I recently took my mother out for dinner. We chose La Fiesta Mexican Restaurant at I-10 and Kirkwood instead of our usual dinner spots since we’ve heard a lot of good things about La Fiesta from friends and such. People we know tend to be picky eaters with high expectations, so we instinctively expected a great meal at La Fiesta.

We chose the Katy Freeway location since it’s relatively close to our neighborhood. We came in around 6:30PM on Friday and were seated immediately. The restaurant had a good amount of people in it, but was not crowded by any means. It took almost 15 minutes before anyone even acknowledged us at our table, and it took even longer to get the usual chips and salsa. The salsa was also very cold… as if they’d just pulled it out of the refrigerator. Good salsa should never be served cold!

When we finally got the menus, we were very surprised to see that the food was cheap compared to other Mexican restaurants in the area. With food prices the way they are today, it’s very rare to see a fajita dinner sold for less than $12, so it was surprising to see that La Fiesta had fajitas for $9.50 or so. We placed our order — fajitas for me, a quesadilla for mom, and some queso to enjoy with our chips and salsa.

The food came out a short while later. My fajitas were pretty decent. The meat was cooked nicely and had a good flavor to it. One thing I did notice is that the portions were very small compared to other restaurants. I wouldn’t consider this a “filling” meal were it not for the chips and salsa that were included. Most restaurants include a round container full of tortillas with an order of fajitas. La Fiesta did this as well, but included only 3 tortillas inside the container. This made the meal pointless, and I had to ask for more tortillas at least three times during our meal.

Mom’s quesadilla didn’t look very good either. I originally thought that they brought out the wrong meal since her quesadilla looked more like two tacos on a plate than a quesdailla. Quesadillas should always be served as part of a very large tortilla, which is cut up into small triangular slices; like so. La Fiesta’s idea of a quesadilla seems to be putting taco fillings into a tortilla, wrapping it up, and calling it a quesadilla. Not good.

All in all, our meal came out to about $26 before tip, which I think is pretty cheap for a dinner for two at a “sit-down” restaurant. Even with the food being as cheap as it is, I don’t think we’ll be coming back to La Fiesta. There’s nothing fun about mediocre Mexican food, so I’d much rather spend a few dollars more at a place that offers good food and good service.