Cuban Archives - Foodology

Havanas: Never Coming Here Again

July 8, 2011

A group of us were craving Havanas, so we headed there after Social Media Day at Ceili’s. I’ve been to Havanas several times but this visit was very disappointing! I don’t even know if I would ever go to Havanas again after this experience.

The men had the Latino Burger ($18). This huge burger has a beef patty, chorizo sausage, bacon, cheese, lettuce, tomato, spicy mayo, avocado, and onions all on a toasted bun.

One thing we noticed instantly was how they don’t cut the sausage in half anymore. This makes eating it a bit problematic because the sausage tries to fall out of the bun. It’s probably best to cut your sausage up (no weird dirty pun intended). M really didn’t like the new bun or how the sausage was not cut up. The best part of the sides are the fries!!

Here was the past review about the burger.

Jojocake and I both ordered the Cobb salad ($15). It is a bed a mixed greens with fried chicken, avocado, pumpkin seeds, bacon, and eggs and finished with a balsamic vinaigrette.

I thought this was a pretty good salad. The fried chicken was very delicious and juicy inside. It’s a very earthy salad, all the ingredients were fresh. It doesn’t look impressive, but it has a good taste. It’s not a heavy meal but you will get full.

The Tuna ceviche ($13) was a major disappointment! They have changed the entire dish into 3 small little tart looking items. It was not even worth $13! That’s more than $4 per “tart”. It tasted so much better before too! The taste was ok, but noting too spectacular.

This is what it use to look like.

After we ate, it took us a while to get the waitresses attention. It also took a while to get the machine to pay with credit. Once she did bring it, she did one transaction … left and didn’t come back for a while. We spent the time waiting looking at each other at the table trying to figure out why it was so slow. It wasn’t a packed day, so this was super odd.

Overall, the food is ok, but the service was really bad and the increased prices are now just a turn off. With so many other restaurants on The Drive, you can go else where.

Words of Wisdom:

Overpriced
Hit and miss items
Great Sangria
Slow service

We rate Havana’s:

Visit Havana’s Website: www.havanarestaurant.ca

Address:

1212 Commercial Dr
Vancouver, BC

In Commercial Drive / Grandview

Havanas: Latin Burgers & Sangria

March 31, 2011

Another late night at SFU and a bunch of us were growing super super hungry after our meeting. Thinking about what is still open, we just headed off to The Drive. We first headed to the Libra Room, but they didnt have enough room for us. We were also all starving and didn’t want to wait. So, what to do… we called up Havanas to see if there was room for all of us.

Success! They did have enough room for us, so we ran down to Havanas. We had 30 mins till last call, so we ordered quickly.

No university student can go without some alcohol, so we started off with the Rojo Sangria. It has red wine, cherry and apricot brandy, fresh fruit, strawberries, and fruit juice.

We all liked the Rojo Sangria! It was sweet and yummy!

After we drank the Rojo Sangria, we got the Tropical Sangria. This has white wine, Malibu, mango, fresh fruit, and citrus juice. This was not as good as the Rojo Sangria. The Malibu Rum gave this sangria a more alcoholic taste.

All 6 of us decided to get the Latino Burger ($18). This huge burger has a grilled beef patty, grilled chorizo, bacon, swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, spicy mayo, avocado, and onions all on a toasted ciabatta bun.This is a man’s burger! It is pretty large. It is quite hard to wrap your mouth around this sandwich. This burger is quite expensive, but you do get 2 types of meat in this burger. You also get your choice of fries, salad or both.

All the girl had to pack up half their burgers since they could not finish it. The men ate it all with ease. In the end we were all satisfied with the food!

At the end of the night, our waitress handed out a ballot form for Dining Out For Life. Participating restaurants such as Havanas donated 25% of their sales towards a great cause for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Havana’s is best known for their Sangria!

We rate Havana’s:

Visit Havana’s Website: www.havanarestaurant.ca

Address:

1212 Commercial Dr
Vancouver, BC

In Commercial Drive / Grandview

Havanas (Visit #3)

January 15, 2011

Did you know, I really love Havana’s? My go to place for days when I can’t decide where to eat. My goal is to eat through their menu.

