Habanero Baja Grill

Love their fiesta salad! Just wish they had longer hours… They close an hour before most places in that food court and it would be so great if they were open until 8 for dinner

I go here on a regular basis. The food is amazing, I usually get the chicken fiesta salad but I’ve tried the burrito as well-​also very good. Everything is made with fresh ingredients and the guacamole goes great with the dish. The chips are fresh and never stale
The staff is so nice, have great recommendations, and are so accommodating to what you want. I definitely recommend this place for a quick, healthy, hardy lunch or dinner for a good price.

I visited with a friend for a late lunch. The ingredients weren’t cold or stale as some other reviewers said, but the server on staff was inattentive, and we had to wait a few minutes for her to finish a phone conversation before we could order.
The namesake habanero salsa really did its job. I’m constantly disappointed by foods and sauces touted as «spicy» at other places, but Habanero’s worked as advertised. I’m a fan of Carolina Reaper, bhut jolokia, and so on, and this salsa was no dud. I had to get multiple refills of my drink (which were free, unlike at many other food court restaurants) to finish my entire burrito.
My overall impression didn’t change much after that fiery meal; Habanero is pretty much Chipotle with actually spicier salsas.

Worst customer service and the food is low end mexican style fast food. The woman working on 12÷22÷14 around 5 pm served me steak instead of chicken. I took one bite of my food, realized it was the wrong meat (…and I can’t eat red meat for health reasons) I went back to get my order correct. I was polite but got shot down very rudely because I didn’t say anything before I took a bite and told I’d have to pay for another salad which didn’t make sense when I clearly hadn’t eaten the one I was given. When she finally gave me another salad she shoved it at me and said that the first one was chicken and basically called me a liar. I took a bite of my new food… it was STEAK again… omg she had no clue which meat was what in their ingredient trays… So I just ate around it since the woman was so rude I didn’t want to go back and interact with her again. While I was eating my food I bit down on something hard… it was a rock. A ROCK. I’m assuming it was somehow unfiltered from the standard black bean filtering process… I guess. It’s the only way I can think of that a hard rock could get into my food. Yet I still didn’t want to go back because the woman was rude and who knows what her attitude would be if I tried to tell her a rock was in my food. So I just threw my steak and rock filled salad away and went hungry for lunch. I am so frustrated with the level of customer service and food quality I will never go back. What’s WORSE is that the website is poor quality and there is absolutely no contact information on the site. I’d much rather tell the business directly about my issues so they actually get the feedback in a timely manner. Terrible. Don’t waste your money, there’s 2 Chipotle’s within walking distance.

Food pretty good but there is a really rude check out girl here. She was rude to the woman in front of me, to me, and then the woman behind me. If i didnt like the food I would say 1 star for service.

I’ve has the veggie salad and chicken salad and it’s delicious. The fish looked amazing, I’ll try that next. The chicken is advertised as antibiotic free, it looks like it could be dark meat but that could just be the marinade. Not fatty at all like chipotle. Both dressings, the avocado like vinegarette and chipotle ranch are great. Salad is so filling and lasts the rest of the day. It’s noon and there’s 2 people in line, so don’t let the line scare you.

Steak fish and shrimp tacos were all stone cold at 11:20 lunch. Tried to call n notify them. Busy signal. Fail and fail.

Not all Habanero Baja Grills are alike. The one in the Nordstrom mall in River North was sub par at best. The rice tastes horrible, the chicken didn’t taste fresh, and the salsa was bland. I would avoid the one in the mall… go to the one near Union Station, the food is fresher and tastes significantly better.

I love this place — the food is fast, fresh, delicious, and highly customize-​able.
I usually get the chicken rice bowl (no rice, please — I’d like to keep it healthy). The steak is tasty, but too salty for me, and the fish is good, but I don’t trust fish from a food court.
Add black beans to the chicken, then it starts to get good:
Extra pico de gallo
Extra lettuce
Salsa verde (best salsa at any fast-​service Mexican restaurant)
Minced onion
Tortilla strips
Coleslaw
I eat this just about every week. 5 stars!

The closest place I can compare Habanero to is Chipotle, but they aren’t that corporate. Habanero is kind of like a low key Burrito Beach, without the huge menu and side charges for every little extra you order. Overall, I like Habanero and their rice bowls with fish. Just the right spiciness, though I suggest you be careful ordering anything super hot. These folks don’t play; it’ll be SPICY.
The ancho shrimp is also a nice addition. They can put a lot of ingredients in a burrito, a rice bowl, a salad. My fave is the slaw – tangy and gives anything a mild crunch. They also don’t charge extra if you want a couple of corn tortillas on the side with your bowl or salad.
My only problem is that after I ate here, I llooked at my receipt hours later. Twice they’ve charged me for ancho shrimp when I’ve ordered the veggie (a $ 2.50 difference). Lunch with a drink already costs anywhere from $ 7 to $ 12 here, so the extra bucks is irritating.

