La Fiesta Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Van Buren

This restaurant used to be my "go to" for semi-authentic Mexican cuisine. I stayed in Mexico for several weeks, which is the only reason I say "semi". When I lived in Van Buren, I ordered pick-up at least once a week. Even after moving to TX, this was the one place I was always excited to eat at every time I visited, which is still every three months, like clockwork.

One could expect consistency from both La Fiesta and La Huerta locations from 2011-2016. The other locations may still be perfectly wonderful. I don't travel to Alma or Fort Smith locations anymore, so they are not included in my review.

This location specifically went from excellent service, accurate orders, great prices and fabulous food to just "so-so" across the board after 2016, but I still kept going back with the hopes that a new cook was behind the blah tasting food; it was the hectic Friday rush that made them forget the tortillas for my fajita order; I even made an excuse for the decline in the amount of meat found in a mixed chicken/beef fajita order.

However, I will no longer make excuses for them. I bought my mother birthday dinner here on 6-10, and because we had people waiting on us at home, we ordered to go. Not only was the food bland (again), it was a soggy mess, they forgot to include salsa for our 3 bags of chips (chips without salsa?), the cost was double what it used to be, the service was disorganized, and all our interactions with staff from the time we entered the door to the time we checked out was completely lacking in the quaint courtesy (not even a smile) it used to have.

I DO understand that these things happen on occasion, but my review is not based off of one or two occasions. This is a steady decline in all the categories that make up a good restaurant over the period of two years. Maybe they raised their prices to pay for the liquor license or higher food costs? I would even be fine with the price increase, as long as the service matched and the food was still fabulous.

I no longer recommend this as one of the best restaurants in Van Buren. If all you want is a family friendly place to hold a child's birthday party or a place to unwind with an excellent margarita, this will suffice. If you're looking for fabulous food, I recommend you...

My wife and I use to eat here two to three times a week but that will not be happening anymore. There wasn't a big huge problem but there is several small problems literally everytime we eat there or get something to go. Getting food to go from here is the worst and I can almost quarantee your order will be wrong. I've been able to over look at the small problems for the past year of eating here but today I have had enough. During our visit today there was 7 things wrong with our order and they forgot 4 different things. The service was terrible and the food was cold. It was after Sunday morning rush so I can assume they were worn out but the price of the food is still the same after rush so I expect to get quality warm food regardless of the time or day. I think the thing that really pushes me is no matter how wrong the order is, how many times they have messed up our food or forgot something, nothing is ever done. Most responsible restaurants will admit to making a mistake and try to compensate with a free drink, or some sort of coupon but I asked the manager today how they manage to get our orders wrong everytime. He just laughed and said well the guys in the kitchen don't read the tickets then walked away.

It's been a long year la Fiesta but I'm going to move on to another restaurant, hopefully one day they can get someone in here to turn...

Took my son and his friends here for a birthday party and everything was fine at first until the food came. My fajita chicken nachos were terrible! The chips were very stale and I took 2 or 3 bites thinking it was just me then I had my wife taste it and she couldn't get through the chip. We told the waiter and he took it back and I told him I didn't want anything else that it would be OK. Well after he took the food back he didn't come back to check on us. No refills no tickets no to go boxes for the other food that the kids didn't eat. My wife had to get up and ask them for refills and boxes and the ticket. Then they tried to charge me for the nachos and when I said I wasn't paying for it they started talking in Spanish saying that I was "Loco" The cashier came out of the kitchen and said yea the chips were from yesterday. George do better! Go get better training! Treat your customers better and before you speak in Spanish just remember some people...