La Mesa — Restaurant in Fort Smith

I'm being generous with the 3, honestly. There are too many delicious Mexican restaurants in FS for you to waste time or money on this unless you just like bland food and mediocre service. My first and biggest requirement at a Mexican restaurant is great salsa. There's bound to be SOMETHING good on the entire menu anywhere, but the chips and salsa are what you're gonna sit there and enjoy while your starving self waits for your food. It needs to be good, and I like a lot of varieties so I'm certainly not crazy picky. I will admit, a friend told me "It reminds me of TaMolly's in TK!" And so I had high expectations. Sadly, it didn't meet them. It didn't even meet decent salsa marks. I had to salt it. Still no flavor beyond tomato and no heat. Asked if they had hot salsa, and the waitress said sure and walked off. That was it. She didn't say, yes, but I'll have to charge you for it, would you like it? She brought me standard Mexican pepper paste, which was fine. I mixed that in about 1:2, added salt, and it was very edible. Then goodness it wasn't too scrumptious, though, bc we didn't get offered any more until we were almost finished eating lunch. My al pastor street tacos were decent, not bad not stellar. His beef enchiladas were very good. The beans tasted like paper and fat. No seasoning. The rice was almost completely tasteless. No caldero de pollo there. This place might be good for elderly people with low salt diets, bc they certainly don't salt anything in the kitchen (except those enchiladas, they really were scrumptious). When we first got there, there were not busy but acted frazzled and over stimulated. I would hate to see them truly busy. They sat us right beside the front door despite being nearly empty. It's a chilly, windy day. Didn't love that. They charged me for the scoop of pepper that was necessary to make the salsa edible and that she brought on her own. Service was meh, food was mostly meh to no. The atmosphere was lovely. Clean, pretty, nice facility. If you like La Fiesta, La Huerta, and her FS classics, if you just like the typical bold flavors when going for Mexican, I absolutely do not recommend this place... Unless you are gonna order queso and enchiladas, because that would be...

Arrived and seated promptly. Chips and tomato sauce based salsa delivered. Ordered Al Pastor tacos and Chile Verde. The meat for the tacos was unrecognizable as what it should have been. It was mushy and had the consistency of dog food. Stopped eating for fear of not knowing what it was. Beans tasted canned. Chile Verde advertised as “chunks” of pork yet shredded pork was served with a very salty and watery sauce. Rice was barely 1/4 cup spread across platter to make it look like more. Asked for corn torts but got flour. Took about 5 minutes to receive corn torts. Ordered guacamole and was asked do you want fresh. Of course we want fresh lol what else would we want. Had to ask where it was. Took about 15 minutes. Bowl of diced avocado with watery onion mixture under it. I said, WE have to mix it ourselves? Tried smashing tasteless mixture with fork. This was the WORST so called Mexican food ever experienced. I’ve lived all over the states and this was by far the most disappointing. Spoke with very gracious manager who was very accommodating but even he admitted the AlPastor is not how it should be cooked and “we cook for Arkansas” if that doesn’t tell you something I don’t know what does. It would behoove them to fix their cuisine authentically instead of passing off less quality food. Good luck to them. We...

My wife and I recently stopped in at La Mesa for lunch on recommendation of the shift manager at El Tapatio Restaurant in Okmulgee, OK. He stated that the owner was a friend of his and that they served good Mexican food. We were seated quickly and served our water within minutes of being seated. Another attendant placed tortilla chips and salsa on our table. The chips were fresh and tasty, but I was unimpressed with the salsa, a little too tomato soupy and somewhat bland. Our waitress inquired as to whether we had been their before and we stated that we had not. She said to take our time looking over the menu and to signal her when we were ready to order. It took a few minutes to look over the offerings but we were able to select our choices without much delay. After we placed our order it was a little wait for the meal to arrive, indicating that it was prepared fresh, a good sign. I had ordered a seafood Molcajete and the wife ordered the steak Ala Parilla. We were provided ample portions for the meals and we were quite pleased with the presentation and the taste of each of our meals. Prices were on par for the locale and the atmosphere was pleasant. Due to the hour of our visit the place was not at...