Habana - Costa Mesa

Habana
2930 Bristol St # A110
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
(714) 556-0176
Type: Cuban food / restaurant
Map

Ditched work today to post this review. Not really. My car ain't healthy at the moment. So luckily for all y'all, you get to read about the stuff I ate a few months ago and look at the award-winning pictures I took.

Lately, my girlfriend and I have been doing some restaurant-hopping on occasion. It's like bar-hopping, but fatter. We'll order a little at one restaurant, then go straight to another and order a little there. We got hungry and couldn't decide whether to eat Caribbean-type food or sushi. So we decided to have a little of both. She took me to a place down the street from the South Coast Plaza Mall. It's a trendy shopping area with Urban Outfitters, some artsy stores selling different stuff, a cafe with a gypsy theme where the hip hang out to lounge and eat, and other places I didn't walk into. Now that I think about it, I've been frequenting these kind of places lately. Does that mean I'm turning into a yuppie or am I just cool and hip-- or neither still?

The first spot we hit up was a place called Habana. My girlfriend loves the sangria here. It's a Cuban restaurant that attracts young-ish, probably successful people. "Young-ish" being 30 something. (I'd like to consider myself "young" at the age of 25.) The place was pretty crowded. I forgot what day it was that we went, but we ended up eating outside cuz it was just too tight inside. We sat outside next to the parking lot (which sucks cuz it's so hard to get parking there). From there, I could see our next stop after this place, but I'll get into that on the next post.

The menu prices here aren't cheap. It ain't super expensive but I'm glad we didn't have a full meal here. We ordered the calamari fritas ($8) and the seared ahi carribean rub ($21). The menu isn't that extensive. If I had somewhat good memory, I could probably memorize the whole menu after two visits. We got some free bread that had some good butter/spread. I think I always rave about the free breads cuz I'm super hungry. This case isn't any different. I killed those carbs.

The calamari fritas were very good. The calamari was light and fluffy in a way and not too chewy. The sauce was like a salsa which was very very good. We killed that quickly and painlessly.

calamari fritas in the dark. really good.


The seared ahi caribbean rub wasn't bad. It came with garlic mashed potatoes and fried onion strings. The tuna was nice and rare. The sauce was a little tangy but not overwhelming. It wasn't filling if I remember correctly. Would I get it again? Hmmm. Maybe not.

seared ahi caribbean rub was coo


After all was said and eaten, we still weren't full. Although the calamari was good and the ahi was cool, the prices for the main meals were kind of high. If I got money to spend, cool, I'll go here if I can't think of anywhere else. If I don't, I'd rather not hit this place up. "Well that's an obvious answer," you might be thinking. But even if I'm broke-ish, I'll still hit up a sushi restaurant and spend $20-$30 per head for my meal. At the moment, I'm in the red financially, so I won't be coming back here soon. On to the next restaurant next door.....