La Carreta Peruvian Restaurant — Restaurant in Orem

Much like Don Salieri, I too am a self-proclaimed 'gourmet.' As Don Salieri's personal 'chauffeur,' I used to treat the Don to various 'swanky' high-society classy eateries and diners on a regular basis.

I feel that I have very 'refined' tastes and thus discern between 'quality' and 'garbage' much more so than the average person. That being said, I'm no 'perfectionist' and 'fair' in my ratings of restaurants...

My brother-in-law and my sister recently decided to visit me -- and invited me to dine out with them. As they are not from the Orem-Provo area, they gave me the choice of choosing which restaurant to eat at. Since I like trying 'new things,' and having never eaten at La Carreta, I decided to give this place a try.

Pulling into the parking lot, we were a little 'pleasantly-surprised' to notice that on a Friday evening, this 'joint' was much less crowded than about all other restaurants in the vicinity. The "La Carreta" sign wasn't lit up, however, and the interior clearly looked 'dimly-lit' from the parking lot. This seemed kind of odd and ominous to us.

We were seated by a nice Peruvian waitress; in fact all the employees are seemingly also Pervian. The interior of this restaurant is dimly-lit and somewhat small; the interior is not very elaborate but okay -- but not trashy or uninviting either. The drink that we ordered was a Peruvian beet-flavored drink made from corn. It was very, very good, interestingly. Their menu is decent sized -- and photos of entrees in the menu give the impression that the quality and authenticity of the food is likely very good.

Once we ordered, even though there were not many customers inside, we had a VERY, VERY long wait for our food to arrive, perhaps around 45 minutes. The chips and salsa that were brought out to us were BY FAR, the crudest, crappiest, lowest-quality chips and salsa I have ever seen or tasted in ANY restaurant, ever.

The appetizer that I ordered was extraordinarily-ugly in appearance and extremely crude. It consisted of shrimp and beef shiskabobs on top of french fries. Any fast food restaurant would've presented much higher quality french fries and shiskabob than what we received. We were not given any ketchup or any sauces to flavor the very bland french fries. The shiskabob, too, was very, very crude and plain, of very low-quality. When our four plates finally arrived, aesthetically, they were the ugliest-looking entrees I have ever seen in any restaurant. The item I ordered from the menu was mixed shrimp, beef, and chicken and veggies in a soy-sauced base noodles. The photo of this entree in the menu looked appetizing. What arrived, instead, was a very crude and ordinary beef stroganoff, that was very low-quality that anyone with no cooking experience could've easily made. My brother-in-law received a plate that consisted of two slabs of thin beef, french fries, a fried egg and white rice. There was nothing 'authentic' or Peruvian about this entree and Denny's could've made the same dish -- and made it far, far better. There were no sauces included within his dish; everything was crude and plain and bland. My nephew ordered a quesadilla that was about the crudest looking quesadilla I have ever seen -no side dishes either.

To be fair and unbiased, La Carreta is probably easily the most 'un'-authentic food that I have ever eaten in my life. The quality of pretty much all of their food seems to be on the level of Skippers or worse. La Carreta is easily the worst quality restaurant I have EVER eaten at outside of fast food joints -and even many or most fast food joints serve better quality food than La Carreta

The waitresses were nice and cordial; however, the food was very, very slow to cook and pathetically-crude and low-quality once it FINALLY arrived. If I had ever taken Don Salieri to eat at this joint when I was working for him as his chauffeur -- he probably would've commanded one of his 'gorillas' to put a 'hit' on me and 'rub me out' of the 'family.'

This is not Peruvian food; this...

My wife and I made reservations for Valentine's Day. It was a place we had been before and loved the food. We got to the restaurant at 6:30 and we were seated immediately, which was a relief. The waiter, Mario, however, took 10 minutes before he got to our table, and so we both ordered the Arroz con Pollo, our favorite. He came back 10 minutes later and said that they were out. Ironically, we heard someone else order dessert, and he said they were out. How are you out of dessert at 6:30? We ordered something else and he left. We realized that it was now almost 25 minutes since we had been seated and he hadn't brought us any chips and salsa. After a few minutes of trying to wave him over to our table, I finally just got up and went over and asked him for them. He brought those out pretty quickly. We each had a can of soda and were just waiting for our food. At 8:00 (an hour and a half after we had been seated), he came to our table and said our food would be done soon. He apologized for the wait and said that the drinks were on him. (Like, "Whoopee". I came here for food. Not free drinks.) I was getting pretty dang impatient at this point, but my wife suggested we at least wait to get our food. When we got our food at 8:15, I looked at it and realized it was completely wrong. I called the waiter over, told him it was wrong, and he tried to tell me that he would fix it. (Like I have another hour and a half to spend twittling my thumbs.) I told him to keep the food and we left, very disappointed. I was so embarrassed and upset, and I will not be going back to La Carreta. They were unorganized, out of half of the menu items, and they didn't pay attention to the customer. They seemed more concerned with seating the waiting customers than actually getting the food for the ones who were...

The last time we went here was a about a year ago and it was fine. My husband is from Peru and we normally love Peruvian food. I make ceviche all of the time. I ordered a to-go order of Ceviche, Papa La Juanchaina, and arroz con poll. The fish in the ceviche was definitely thawed out in a microwave (frozen— ew at a fresh fish price point 🤢🤮) or just flat left out on the counter. The fish was warm which should never happen with ceviche. For ceviche, the fish needs to sit for at least an hour in the fridge and marinate which essentially cooks it so that you don’t end up getting food poisoning. This definitely was not done. It had a gross sand paper like taste to it. They also cut out very little of the blood line which is nasty. It’s the most disgusting fish I have had in my life and I won’t be at all surprised if it ends up making me really sick. The lettuce used was nasty and wilting. As for the arroz con pollo, it was literally two gross stiff hard slices of chicken. There was very little rice or chicken for the price. This is the cheapest way I have ever seen that fish done but they are still charging 5 star pricing! Usually the chicken is an actual piece of a rotisserie chicken and it did use to be that. I am so extremely disappointed. Photos attached. The only thing that was even decent was the papa la huancaina. Those three dishes to-go were almost $50 for something that’s no even edible. Save yourself the risk of food poisoning and don’t go here until they make some serious changes to their food prep. Way overpriced for something so gross and not even...