Sarita's Chicken

This is a great Peruvian restaurant! I’ve been to several Peruvian restaurants in the DMV area, but hadn’t came here yet. There always seems to be a fault in every Peruvian restaurant we’ve been to. It is located in a strip mall in Wheaton. In the same strip mall, there are two more Peruvian restaurants. Hmm. I haven’t been to the other two, but we chose here.

There’s a lot of tables, and cool Peruvian wall decor. For my appetizer I ordered Leche de Tigre and for my entree I got Anticuchos de Corazon, which I haven’t ordered in a while because other Peruvian restaurants don’t make them very good. I’m glad I did order them here because they were delicious! Cooked and seasoned perfectly. The potatoes, corn and salsa Criolla that it was served with was also very delicious. The leche de Tigre had a perfect taste to it, not too spicy but it had a kick. My husband got the Seco de Nortena (or something like that) and enjoyed it. For dessert we got picarones and they were very good! Prices were also pretty good compared to most Peruvian places, but still kinda pricy.

My only complaint is that my food came before my appetizer, which annoyed me, but it’s all good because the taste was on point! I will come back here!

Saritas and the surrounding shopping mall is as if a little bit of Latin America was dropped right into the US. The one server that speaks the best English out of the servers will automatically be assigned to your table and the entire clientele except for your gringo butt will be Latino. A little awkward at times, but overall comprehensible.

The menu is quite extensive- including the lunch special it spans about 4 pages of not more, with the seafood section being the longest and a section dedicated to Peruvian chicken.

The SO and I were all turkeyed out so we wanted something flavorful that did not resemble the festive bird. We ordered ceviche and Jalea and opted for the pescado (fish only) option.

The servings was plentiful and the presentation was excellent. The dishes were served with a green hot sauce (similar to the green sauce at el pollo rico). The food is good but not amazing- the fish (tilapia) tastes like the frozen fillets you get from Costco. The batter on the Jalea was thin and not very flavorful or crisp. The best thing about this dish was the yucca. The dishes weren’t much cheaper than our go-to Peruvian joint, La Limena, in fact it might have been a hair more expensive despite being a more casual place (total bill for ceviche and Jalea with 2 dollars in drinks was a little over 31 dollars without tip).

There is no alcohol from what I could tell. They charge for bottled water in classic Latin American fashion (something I still cannot get overrrrrr).

Overall, if you can make the treck out to La Limena I’ll definitely make that choice over Sarita’s, but it’s not a bad choice in general. It’s essentially a joint for locals to shoot the sh– with one another and/or have a no frills meal with their families, not fancy adventures in exotic cuisines or a place to celebrate birthdays or impress guests. They do have an eight dollar lunch special that sounds pretty good and would probably be worth trying.