brulee tasted like they made it a couple hours beforehand.

I can't really get too mad at those hit-and-miss desserts though, because I thought the flan was downright delicious. It was creamy, sweet, and right on the mark.

When it comes down to it, the food is very, very good.

The service I had at Casual Habana Cafe was mixed. I went there twice; the first time ordering out, and the second time eating in. When I ordered out, it was their peak dinner hour, so I was forced to wait over 40 minutes to get my food and didn't even receive any real acknowledgment that I waited long. That was not very good.

However, when I sat down and ate, the food came very quickly and the service was great. The chef / owner even came out and asked us how our food was. So it seems like eating in is generally the way to go.

Oh, and one thing to note is that they seem to have odd hours. Some friends and I tried to go eat at the restaurant at around 7:30 PM on a Thursday night only to find it closed.

All in all, I really love Casual Habana Cafe. They have some problems here and there, but all of that is made up by their really great food at really great prices. I would highly recommend this place if you're looking for delicious Cuban food.


Atmosphere: B+
Food: A
Service: B
Overall Rating: A-