El Pollo Loco — Restaurant in Chula Vista

Ok, so ads do work and in our case, we drove over to the nearest Pollo Loco to try out their new Birria combos. Let me be clear, their chicken is on spot and would always give high ratings for taste. But the Birria plates is something else. For $9.99 you get a small cup of Birria stew (possibly 25 cent ramen soup without noodles), chips, salsa fresca and your choice of 2 crunchy tacos, quesadilla or burrito. We tried the quesadilla and tacos. Spoiler Alert, throw out all expectations of Birria anything before you start craving these belly purgers. For starters, the food has a foul chemical smell that you can't identify as something that would be edible. We thought it was the cardboard but it turned out to be the stew. The tacos tasted like a burger king taco (remember those?) Dipped in 30 day old oil. And speaking of oil, anybody say Exxon Valdez? The quesadilla wasn't as bad but did not meet any Birria expectations by a long shot. The best part about this quesadilla is that they didn't deep fry it like the tacos. I can't really speak much about the burrito but I think that the upside of this was that I didn't have to taste it. The overall experience was (can you tell) not good enough to consider it bad. My best suggestion to El Pollo Loco is to stop their commercials and jettison the whole Birria campaign and leave this experiment behind so it's only a distant failure. Maybe I'm just too Mexican with high expectations and then again, maybe I wasn't hungry enough to mask the odor and taste of oil. All I can say is that it's a try once and never again. Sorry but that's my personal opinion and some May disagree but that my story and I'm...

Dear readers and El Pollo Loco management and employees, I’m very disappointed on my experience at your restaurant drive thru, I purchased Beans and rice and chicken legs. The person who was cooking the beans didn’t close the beans all the way because of there mistake, beans spilled out from the bag all over my car front seat and on the floor and left a stain in my car. I’m sad I wasn’t able to even eat my beans that I ordered and my car was ruined. I experienced this and no one should receive an order like this. You guys need to check how you hand things to your customers and also make sure you close the lid right or get better less cheap quality containers for customers so these things don’t happen. I’m very disappointed because I spent money here and got nothing but stains and no food to be eaten due to the fact that it fell all over my car due to improper handling of the employees. I highly recommend people to check before they leave and also don’t bother coming to this establishment unless you want to enjoy your food on ur car floor & have your...

New review 1/22/24: Down from 5 stars to 2 stars

I have been ordering for years at this and other locations the same thing: 2-piece meal and ask for 2 chicken breasts that I gladly pay more to get. We use the drive thru to get our food. For the last 4 consecutive times at this location, I have been told that there are no chicken breasts and have gone empty handed 3 times and 1 time settled for a chicken leg and thigh that were too small for my liking. It is not the end of the world when they don't have what I like but it does signal to me that I should avoid this place and try either another El Pollo loco location or one of two non-El Pollo Loco competitors that are nearby.

Older review:

I was so happy that El Pollo Loco opened so close to my house. The restaurant is clean and the service and food is top notch. Only slight negative is that the restaurant is crowded but I guess people found out...