May 18, 2026 · Updated May 18, 2026
Sabor Quisqueyano opened last week at 148 Front Street in Hempstead, bringing family-style Dominican cooking to a neighborhood where the cuisine had no dedicated sit-down spot. Owner Carmen Reyes left a catering job in Queens to open the 38-seat restaurant, with lunch plates starting at $12 and dinner entrees topping out at $22.
Carmen Reyes spent 11 years catering quinceañeras and family parties out of a Queens commissary kitchen before she found the right address. Last Tuesday, she opened Sabor Quisqueyano at 148 Front Street in Hempstead, a 1,800-square-foot corner space that had been empty for nearly three years.
The restaurant seats 38. At lunch it runs $12 to $16 plates built around a changing protein, roasted pernil, stewed chicken, or red snapper in garlic sauce, served with a choice of rice, habichuelas, and a small house salad. Dinner plates push slightly higher, topping out at $22 for a whole snapper with tostones and sweet plantains.
Mangu, the mashed plantain dish that is the backbone of Dominican breakfast cooking, anchors a morning menu that Reyes serves from 7 to 11 a.m., seven days a week. A thermos of cafe con leche comes with every breakfast order. "People were driving to Queens or the Bronx for this food," she said, wiping down a prep station an hour before the lunch rush. "I thought, why is nobody doing this here?"
Hempstead's Front Street corridor, which runs parallel to Main Street, has seen a wave of Latino-owned businesses open in the past three years. A Salvadoran bakery and two barbershops opened within the same block over the past year. But a full-service Dominican restaurant with a sit-down dining room was absent until this week.
The village's Latino population, which includes a substantial Dominican community centered on Fulton Avenue and Front Street, was estimated at more than 40,000 in Nassau County's 2023 community survey. Reyes said she chose the location after walking the neighborhood for two weeks and watching the lunch-hour foot traffic from nearby municipal offices and the Nassau County Courthouse, three blocks north.
The space was renovated on a $65,000 budget that Reyes financed through a combination of personal savings and a $20,000 small business grant from Nassau County's Economic Development Initiative, a program for minority-owned food businesses launched in 2024. The kitchen runs on a staff of four, including her sister, who handles the breakfast line.
Sabor Quisqueyano is open Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. No reservations. Walk-ins only.
