dee g.
Yelp
The decor has recently changed: now more seating is available (since the place is ALWAYS packed even after 9pm on a Wednesday night), but gone is the Peruvian ambiance. The old hats and knickknacks that used to adorn the walls are now nowhere to be seen.
Lighting is now suspiciously dim (to hide the defects with their food?) except when it's someone's birthday, where the lights brighten to a soundtrack of a cute slightly-mispronounced birthday song. This is the only reason I might recommend the joint for entertainment purposes.
The first 2 times I went there, I was extremely happy with everything and recommended it to others. But in January 2009 I had a miserable experience. I'd reserved a table for 8. Two people were late to arrive, and the staff rudely tried to split our table to accommodate a couple who came in with no reservations. The uprooting caused 4 of us to change seats after we'd already been served, and when our late-comers arrived, we had to ask for extra chairs to squeeze us all in.
The waitress was rude, could barely speak English or French, got my order wrong, and called me SIR when I'm clearly FEMALE.
Only one of my co-diners was happy with their coriander chicken. Another, who had the chicken in cream sauce said there was too much sauce and hardly any chicken. The sauce itself had no real flavor to it and there was nothing such as vegetables to break up the monotony of the heaping plate of cream-and-chicken. One of the entrees was listed very enticingly as a type of chicken salad, but turned out to be (likely) chicken from a can with mayo. One of our late-comers found a hair in her food, which was replaced by salsa and chips, at her cost!
For nearly a year, I refused to go back, but tonight decided to give it one more try, thinking I may have just had bad luck that last time. WRONG. Hair in the food again, lack of attentiveness from the staff, and when I dropped my change to pay at the poorly-lit, cramped cash area, the staff just shrugged, saying 'Sorry, I'm not bending down to find it'. They let me search aimlessly for it on my side until I realized it had rolled under the counter onto theirs. Leaving behind the 2.50$ in lost change, I felt somehow very cheated, as I hadn't planned to leave any tip, let alone this hefty tip for hairy food and unhelpful staff.
I'd planned to ask for a doggie bag since my dish looked like about a pound of (very dry) chicken, and I could not finish 3/4 of it. Because of the frustration at the cash and with the hair in my co-diner's food, I completely forgot to ask for my food to be wrapped up. I might also point out, that we sat at our table for at least 40 minutes, hoping someone would come by to ask if we were done or wanted the rest to go. Nobody ever did. Though they didn't charge for my friend's meal, I felt grumpy about the quality of my own, and seeing a friend dissatisfied with the food does not encourage me to continue enjoying my portion. It puts a damper on the whole thing, and makes me wonder how many hairballs I myself may have ingested without noticing.
I felt frustrated when we left and decided not to go back to haggle for the remainder of my meal.
The only good things about the evening? The aroma of the food before we'd ordered, and the dulce de leche dessert - a sort of cookie sandwich, which after-the fact (we took out), left my dining partner and I feeling DIRTY. I won't be back again. Neither will the friends or family I'd previously encouraged to go to the Villa.