As New Orleans diners celebrated Cinco de Mayo, one French Quarter restaurant recognized for its Cuban and Mexican flavors was serving its ultimate clients.

Habana Outpost, at North Rampart Road and Esplanade Avenue, has closed after about two years in enterprise. The restaurant opened in 2023 in a long-vacant former gasoline station that was redeveloped solely after years of neighborhood opposition and authorized battles over the challenge.

The restaurant grew to become recognized for dishes together with Cuban sandwiches, tacos, road corn and margaritas, served in a patio-oriented setting on the sting of the French Quarter.

The Habana model traces again to 1998, when Sean Meenan opened the primary Café Habana in New York Metropolis’s NoLita neighborhood. Through the years, the idea expanded past that unique diner right into a wider household of eating places and outposts, together with places in Brooklyn, Malibu, New Orleans and worldwide markets akin to Tokyo and Dubai. The broader Habana identification has lengthy blended meals, design and community-building, with the Brooklyn places specifically serving to set up the model’s repute for a extra eclectic, socially pushed restaurant mannequin.

In 2006, Meenan launched Habana Works, a nonprofit aimed toward selling city environmentalism and supporting the neighborhoods the place the model operates. By means of Habana Works and associated initiatives, Meenan has tied the Habana identify to hands-on schooling, environmental programming and native engagement.

When Meenan introduced the Habana Outpost idea to the French Quarter, the challenge plans drew opposition for greater than a decade, from public conferences and neighborhood resistance suggesting that the proposed restaurant within the historic district was too giant and out of character for the world. Remaining approvals and eventual opening took near a decade.