I recently had a chance to eat at one of the food vendors at Phoodery, a collection of food vendors ( i.e. brick and mortar "food trucks" ) in Phoenix, Oregon that came recommended,
specifically Peruvian Point at the Tap. Unfortunately the experience left me disappointed and frankly surprised.
After ordering their Anticucho de Pollo ( Grilled chicken marinated with Peruvian spices, served over organic spring mix salad ) , I was given a restaurant pager that failed to correctly notify when my food was ready. After 15 minutes, I finally went back to the restaurant to ask what might be taking so long. At that point, I was told that they were trying to notify me, but obviously their pager wasn't functioning correctly. At that point I suggested that they probably needed to remake my meal, since it had been sitting there for over 10 minutes getting cold, which they agreed to do. I asked how long that would take, and was told just a couple of minutes. I returned about 4 minutes later to collect my order. Unfortunately, what I was served was quite disappointing. Although most of the chicken was tasty, there were pieces included that were obviously undercooked...i.e. raw. Additionally, the cilantro rice had obviously been cooked hours ago, and was overcooked and mushy with little cilantro flavoring and clumped together ( Chipotle's cilantro rice is far better than this attempted version I was served! ). The salad included was the only thing that lived up to its description. I ate the pieces of chicken that weren't undercooked, about 1/4 of the rice before I gave up on that, and all the salad. I decided to go back with the pieces of raw chicken to show the vendor, not to ask for any compensation, but to simply advise them that they might want to advise their cook to double check and make sure any chicken they were serving was fully cooked.....and that's where things went south. The woman who appeared to be running the restaurant wouldn't even look at the raw chicken pieces I was trying to show her, and simply stated that "we don't serve raw chicken". Even when I asked her to look at what I had in hand, she just repeated the same thing again....suggesting that what I was telling her was simply impossible! Any restaurant that doesn't even consider the possibility that a customer may have been served a less than adequate meal....let alone one serving less than fully cooked chicken, should, in my honest opinion, be given a wide berth. One would hope that Peruvian Point at the Tap would review their practices for food preparation, and listen to customer feedback that is only trying to be helpful! read more