El Rancho Peruvian Restaurant

I felt like I found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow when I found out that there was a Peruvian chicken place in Springfield -- all thanks to Yelp!

Their menu is extensive and has more than just Peruvian chicken and your typical sides.  From pupusas to empanadas to lomo saltado to sweet plaintains, there's a variety of things that I want to come back and try.  I ordered the 1/4 chicken with yuca and rice, and they were plentiful with the side orders.  The chicken was succulent, and they give you a special orange sauce, in addition to the typical white and green sauces!  I forgot to ask the name of it, but it seemed to be a sweet and spicy mix.

Although it's no El Pollo Rico, I'm glad that I found a good place closer to home.

Found El Rancho on Yelp and decided to try it with some friends last Saturday for lunch since it had such positive reviews.  We were all extremely disappointed.  We chose this place because we thought it would be a quick, delicious meal.  Instead, it was incredibly slow and mediocre at best.  

The Service:
We waited for about 40 minutes before going back up to the counter to figure out what was taking so long.  The gentleman at the counter said "Oh yes, your order is coming up in just 5 minutes."  We waited 10, and went back to the counter again.  It was very obvious they had completely forgotten our order.  It was still another 10  minutes before it came out.  This was a total of about an hour to get what is supposed to be pretty fast food.  When the food came out, the lady who brought it didn't know what any of it was.  We ordered several different types of empanadas, and when we asked which was which she just looked at us like "Ummm....?"  We complained about the long wait and the manager sent our table 3 desserts, which we really didn't want, but we did at least appreciate the gesture.

The Food:
The food wasn't as bad as the service.  Some of our empanadas were cold (eww).  Otherwise, the food wasn't bad.  I got a quarter white chicken with fries and plantains.  The plantains were EXCELLENT - very sweet, just the way I like them.  The fries were pretty good, too.  Definitely had better Peruvian chicken at other places, though.

Overall, there are much better Peruvian chicken places around - particularly El Pollo Rico and Super Pollo in Arlington.  Those are fast, cheap, and delicious and worthy of 5 stars.

I've only had their steak and cheese and chicken and cheese.

Their steak and cheese is rare because it has CHUNKS of steak, very very great.

Try it when you pass by