El Habanero & Churrobar
El Habanero & Churrobar serves Cuban dishes and epic churro desserts with rainbow sprinkles and soft serve in a primarily takeout format.
Partners Michelle and Angel Videaux Mencias started the business as a mobile churro bar. This brick and mortar gives them the chance to expand into real deal Cuban food as well as wacky churros.
The interior, though stark and large, reaches for hominess and comfort with low chairs and rustic decor but falls a little short with harsh lighting and grey walls.
Nevertheless, the cheery attitude behind the food shines through here, and the space isn’t really meant for eating in anyway.
Picadillo fries ($7.99) are essentially a Cubanized version of chili cheese fries, picadillo being a traditional Latin American hash. They’re definitely not skimping on the meat or blend of cheeses and the fries are seasoned well.
The El Cubano ($10) is a classic Cuban hot pressed sandwich on crunchy Toronto Bread Company bread with melty swiss, roasted pork, ham, and acidic pickles and mustard.
Cuban stewed chicken ($12.99) is super tender and falls apart with the touch of a fork, after being slow cooked in a tomato sauce with comforting Cuban spices. It’s served bone-in with potatoes, warmly spiced rice and hearty slices of sweet plantain.
All churro sundaes are $7: soft serve with various extravagant toppings and a churro stuck right in.
A brownie version is topped with chocolate crumble, a fudgy brownie from local company Triple Baked, chocolate syrup and, of course, a glazed and chocolate-dust-dipped churro.
Triple Baked also provides the monster, chewy chocolate chip cookie for the Milk n’ Cookies churro sundae, which comes topped with addictive cookie dough bites and is dripping with condensed milk syrup.
The Galaxy churro sundae is topped with cotton candy bits and a blue raspberry syrup plus a glazed churro coated in bright pink sprinkles.
As for the churros themselves, they’re relatively hollow and crunchy but are generously coated in cinnamon sugar and super long. So long they’re hard to stuff into boxes of a half dozen for $9 or a dozen for $15 (individual churros are $1.75).
There are also gourmet churros ($2) with special toppings like Nutella and "rainbow," and even churro cupcakes.
Hector Vasquez