So disappointed, as well as confused. Do not understand why this place gets voted Waco's Best. Nothing special. They can't even make an enchilada that tastes better than a TV dinner. Perhaps all the voters are getting inebriated on the margaritas and therefore not even tasting how bad the food is? Or, perhaps more closer to the truth: People around here just accept mediocre. What a shame. If you keep settling for average we may never have a decent restaurant in this town.
I always cringe when a friend suggests going to La Fiesta. The food is mediocre, at best. And the service is always, without fail, 100% of the time, horrid. Having to pay what seems to be higher-than-average prices for this lack of taste and service is the worst. There are so many better Tex-Mex choices in town!
La Fiesta on Franklin Ave. should be ashamed to call themselves a Mexican food restaurant. The enchiladas tasted manufactured and to say the food was over salted is a gross understatement. The tamales tasted like something you pulled out of a Sam's freezer bag, so if they're actually telling the truth when they say the tamales are made daily, that makes me terrified for anything else on the menu. Being originally from San Antonio, I realize I tend to be spoiled, but there are so many other better places to get a great plate of enchiladas here. The only reason I didn't give them a very poor rating was because of their margaritas. Those are very good. Everything else tastes like freeze dried astronaut food with cheese, day old beef, and an unholy amount of salt piled on top.
Let me open this review with a good ol' fashioned rant. La Fiesta loves their "Best of Waco" awards. They've even got one hanging on the side of the building, for Pedro's sake. I think the "Best of Waco" title is hideously misleading. "Best at making food dull enough to be inoffensive to the masses" is more like it.
Every time I see one of those “voted best in Waco” plaques hanging inside a truly mediocre restaurant, I die a little on the inside. I always wonder, “who actually votes for these?”
Let’s face it: La Fiesta is unforgivably meh, Uncle Dan’s isn’t good for anything besides a massive potato and typically bland chain restaurant fare has no place on the likes of a local “best of” list unless we’re lacking any better alternatives. For somewhere as wacky and interesting as Waco, that simply isn't the case. Why, then, do terrible restaurants end up winning awards year after year?
Awards mean nothing if the people picking them don’t know what they’re talking about. When I miss Waco’s food, I miss the extraordinary things about it. The problem is, Waco’s “best of” lists smack of generic restaurants that don’t really seem to speak for Waco. I can always find a Cheddar’s in Longview, or Tyler, or Austin, for pete’s sake. I can’t head up to Dallas and find another Olive Branch or Bangkok Royal.
Similarly, while La Fiesta may brand itself as a local tradition, the food is rather forgettable. There are a million other Tex-Mex restaurants that do it better all over the state. I can’t think of a single dish that would bring me to La Fiesta over any of the other ones. The queso is decent, but that just means that they meet the minimum standard for existence as a Tex-Mex restaurant. The salsa is unforgivably runny despite the fact that it has a respectable level of heat. Its consistency is more like a spaghetti sauce than it is a dip for chips. The rest of the food is exactly what you'd find at any other Tex-Mex joint in Texas, just usually a bit blander than it should be. Piling on the fresh pico de gallo (which is good stuff, but again, we're talking bare necessities of Tex-Mex here) can help with this, but not with everything. The fried items are usually so greasy that they're a bit gross. Although the service is usually fine and the room to the left of the bar is bright and airy, the whole restaurant always seems like it needs a good sweeping. In short, there's a good, long list of places I'd send you for Mexican food in Waco before I'd send you to La Fiesta.
Therein lies another problem with these silly awards: some of the usual winners simply aren’t adding anything unique or interesting to Waco’s culinary scene, but instead, they’re betting the farm on “this is where people in Waco have always eaten.” That's basically La Fiesta in a nutshell.
I have a bad feeling that the people who end up doing the majority of the voting for these “best of” lists are the kinds of people who love to paint things in neutral earth tones. People who buy Volvos not for quirky Swedish turbo goodness, but because they have practically enough airbags to float the car should something whack into it. Nickelback fans. Twilight readers. Anyone who’s ever been captivated by the plot of an English-language soap opera. The people who complain about things being too spicy, too loud, too bright, too fast--too everything. In short: the people who like things to be safe, familiar and predictable.
Those are not the people I like to ask for advice on about anything—especially food. What I love to eat might give them an ulcer.
I don't know why this restaurant chain is always voted best fajitas or anything else in Waco. We have eaten at the Franklin Ave and Hewitt location a handful of times since moving to Waco four years ago and now only go there when invited by friends. The food is just OK... nothing to rave about. There are MUCH better fajitas to be had in Waco.
