Habaneros, Caye Caulker

This was the best meal we had on Caye Caulker, by far. The food tasted amazing, the service was excellent and they have lots of different seafood dishes. Average meals were around US$20 but for a huge portion of Lobster i thought that was excellent. We met the chef, a young guy from the island...and i can honestly say i have not had a better meal on any other vacation. We will definitely be back!

Favorite Dish: Lobster Lobster Lobster!

In the course of our wanderings around town, we had noticed the nearby Habaneros restaurant, with it's second floor outside deck seating looking like a great place to enjoy a meal while watching the town go by below. As a result, on our final night before leaving for Ambergris Cay in the morning, we decided it was time to check things out. The place was quite busy when we arrived, but we were able to find a table for two on the deck as planned. Because we had lunched late following our snorkel dive, we decided to order a couple of small dishes and share them, which was fine with the staff.

Favorite Dish: This restaurant is known for it's internationally trained chefs, so we decided to sample their work with 3-Chicken Satay skewers of breast, marinated in Indo-inspired Herbs & Spices, grilled and served with Peanut Ginger Satay Sauce (US$8). We combined this with a really wild sounding dish of Creole Voodoo Cakes - a mixture of fresh seafood, combined with onion, sweet peppers & Creole seasoning, lightly breaded and then pan-fried (US$9). It was served with very hot Voodoo dipping sauce! We both greatly enjoyed the variety of flavours that we experienced with these dishes and washed everything down with a Belikin Lighthouse Lager (US$2.50) and a white wine spritzer (US$4). I was very happy to pay the US$31 total cost of this meal, after all, combined with the atmosphere, it was the best one on the island as far as I was concerned!

In spite of its Hispanic sounding name, Habañero's serves more Italian food than Mexican food. Their dinner menu features the likes of vegetable lasagne (which I highly recommend), jerk pork fajitas, and conch fritters. They have French and Italian wines on the menu, too. At lunch they only serve "Mayan Pizza" - try the Don Dario, with ham, pineapple, and shrimp (we asked them to hold the anchovies). Their thin pizza crust is very good!

The restaurant is open-air, and they actaully have real, albeit tiny, bathrooms inside, instead of the typical shack out back. This place is a little more upscale than most here (this is relative, remember) - we even had a wedding party sitting next to us one night. Here and at Don Corleone are the only places you might need reservations.

We ate hear twice in five days. The food is really good. They have two seatings, one at 6pm and one at 8. Everything was great but the pork chops and the chicken with ***akes were outstanding. They also make the smoothest "panty-rippers" (Coconut rum and pineapple) that we had on our trip - and we tried plenty! The service is remarkably fast and the setting is very elegant by Belizean standards. The setting is romantic. Your on a porch above the street at a table lit by candles and they have cloth napkins and nice decor.

Favorite Dish: Chicken with ***ake mushrooms. Chicken sounds so plain but this was heavenly.