Chabuca - Lee Vista — Restaurant in Orlando

Update: Chabuca continues to be a great Peruvian restaurant overall! However, I have a couple of complaints from my last visit. My first complaint is that there is tomato in the causa de pollo and from all the causas I’ve tried in my 27 years of existence, I have never had any tomato inside my causas. When I eat a causa de pollo, I expect the fork to go right through it like butter. With the tomato, that’s not possible, it gets stuck lol the second complaint is that they changed their plates for pollo a la brasa. They are extremely small and gave us barely any fries. The server, bless her heart she is the best, she gave us more fries out of the kindness of her heart. The pollo a la brasa in regards to taste is perfection though, I would give them that 😆 Also the pisco sour was fire, the cocktails are amazing! Anyways, if you go and order the causa, you will have tomato in it so I don’t recommend it. Also if ordering the pollo a la brasa, be prepared to order more fries lol

Update: The restaurant was now changed to Chabuca. I’ve tried the Pollo a la Brasa again and still #1 for me in the Orlando area. The sauces are even better, and the French fries seem to be bigger like the ones in Peru. 10/10 still recommend for this meal 🎉

— I’ve lived in Orlando for about 6 years now and in my time here, I have never been able to find good pollo a la brasa. I made it my number 1 mission to find the best pollo a la brasa in the Orlando area and this year I ALMOST gave up. But then, I heard from a few couple of friends: “Hey, try the pollo a la brasa from Aji Express, it’s really good” and I was like hmmmm 👀. I was skeptical at first because I already gave up in my search of pollo a la brasa, but then I decided to give Aji Express a try and let me tell you… I enjoyed every single part of that meal 😭♥️ I mean let’s be honest, my Peruvian friends know that there is NOTHING like the pollo from Perú, but the one in here, was supeeeer good. It even had the RIGHT sauces ♥️😃. Full disclaimer, I haven’t tried other dishes, just this one. I’ll come back to update here if I get anything else. I’m very happy that this place exists and I can be happy now since my search is over. Please continue to have the same great quality of service you guys have! Everything...

First, I want to add that when this place was called AJI EXPRESS, it was so much better. The ambiance felt like home, the service personal and fast. The portions were big, and drinks delicious and a simple menu.

Now, it’s called Chabuca. It got an upscale look, fancy menu and dishware. But the service went downhill and the portions average.

The server, who never introduced herself so I dont know her name, felt bothered to accomodate some of our needs. We ordered our drinks and food the first time, it came at a reasonable time. But after that, time passed, they were going to other tables and we felt ignored.

Two other friends were joining us about 30 mins later, and they wouldnt accomodate us to add more chairs/table. Took three times to ask and when our friends showed up, they finally added a table saying just because its a special reason. Like why now while we were told no, its not allowed.

We noticed everybody got waters. Not us. Not even extra napkins or swinging by the table to ask how is everything.

Our friends that came after, got their orders. Our drinks were clearly empty and wasnt even asked if we wanted another. Then, one of us had to raise our hand to request three more drinks.

To make it more interesting, more than 25 minutes passed. We saw them going to all the tables. We thought they forgot so we were just ready to ask for the check and leave. 30 minutes later; the drinks showed up. I don’t know how much time passed, before we could ask for the check.

Then the check came. We had originally told her it would be 2 separate checks. She then asked “one check, right?”. Then she was bothered that she had to fix it. One of our friends was about to open the check booklet and she basically reprimanded him saying “dont open that, i have to fix it”.

In short, we always came to Ají Express and always felt like going to your own home, delicious food and a welcoming environment. Now with the new name and upscale, it seems like a pretentious place, were they don’t want to be bothered...

Food: 5 stars, Service: 1 star… the food keeps me coming back. Food is excellent! It is so good that I prefer to suffer through the terrible service. The servers are very nice and pleasant but there is clearly no system in place. I’ve been three times and all three times we are seated and then you wait and wait and wait for someone to come by. Until finally we have to flag someone down to get service. Today we were a table of 4. Three of us got our food and finished eating before the 4th person even got their dish. We asked for waters when we ordered our drinks and didn’t get the waters. We had to ask for the waters again at the time of dessert. Again we had to flag our server in order to get our checks. And when we asked our server for 2 checks, he asked us if we had mentioned to our server that we were 2 checks… we told him “you were our server. You’ve been our server the whole time!!!” How can he not remember that we were his table???? The restaurant was more than half empty. For most of our meal there were only 5 tables occupied in the whole restaurant! PLEASE, if management reads this, improve the service and set up a system. It is more than clear that tables are not assigned. We should not have to keep asking for things or flagging our server down when the restaurant is mostly empty. Food should be delivered together. We received our appetizer AFTER our main dishes! Once again, I will admit that the food is SO good that I am willing to suffer the bad service. But...