Café Habana

The Verdict

Café Habana is one of SoHo's most consistently rewarding casual stops, and Friday and Saturday nights — when it stays open until midnight — make it a genuinely useful late-night option in a neighbourhood that mostly goes quiet after 10 PM. With a 4.6 rating across more than 4,000 Google reviews and a 2025 Opinionated About Dining Cheap Eats ranking of #151 in North America, this is not a secret, but it holds its position for good reason. Book it for a relaxed late dinner when you want Cuban food done well without the ceremony or the $300 price tag.

What to Expect

Café Habana sits at 17 Prince Street in SoHo, a corner address that has drawn a steady crowd for long enough to become a neighbourhood fixture. The format is casual Cuban: the kind of place where the room is lively, the menu is approachable, and the bill stays manageable. For food-focused visitors exploring New York City's restaurant scene, this is the Cuban benchmark in lower Manhattan , the spot you measure others against before deciding to go further afield to something like Havana Central.

The OAD Cheap Eats list is a useful compass here. Moving from Recommended (2023) to #447 (2024) to #151 (2025) is a meaningful upward trajectory , the kind of sustained improvement that tends to reflect consistent kitchen execution rather than a one-year surge of attention. Chef Luke Thomas runs the kitchen, and the upward ranking movement suggests the food is landing better than it was two years ago.

On the practical side: the restaurant runs Monday through Thursday and Sunday from 11 AM to 11 PM, with Friday and Saturday hours stretching to midnight. That extra hour on weekends is worth noting if you're planning a late finish , it gives Café Habana a clear advantage over most of its SoHo neighbours, which stop seating by 10 PM. The kitchen turning out Cuban food at 11:30 PM on a Friday in this part of Manhattan is not something you take for granted.

The aroma profile of a well-run Cuban kitchen , garlic, citrus, roasted pork, slow-cooked beans , tends to be one of the more immediately welcoming signals you get walking into a room, and Café Habana has been putting that smell into Prince Street for long enough that it's become part of the block's identity. For the food-focused traveller who treats a restaurant as a destination in itself, the context matters: this is a place that has earned its position through repetition and consistency, not through hype cycles or a chef-as-celebrity narrative.

No price range is listed in our data, but the OAD Cheap Eats ranking is a reliable indicator that you're in casual, accessible territory , not a $$$$ tasting menu situation. For reference, the venues at the leading of that same list typically run well under $50 per head. If you're planning a broader day in the area, New York City's bar scene and experiences guide are worth checking alongside this.

Booking and Timing

Walk-ins are realistic here , this is not an allocation-style booking situation like Atomix or Masa, where you're competing for seats weeks out. The booking difficulty rating is Easy. That said, SoHo on a Friday or Saturday night is busy across the board, so arriving early in the evening gives you the smoothest experience. If you're specifically planning a late-night visit , say, arriving after 10 PM , the crowd typically thins and the room becomes easier to work with. For solo diners or pairs, a late Friday visit is probably the lowest-friction way to eat here.

Groups of four or more should consider calling ahead or arriving before 7 PM, when seating pressure is lower. No phone number is listed in our current data, so check the venue directly for group booking options.

How It Compares