Check out my past posts on Havana’s: Visit #1, Visit #2

I came here hungry and ready to eat their AMAZING Tuna Burger, but alas they discontinued it 2 months ago since they could not get fresh tuna from their suppliers. They didn’t want to serve their customers a dish that is not fantastic.

Since I was craving Tuna, I ordered the Tuna Ceviche ($12). This is a fresh tuna crudo house cured ceviche with warm corn tortilla chips. The tuna is amazingly seasoned and the tortilla chips were really crispy yet warm.

One thing I felt was very off about this dish was how largely the green onions were cut p to be sprinkled on top. If i ate it with the Tuna, it would have overpowered the dish. So, I scraped off the onion from the top.

I am and always will be a fan of their burgers, so I ordered The Burger ($14). It contains a beef patty, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pickles, mayo, mustard, all on a toasted ciabatta bread. The burger was quite good and had a lot of fixings on the inside. Well made burger, but if you need something meaty and to DIE FOR, try out the Latin Burger because its MASSIVE!

For my sides, I ordered half salad and half fries. Best of both words! Their fries are thin cut and seasoned with salt and pepper. I really like their fries because of the cut.

M decided to make it a healthy day, so he ordered the Jerk Chicken Wrap ($15). It has grilled chicken breast, spicy mayo, salsa, lettuce, fetta cheese, and jalapenos wrapped in a cheese tortilla. I think this was M’s most favorite chicken wrap ever. All the ingredients blended well and is worth the $15 you pay!

Instead of fries and a salad, M got the daily soup for a few bucks more. The soup was a vegetable based soup.

We rate Havana’s:

Visit Havana’s Website: www.havanarestaurant.ca

Address:

1212 Commercial Dr
Vancouver, BC

In Commercial Drive / Grandview

Havana

September 20, 2010

Oh Havana’s…how much I love thee. When I am in need of a drink or some oh so yummy food, I turn to you.

Havana’s on Commercial serves up Latin American and Cuban cuisine. When you walk into the restaurant, you can’t be helped but to be drawn towards the wall. People have scratched it up and have written on the walls…and then there are old photos of people up. Kinda creepy, but it’s interesting to look at.

On a nice summers day they have air conditioning inside! They also have a patio on the outside to soak up the sun.

To start off the whole meal, MedicalGiraffe and I had a pitcher of Champaign Sangria because if you plan to have more than one glass (which you will), you save more money. I think it was $25 compared to about $8 per glass. It’s a big pitcher, so 2 or 3 people will be a bit tipsy after drinking so much.

We ordered the Halibut ceviche ($12) with warm corn tortilla chips. The tortilla chips were nice and crunchy. The Halibut was just ok but not super compared to the Tuna Ceviche. I have yet to try the crab ceviche.

Medical Giraffe ordered the Goat Cheese Salad ($12), which had fresh greens, crumbled caprini goat’s cheese, fresh strawberries and champagne-ginger vinaigrette. I tried a bit of it and I never knew this before but GOAT CHEESE IS AWESOME.

I had the Tuna Burger, which the tuna was nice and seared on the outside and pink on the inside. It also came with choice of salad or fries or both. I would recommend getting both the fries and salad since both are really good to try out. I particularly like the fries because they are thin. I think it was about $15 or $16. I’m not 100% sure since it’s not on their website.

As we were eating our meal, we noticed a couple outside eating shrimp. Since I am addicted to shrimp and all things seafood. We decided to order the Shrimp cocktails ($9). It had 15 pieces (not 30 as per the menu), house made cocktail sauce, and lemon. The house cocktail cause was very spicy and was kinda in your face. I think they added either wasabi or horseradish to it.

I’ve been here a lot, so let me impart some words of wisdom:

Do no order the Tostones ($7 Fried plantain chips), tasted burnt and Super fried
Sangria is a must, or the mojito will do
If you are a man who loves meat, try The Burger
Do check out the art gallery in the back of the restaurant near the washrooms

Havana’s is my favorite spot to go to! It has AMAZING Sangria and lots of choices on food. I always end up spending about $25 here by ordering appetizer, entrée and sangria.

We rate Havana’s:

Visit Havana’s Website: www.havanarestaurant.ca