Haven Haus Cafe — Restaurant in Temecula

Frozen reheated food, but with ambiance? That's what awaits you at Haven Haus in Temecula.

This restaurant has an incredible amount of potential, and considering that they are on their second location I expected far better quality than what I got last weekend. There were numerous examples where choices were made to deliver food that is better looking than better tasting. The majority of the food is clearly frozen or the lowest quality available from cheap restaurant suppliers.

I had a veggie omelet with hash browns and it was fine, no problems and thankfully not overly salty or greasy. I ordered a biscuit for a side and that is where the downfall began. The biscuit was clearly a thaw-and-serve biscuit that was microwaved. If you are going to go with frozen bread, at least go get the frozen dough biscuits that you can freshly bake and you'll at least deliver something on par with Denny's and IHOP. But this thawed pre-made biscuit was served with another sin, whipped margarine. Once again this is an example of choosing looks over taste as the margarine maintains a nice lemon yellow color, but is otherwise gross.

My wife ordered the "specialty" which was unfortunately scarred for life by the aforementioned biscuits... The Honey Chicken Biscuits. This was the source of an even worse sin, frozen pre-breaded fried chicken fingers. This is where I draw the line as even "coffee shops" manage to bread in-house and fry their own chicken. It would probably be cheaper for the restaurant. These shoe-leather chewy chicken fingers on the rubber sponge texture biscuits were just plain disgusting. The only thing that wasn't previously frozen on that plate was the coleslaw.

So if you're looking for taking good pictures of food, this is the place for you. If you want good tasting food, lots of better options in town within walking distance. Service was friendly but they seem to know that the food isn't very good and this is just a place to be seen instead of a place to dine.

What is probably the most disappointing is when the server brought over a tablet computer payment device, the owners have a customer satisfaction survey set up to collect feedback from their guests. But our server told us "you don't need to waste your time filling that out." So I guess that management really doesn't care what their customers think about their food, and they're waiting until the dollars stop flowing in when the mediocre taste of their food churns through the customer base with nobody coming back.

So much potential here, but they can't get to the...

Updated Review 7/6/2035:

So after our last experience my wife and I were invited to come back by the owner in an effort to make things right. I have to say that they hit it out of the park this time! From the minute we walked in until the minute we left Javier and his staff made us feel so welcomed. Everything was great in this visit, the team, the food the ambiance. A special shout out to our waitress, Madison, who did a spectacular job. It was so great to talk to one of the owners and see how they genuinely care about their customers. I can’t recommend this place enough. One last note: Try the chilaquiles - they’re great! Oooh, and the corn ribs. Yum!

Thank you Javier and team for making this visit special.

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Previous Review (June 2025)

Disappointed.

Well, we have eaten here 1.5 times. The first time the food was great and the service was good. However, today we came for an early lunch and were seated promptly in the middle of the restaurant at a two-seat table. So far, so good. We sat and sat for about 30 minutes while waiters walked by minute after minute without even looking our direction. Never were we given water or anything - no contact at all. Not even when another couple was seated right next to us, given water, and their order was taken. We were flabbergasted. The nice couple next to us even asked if they had served us yet. Not sure how they noticed, but not a single waiter in the place didn’t, even though they literally were facing us as they took the other couple’s order.

Long story short, we ended up walking out after 30 minutes. The hostess apologized when we told her what happened.

So...

Place is cute and trendy but not worth the wait, service and food. We waited 45 minutes to be seated for a party of 5. It was our first time there, so we decided to wait. Once we were seated, the waitress came to introduce herself and asked if we had any questions. We started by ordering water as we decided what drinks we were going to order. The waitress left and came back, without our water, but she took our order. We ordered and reminded her about our water. We got our drinks, and we never got our water. We reminded her again, and she finally brought us water. Two people in our party ordered their burger meat medium rare, but the meat was over cooked, even felt rubbery. At this point, we had already waited for a while for our food to be served, so we decided not to return the plates. The food was a bit cold, like if it was left out for a while. We are regulars in Old Town Temecula, and unfortunately, we will probably not return to Haven Haus. There are better spots in the area. The hostess and waitress did have sweet personalities, and were nice, but the waitress needs to be trained to make sure their customers are...