El Sazon de Doña Eva

We ended up dining here since Inka Wall was closed and it was a wonderful, serendipitous find. Our waitress was phenomenal and provided us samples with their homemade drinks and the soup of the day, which was all very tasty. I enjoyed the apple/​oatmeal juice, weird sounding but delicious. The spicy sauce for the bread was very good, I would have had more bread but I knew we were going to be trying a lot of dishes. I still used the sauce to top other dishes that I wanted to have a kick. I ordered avocado thinking I would get sliced avocado but it came out as guacamole and fresh fried chips, best guac and chips by far and it was only $ 2.50. Another must is the sweet plantain with cheese, I could have eaten the whole order myself. The ceviche mixto was delicious and even had octopus also very fresh tasting. Although, they may have precooked the fish as it had that flavor and texture unlike «raw» fish ceviche. The ceviche is supposed to only be available on the weekends but we were in luck and you should ask if they have the weekend stuff anyway. The ceviche came out with the entrees although I would have expected it to come out as an app.
The main entrees took longer than expected to come out but I think most of the dishes were being made to order so that is a plus. The Fried fish (porgy) and the roasted pork were my faves. The roasted pork was served with an orange potato species that I’ve never seen before and with a type of large corn as another starch, truly authentic looking sides! The Ecuadorian steak was a little overcooked and chewy. We also ordered the seafood soup which was huge and had lobster which explained why it was $ 16.00, it can easily feed 4 – 5 people. The soup was tasty but the clams and mussles had an overly fishy flavor.
Overall I would go back, especially since they had alot of soups and stews available on weekends only. Also the waitress mentioned another great dish of shrimp and pork that we need to try.
There was only one other person dining in but they had a lot of take out orders.

Great spot! I have passed this place several times and meant to stop in but don’t often go to Upper Darby. It is worth the trip! I studied abroad in Ecuador and have desperately wanted to find an Ecuadorian restaurant, but most restaurants in the Philly area that do have Ecuadorian food on their menus are «fusion» restaurants that pull foods from several other Latin American countries. That’s great, but I wanted straight-​up Ecuadorian. Doña Eva’s is the place.
I brought my trusting boyfriend along, and together we ordered yuca fries, fried plantains with cheese, and fried shrimp in bacon for appetizers… you may be sensing a theme here… the plantains with cheese is a great combo, sweet, soft plantains with the dense, salty Ecuadorian cheese is one of my favorite combos. I love yuca fries because I love all things starchy, but my boyfriend was not so impressed. They’re kind of like giant French fries.
For entrees we ordered the churrasco Ecuatoriano (steak with fried egg, rice, salad, fried plantains, avocado and salcipapas) and the garlic shrimp (shrimp in garlic sauce, salad, avoacdo, tostones and rice). This was an insane amount of food. We stuffed ourselves and had plenty to bring home. The steak was perfectly cooked and the shrimp was really flavorful. I love tostones too, they’re fried green plantains (savory, not sweet). I’ve never gotten into salcipapas. It’s just French fries and a hotdog. Never understood the appeal in Ecuador either. But overall it was a great meal and I feel really nostalgic for Ecuador now.