Rebel - New York

Tonight we Celebrated our 10 Year Wedding Anniversary. When I say the Food...Service Atmosphere was exceptional. 5 out of 5 starts across the board. We will definitely be back!

The black rice wasn't made with real black mushrooms (Djon Djon). The goat had no season,pepper or acid. The tour of Haiti was a rip-off. One peice of fried green plantain was $2 and akra had no epise or spice. Mac and cheese tasted stale, like they took it out the freezer where it's been for a month or more and threw it in the overn, no real cheese flavor. The quality of the food wasn't good. Not Authentic Haitian cooking. 8 of us went and none of us were happy with our food. Not a pleasant experience. OUR CUISINE IS SO MUCH BETTER!!!!

I had been craving Haitian food for a while and this place did not disappoint. I had the chiktay (smoked herring) appetizer, which also came with green plantains. The chiktay was so flavorful/delicious and the plantains were fried to perfection. The chiktay had A LOT of oil though, which I noticed at the bottom of the bowl. It wasn’t a problem for me since it’s not something I eat often, and I don’t feel like it affected how much I enjoyed it but something to be mindful of if you need to limit oil intake. For my entree, I had legume and diri ak djon djon (black rice). As a pescatarian, I like that they don’t cook their legume with meat. That’s so hard to find at restaurants. You can pick your protein to add in, and I chose shrimp. The rice was on point-texture, flavor, everything! The legume was okay. I felt it was missing something in flavor but can’t exactly pinpoint what. I did notice some liquid separation from the puréed veggies so maybe it just needed to cook down more to let the flavors settle in. It wasn’t bad, but considering how great everything else was, it just fell a little short. I would probably skip it the next time. However, the shrimp in the legume was cooked well. Overall, I would come back to try more of the menu, especially since they seem to have a decent amount of seafood options.One thing that I did not like was that they charged $8 for a glass of lemonade. $8 is wild to me considering it wasn’t made in-house. It came out of the bar tap. It tasted like watered down Minute Maid. And, since it was happy hour, the cocktails were the same price and the beer/wine was actually cheaper! I could maybe understand the up charge if it was a mocktail, but this was not that at all.

Food: Delicious, authentic, and great highlight of the diverse flavors of HaitiPortion size: very generous and fillingService: communicative and fastLocation: difficult to find parkingDecor: Good depiction of the creativity of Haitian art and cultureMusic: blend of Kompa , afrobeats, and reggaeI would highly recommend this place especially for anyone who would like to try Haitian cuisine for the first time.I appreciate that the authenticity of the food was not compromised.Parking: It is important to allocate time to find parking. This area is full of restaurants and boutiques with patrons walking around. The streets in this area are very narrow.

Searching for the flavor and couldn’t find it.Living in Jersey, I’m not in NY that often. I’ve heard great things about the Haitian culinary scene in NY. I figured I try a Haitian restaurant before inviting my colleagues to take part of my culture. Haitian restaurants can be hit or miss. Rebel was a miss for sure. It looked Haitian but was not authentically Haitian.I don’t mind spending and supporting Black owned businesses especially that of my culture. However this was not it.The legim was lacking. One of the reviews said the djon djon was like fried rice and I couldn’t agree more. The makawoni au gratin tasted like it was cooked on the stove and the used a flame torch to brown the top. The taste of the peppers and onions was clearly absent. Plus it needed salt.The portions for the price, disappointing.If I’m going to spend $33 bucks for my dish (legim) it better be worth that much. I rolled my eyes at the receipt because it was a waste of money.