Misky Chicken

Misky Chicken is the place where you can go for Peruvian food. Its location makes it the closest Peruvian restaurant for miles from Stone Ridge. This is very beneficial for its business, considering that it is also close to a neighborhood. I have eaten at this restaurant once before. I went a few days after its opening just over two year ago. The restaurant offers chicken cooked in several different ways yet, it always seems to come out dry. This restaurant is a shell of what it wants to be that is a good Peruvian Chicken restaurant. Misky Chicken is a restaurant with subpar food, an unwelcoming ambiance, and low quality service.

I had tried the Pollo Saltado. While “saltado” means stir-fried or sautéed, I can't help but think that it means salty. Their chicken was extremely salty and hard. It was actually surprising how hard it was because their Pollo Saltado looked amazing. It had raised the bar high but ultimately let me down in the end. I was asking for savory, not whatever distasteful piece of chicken this was. Not to mention their rice. I have had my fair experience in eating rice. The rice served to to me here seemed old. It was hard unlike freshly cooked rice that would usually have a soft and almost fluffy texture. In the meal that I was served, it felt like I was chewing on tiny rubber pellets which were just soft enough to actually bite through. Their “french fries” are more akin to potato wedges. They were soft and almost tasteless. I guess that’s why their chicken is so salty. I am not complaining.

If the fries had been salted, I feel like it would not only be their customers complaining but as well as their customers’ doctors.

Like a typical restaurant, an unstable styrofoam plate filled with food was placed on top of a plastic tray. The tray was orange. It matched the walls the restaurant; creating a somewhat cohesive setting with the odd color palette of various shades of orange. The thin styrofoam plate was so sensitive that I thought it would rip apart if I pushed down a little more than necessary with my spoon or tried to lift it off of the plastic tray. They didn’t have a soda machine, instead they had a refrigerator full of various sodas and drinks. This didn’t bother me as much since I typically only need one bottle of water per meal. But it wasn’t included in the price of the meal which was a little high for a fast-casual restaurant. Nearly twelve dollars, plus one dollar and fifty cents for the water, was not worth the food that I ate at Misky Chicken.

This restaurant, being a local business, had not been busy the two times that I have been there. Had they been serving more customers while the time of my visit, my experience might have been different. This contributed to the ambiance of the restaurant because it is just you, the cashier (doubling as your server), and the chef in the restaurant. This puts some unsaid tension in the room to like the food being served to you. It had felt like the cashier was watching me as I ate and was waiting for a reaction even before I had spooned my first bite of the food. The restaurant itself was relatively small compared to its surrounding shops. Though this could create a cozy ambiance, the fact that this would only make me closer to my server made the entire experience worse. While trying to taste my meal and create an accurate report of it, I couldn’t help but feel pressure to put on a smile just to satisfy the cashier and the chef that what they had made was good. It felt like I was a judge on Master Chef. Their cleanliness was good though. Everything from the floors to the tables were cleaner than most other restaurants that I had been to. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was a sign of good maintenance or lack of customers. The aroma of cooking chicken in the air as I walked in was nice. It had raised my expectations for the food but I was ultimately let down in the end, like how a seemingly full bottle of water on a hot summer's day looks so refreshing but once picked up, is disappointing.

The service at the Misky Chicken was satisfying. The staff was friendly, which made me feel better about my experience there. It was nearing the end of their shift so I couldn’t really blame them if they were feeling tired. He was short and to the point about his questions while also trying to give a small smile every now and then. I had made my order pretty effortlessly. However, that was not the case when it came to getting the food to my table. While it had only taken me about two minutes to open the door, give my order, and sit, it had taken about twelve minutes for the server to call me up to pick-up my food. I had to go pick-up my own food. Usually I wouldn’t care too much, but I was the only customer of theirs at the moment and I thought that because of this, they would bring the food to my table. Overall their service was a little worse than I would have expected.

Overall, my experience at the Misky Chicken left much to be desired. They had several pitfalls and shortcomings during the short time that I was their customer. Based off of this experience, I would not recommend going to this restaurant anytime soon. Since it was established just over two years ago in the Gum Spring Village Center, it has potential to grow and improve upon its faults.

Misky Chicken

24640 Southpoint Drive Suite 115,

Chantilly, VA, 20152