Havana

Havana has occupied its spot on South Dixie Highway since 1993, when Roberto and Martha Reyes opened the restaurant with their daughter, also named Martha Reyes, and son in law Rafael Perez. More than three decades later, the family is now on its fourth generation working the restaurant, with a great granddaughter of the founders greeting guests at the same location. That kind of continuity is unusual in restaurant ownership, and it shows in how the place runs: a Cuban restaurant built around a family recipe book rather than a concept dreamed up for a single grand opening.

The restaurant is known locally for its walk up coffee window, a ventanita in the Miami Cuban tradition, where cortaditos and colada get poured to a steady stream of regulars stopping in for a quick jolt of Cuban coffee. Havana’s own site notes that the window operates around the clock, though the full dine in hours for table service are not spelled out day by day, so anyone planning a late night or early morning sit down visit should call ahead to confirm the dining room itself is open rather than just the window out front.

On the menu, the Cuban sandwich gets top billing, including a Havana Edition built with lechon asado, and it has earned outside recognition: USA Today included it among the top Cuban sandwiches in Florida. Beyond the sandwich case, the kitchen turns out Mar y Tierra, pairing steak with garlic shrimp, a churrasco served with chimichurri, camarones al ajillo, and housemade empanadas. Plantain nachos topped with Cuban picadillo show up as a newer addition to an otherwise traditional menu, and the tres leches cake closes things out the way a Cuban abuela would insist on.

Havana has been named a Best of Palm Beach County winner across multiple years running, including 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024, a run of recognition that reflects the restaurant’s standing with the newspaper’s readers rather than a claim the restaurant makes about itself. Catering is also part of the business, which makes sense given how many South Florida family gatherings and office parties run on trays of Cuban food ordered ahead of time.

Location wise, 6801 South Dixie Highway puts Havana south of downtown, along the same Dixie Highway corridor that runs past Antique Row and into the South End, a stretch of the city where family run, single location restaurants have historically had an easier time surviving than they might closer to the tourist heavy blocks downtown. For anyone tracing the history of Cuban food in Palm Beach County, Havana is one of the longer running names still operating under the same family that opened it more than thirty years ago, which is worth knowing before assuming every Cuban spot along Dixie Highway is a recent arrival to the neighborhood.

The dining room itself keeps a casual, counter service feel that matches the neighborhood around it, a mix of longtime residential streets and small businesses rather than the hotel and office towers that define downtown a couple of miles north. That setting has helped Havana build a loyal base of regulars who treat the restaurant as a routine stop rather than an occasional destination, the kind of relationship that takes decades of consistent ownership to build in a restaurant industry where turnover is the norm rather than the exception.