Choza Mama
96 E Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena
626-432-4692
Is Pasadena moving up in the world? Out with the Hooters and in with a Peruvian restaurant. Or did
Hot Wings Cafe drive Hooters out of business? Either way a nice addition to the Old Town Pasadena scene.
I've never had Peruvian food before and was excited to try it. I heard that Peruvian food is a fusion of flavors from Latin America and even China.
I got the Caufa De Mariscos, $15. A Peruvian version of seafood fried rice with shrimp, fish, calamari, mussels and octupus. Out came a huge bowl with what looked like curry. The sauce was full of spices or too salty, I'm leaning towards too salty. Most of the seafood was a bit overcooked, a few less minutes on the stove would have made this great dish. There was plenty of seafood, you got your moneys worth but the shrimp, calamari, and mussels were overcooked, chewy, and tough.
Service by the server was bad. We got seated and it took about forever to be greeted. The busboy was a very nice and hard working person. He got us water and kept refilling them, all night. But the server was terrible. She finally came and said sorry I had a table of eight. Ok, not a problem. But we rarely saw her. We order two drinks and they didn't come until right before our meals came. She never bothered to ask how everything was. We had a tough time tracking her down. We saw another server more than our server. Either Choza Mama needs to have a better table rotation for their servers or need to train their servers better.
I understand it is a Saturday night and restaurants are busy. But we shouldn't have had such bad service.
I would go back to Choza Mama because a lot of other dishes, especially the Jalea; deep fried seafood on top of a whole sole fish, looked great.
Choza Mama
96 E Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena
626-432-4692
Is Pasadena moving up in the world? Out with the Hooters and in with a Peruvian restaurant. Or did Hot Wings Cafe drive Hooters out of business? Either way a nice addition to the Old Town Pasadena scene.
I've never had Peruvian food before and was excited to try it. I heard that Peruvian food is a fusion of flavors from Latin America and even China.
I got the Caufa De Mariscos, $15. A Peruvian version of seafood fried rice with shrimp, fish, calamari, mussels and octupus. Out came a huge bowl with what looked like curry. The sauce was full of spices or too salty, I'm leaning towards too salty. Most of the seafood was a bit overcooked, a few less minutes on the stove would have made this great dish. There was plenty of seafood, you got your moneys worth but the shrimp, calamari, and mussels were overcooked, chewy, and tough.
Service by the server was bad. We got seated and it took about forever to be greeted. The busboy was a very nice and hard working person. He got us water and kept refilling them, all night. But the server was terrible. She finally came and said sorry I had a table of eight. Ok, not a problem. But we rarely saw her. We order two drinks and they didn't come until right before our meals came. She never bothered to ask how everything was. We had a tough time tracking her down. We saw another server more than our server. Either Choza Mama needs to have a better table rotation for their servers or need to train their servers better.
I understand it is a Saturday night and restaurants are busy. But we shouldn't have had such bad service.
I would go back to Choza Mama because a lot of other dishes, especially the Jalea; deep fried seafood on top of a whole sole fish, looked great.
