Laura R.
Yelp
I was excited to try this place based on enthusiastic Yelp! reviews and I wanted to give it a rave. On this night, at least, it did not live up to expectations.
Food: My friend and I shared the "chicha salad" and the Peruvian-style paella. Portions were good - with two of us we still had leftovers from both dishes. The risotto style rice in the paella was nicely cooked. The seafood - clams, mussels, shrimp, calamari - was fresh and not overcooked. The flavor was fine, tasty but not wonderful. To me, the sauce was a bit thick and the tomato seemed to mute the saffron. I wouldn't object to eating this again but neither was it delectable. The salad was quite lovely - crisp, good selection of flavorful greens, nicely cooked hard boiled egg, intriguing Peruvian corn, which was something like a bean, bright flavored dressing. We were sorry they were out of flan, one of the things I had my mouth set on. Instead we ordered the caja de alfajores, crumbly cookies sandwiching a caramel sauce and accompanied by a flavorful vanilla ice cream. This was very pleasant, I loved the cookie's crumbly texture but the cookies didn't have the butteriness or the caramel the flavor-forwardness I hoped for. Oh, the dinner rolls! They were to die for! Small, round, light, perfect!
Service: Began auspiciously but went downhill. On the positive side, when we got there we decided to eat indoors because it was chilly. My friend has hearing issues so we asked for a quiet spot. There was music in the main restaurant and they suggested we eat at a table in the bar area. This worked well, it was a pleasant space, and we appreciated the recommendation. Our server was pleasant and enthusiastic, but she spaced out on our request for more dinner rolls. We had to ask at least twice after our initial request. Then, after we ordered dessert, she disappeared for about a half hour. This is not an exaggeration! We finally went looking for her and had to ask another server to track her down. It was still quite a while after that, but she finally showed up with our dessert. When she did, no acknowledgment that eons had passed. She was pleasant to interact with and knowledgeable about the food, happy to respond to our questions, but seemed to completely forget that our table existed!
A slight weirdness: another person, who seemed to belong to the restaurant, approached us with a not very clear request to take our picture. After some back-and-forth, we recognized that this was a "the first one's free"deal: we could get a quick printout but she was hoping to sell us a version in a frame to commemorate dinner. I guess, on balance, this added amusement to the evening, but we were not looking for intrusions or sales.
I'm a believer in confirmation bias, meaning that what we see is based partly on what we expect. I came in expecting a lot. My actual experience overcame my initial bias in favor of this restaurant. If I keep hearing great things about it I may give it another try but, in the meantime, continue to be in search of a new favorite...