The restaurant isn’t very hard to find. Habanero Express is on the main road of one of Islamabad’s centrally busy places and on a chilly Islamabad afternoon (the weather is still crisp up here), a burger craving is probably the one reason why so many burger joints have popped up all over Islamabad. The once sleepy town is slowly waking up and trying its hand at culinary magic.

Smoke bellowed out the small restaurant as I walked in. Doors open, customers were enveloped in a haze of warm, grey smoke. Not a good sign but on a cold Islamabad afternoon it wasn’t as disturbing as it could’ve been. The restaurant is very cute. Red chairs and wooden tables with the kitchen looking out into the restaurant (a modern touch that I assume the owner is probably regretting because of the smoke factor) and a small coffee area next to the kitchen.

I like a short menu and deeply distrust a menu with more than 20 dishes; they can’t all possibly be good. With Habanero Express it’s evident that they feel that their burgers are their true calling as there are eight burgers, including two chickens on the menu. They also have sandwiches and pasta type entrees.

Who wouldn’t order a burger called "The Mighty?" It was a thick beef burger with crimini mushrooms, gouda cheese and caramelized onions - oh my! Next up was the Roast Beef Burger. Simple sirloin steak with onions and cheese, it was a safe choice. You can’t really go wrong there. And for variety’s sake, there was an herbed chicken sandwich with sun dried tomatoes, spinach and a balsamic glaze. Habanero Express was speaking my language. After placing the order along with a bunch of different orders for fries, namely kimchi fries, sweet chilli fries and aioli fries, I was famished and ready to eat.

The one thing I cannot accept at a restaurant is when the food for a group of people comes separately. It’s really not fun watching someone else eat their main entrée while you end up waiting for yours. Or making someone else wait, for manner’s sake, while the food gets cold. Habanero Express really needs to work on getting its food out together. It’s been around for more than a few months and cannot just be teething issues.

First up was The Mighty. And what a burger it was! I wouldn’t necessarily call it "mighty" though. With moist, succulent beef, a strong punch of gouda, mushrooms and cheese, it really hit the spot. But it was more "Mighty Mouse," I would say. It’s a fantastic burger but needed a little green to give that fresh crunch that would give this mammoth burger its zing.

Next up was the Roast Beef Burger. A simple burger, it stays true to its roots and honors the sirloin steak. It was good and good enough to say that simplicity sometimes goes a long way.

I played with the different fries we had ordered while waiting for the herbed sandwich. I know kimchi fries have been on trend for a while but the taste just eludes me. The tartness of kimchi on pre-packaged fries doesn’t turn out well. I would recommend that the restaurant should cut their own fresh fries. This would do wonders for their different sauces. The sauce doesn’t hang on so well to the curves of pre-frozen fries. They don’t go well with tart and tangy sauces and they didn’t in the case of kimchi. Leaving kimchi behind, I moved onto aioli and sweet chilli. Not bad. Aioli with a lemony mayo taste reminded me a refined " Karachi’s hot and spicy" mayo fries - although I do crave the latter a lot more.

The long wait for the herbed chicken sandwich could have been longer. The sandwich was aggressively flavoured with herbs - something I am an advocate of since the flavor is incredibly enhanced. What ruined the sandwich was the spinach. The sandwich had a bitter after taste, which is something that spinach sometimes, proudly leaves behind. The lingering taste made it difficult for another bite and another assault on my taste buds. Switch the spinach for rocket and you’ve got bitter with a smooth after taste but with this, two bites is all I could take.

The staff was very sweet, music very country, and my afternoon cup of coffee - a cappuccino – was also very good. I think Habanero Express could wipe out their sandwiches and entrees off its menu and just focus on the burgers. It has the potential for country-wide fame, with people coming in from different cities just to try the burgers, myself included. But they need to work on their chicken and scrap the lazy, frozen fries. Not Express-sive at all.