El Pollo Inka — Restaurant in Rolling Hills Estates

My family and I have known about Pollo Inka since the nineties. I have fond memories of this place. We've been coming to the PV location since it opened. On Sunday, January 22nd my family and I went to this location to celebrate my brother-in-law's birthday. It was 15 of us. Veronica was our server. We had never seen Veronica before. We waited a while for the rest of our party to arrive. Meanwhile, Veronica took our drink orders. She did forget a couple of drinks but we did not make a big deal about it. When the rest of our party arrived, we submitted our food orders. At this time, Veronica noticed my nephew and his boyfriend being affectionate towards each other and she commented they should get a room. Who says that to a customer?? The food came out late and not all the food items were brought out at the same time. At this point we were getting uneasy and started to think about the option of paying for our drinks and leaving. We asked to speak to the manager and to our surprise, we were advised Veronica was the manager. We couldn't believe it. Anyway, we decided to stay and enjoy our food. When we received the check, we noticed there was a $56 gratuity charge automatically on our check. When Veronica was asked about how was the gratuity charge was calculated, she stated she could remove the charge. At this time she was advised we were really disappointed with the service that she had provided us with. Very sarcastically, Veronica apologized. As she was apologizing, she was picking up the plates from the tables. She hit my son on his head with one of the plates. I understand it was an accident and she did apologize to him and made sure he was OK. At this point I did ask her to wait until we left to continue to pick up the plates because I felt she was trying to do too much. Even though I politely asked her to stop, she continued! I made the comment of 'oh you must of not have heard me'. She stated she had heard me but the way I asked her. I advised her I had asked her in a polite manner. She tried to start a back and forth with me. I told her she needed to stop and to bring us the updated check without the $56 gratuity charge. She left and she never came back. Another server, who's always there and has always taken excellent care of us, came to give face for her and apologize. I understand times are tough right now, for everyone, but this does not provide and excuse for customer service to be horrible. I do not know what Veronica is going through outside of work but when she steps into Pollo Inka she must be ready to serve. We just would have appreciated for Veronica to take note of everything we ordered and delivered in a timely manner. Please try to avoid this from happening again. Pollo Inka we love you and we won't let Veronica stop us from going but please take care...

Ridiculously SALTY FOOD!!! We were here for a lovely event with very lovely friends, and had a simply marvelous time reconnecting in social bliss. All others had been here before and claimed to have loved the food, so I was excited to try it out. I requested "very light salt" and ordered a type of ceviche, as well as the house salad, dressing on the side.

The ceviche was incredibly salty, and had hard hominy pieces scattered on it, as well as Inka corn, that was water logged from the liquid of the ceviche. Odd, inedible combination of food on the plate. All the ingredients lacked flavor or any recognizable taste other than SALT!! :( . I took one small bite of ceviche and there was CLUMP of SALT in that one bite. I had to excuse myself to go to the bathroom to get rid of my mouthful of SUPER SALTY food.Ugh.

The food was inedible. The salad was iceberg lettuce (really?), that was old and I tried the green cilantro dressing which was (you guessed it) ridiculously SALTY TOO! What's with all the salt on the food?? Good food doesn't need a truckload of salt.

The platanos fritos were huge chunks of platano vs thinner slices of platano. The difference? The smaller slices allow people to have just a bit of the very rich, sweet taste, to offset the predominantly savory flavors. Also, the slices offer more crispy exterior, as opposed to the huge platano chunks, which deliver a crude, unrefined presentation.

All in all, our incredible social event trumped the bad food, but with such a gorgeous restaurant setting, I was really hoping for at least edible food. I hope Pollo Inka keeps working to...

My review was of 5 stars since the past 3 years I’ve been going to this place but on November 4th they gave me raw chicken. I ate it and it felt a bit weird, from the outside it looked cooked. Well then I check the chicken and I see it as the picture I’m going to attach. Not only did I eat that raw chicken but right after my body rejected it and I had to throw up so bad. I went to the restroom and I was throwing up none stop for like 10 minutes even my husband had to come into the restroom to check in, I was red and felt the worse I have ever felt. They still had the dignity to charge me even knowing that i basically threw up everything i ate because of the raw chicken. I wanted to speak to a manager and they claimed no manager was available so they took down my number for the manager to give me a call and as I right this it is November 24th and I’m still waiting for a call… at least to apologize or something! As much as I loved this place I will never ever be stepping a...