I wasn’t expecting much. I was hungry, grumpy and I needed something to eat before I went on a rampage and stole everyone else’s food.
I got 2 spicy chicken tacos from here and they weren’t half bad. They had enough kick to them to give them some flavor.
While I wouldn’t go out of my way to come back here, I’d certainly eat here again if I found myself in this mall

In terms of food court Mexican cuisine, these were some of the tastier shrimp tacos I’ve had. I like to get them on corn tortillas with pico de gallo, green chili (mild or medium) and red (hot) chili. Depending on the size of the shrimp you’ll receive either 2 or 3 per taco, but they are seasoned to perfection. The service is fast and the prices are affordable. Even though the menu doesn’t state so, you’re able to order tacos a la carte.

The food here tastes like it’s in a mall food court. Oh wait, it is.
I went out on a limb and tried the fish tacos. Let’s just say I won’t be trying those again.

Good, not great, but good.
I visited Habanero Baja Grill for a quick lunch with a friend. I typically go with a burrito and QSRs like this, but I decided to change it up a bit with an order of 3 chicken tacos. The chicken was seasoned well and was moist. That is always a plus! The toppings were good. Overall a solid option for a burrito or taco in the area.

I just started a job in Streeterville and I’m on a quest to eat everything in the neighborhood. Today was Habanero’s day…
I was going to give an extra start for the corn-​tortilla option — not because it’s authentic, but because it’s just tasty. Being a heat-​fiend myself, I got the Verde on two tacos and the «caliente!» on the the third. Totally underwhelmed.
See, when I’m going for something spicy I need something hot enough that it slows me down (not an easy task for me). I couldn’t even taste the heat in the verde sauce and the caliente sauce did have spice, but not enough to need a quick drink to keep going.
All that being said, the sauces and the barbacoa were very flavorful and for me, decent flavor is the most I expect from fast food.
Service was also very good. Same lunch-​rush efficiency you’d expect from most eateries in the city.
I’ll be going back to Habanero.

Restaurant Review
No flavor, world’s smallest burrito. The meats lack flavor and the burrito itself has so little content that I thought I was eating a kids meal. I prefer making my own burrito than eating this over priced nightmare. On top of that, the steak was dry and appeared to be sitting in the bucket for a long time. Staff was another nightmare. I have never seen anyone so lazy then you ask for more rice, he gave me a small spoonful more. You pay 6 dollars and you feel hungry afterwards. Never again!
Pro– none
Con– small portions, pricey for what you get, terrible service
Hidden deal– none

Fish Tacos with Slaw and Habenero Salsa was pretty good on corn tortillas.
Staff was great.
I’d go back.

If Chipotle had an evil twin, it would be called Habanero Baja Grill. At least Qdoba tries to be its own thing, but Habanero on the other hand is like if someone walked into a Chipotle, changed the flavors slightly, and changed the graphic/​interior design to something much more generic.
I got my usual from all Mexican restaurants: Chicken burrito — and to make it close to my Chipotle usual: rice, black beans, pico and corn, sour cream and cheese. It tasted OK but the rice (one of my favorite things about Chipotle cuisine) just did not hit the mark. When I say it tastes kind of like Chipotle but different, its like the meat is prepared/​spiced slightly more aggressively to try to make it unique. And it doesn’t quite work.
I also got a bag of chips /​guac. The guac is bland, and the chips tasted like they were a few days old.
WORST OF ALL, they don’t know how to wrap a burrito! Now, I am a self-​proclaimed master of eating burritos. I once was a young, feeble, messy eater, but over the years I have honed my burrito eating skills and have not had an ounce of burrito filling drop from my hand and onto my plate/​tray in years. Today something egregious happened. The burrito wraper-​er did a terrible job with my burrito and the tin foil + flour tortillia caved in on itself and spilled all over my tray. Terrible.
Ok, so I mentioned Chipotle like 10 times in this review. Go there instead for your americanized fast food chain Mexican.

If this Chipotle knock-​off is closer than an actual Chipotle, or if you are already in the mall or whatever and it is raining outside or twenty below zero and you’ve already had three Potbelly’s that week, then Habanero may be a suitable substitute. Note that Chipotle makes a big deal out of how much they try to be kind the the planet when they source their ingredients. Habanero does not seem to care about such stuff. Given that indifference stuff should at least cost less here right?
I just finished a veggie burrito which was the same price price as Chipotle’s offering (~$ 6) and it was about 20% smaller. It was also about 30% less tasty.
The service was fine — entirely competent for such an operation, but then again I did go in there before the lunch rush.

I’m not sure what those other guys are talking about. I’ve been here about 10 times already during my lunch break and have had a good experience every time.
Habanero Baja Grill is just like Chipotle, but better and cheaper. Compared to Chipotle, this place has more flavor.
My favorite meal here is the salad bowl with Chicken. It’s got beans, lettuce, salsa, tortilla chips, corn and a few other ingredients (sorry, I can’t remember off the top of my head).
I’ve also ordered fish tacos and steak tacos and both were good as well. I’m so glad they serve corn tortillas, unlike those places that only serve flour (bleh). Their hottest sauce claims to be the hot habanero, but it wasn’t flaming… it just tickled.
The service is good and fast. The only thing I would complain about is the glass wall that I have to talk through, which can make it hard to hear sometimes. But I understand that it’s there for sanitary reasons.
Other than that, it’s a good place to go for a healthy, flavorful meal. I highly recommend it!