La Fiesta Cafecito & Restaurant

I almost don’t want to post this, as it’s busy enough at this place! :)
It’s as good as it gets — homemade, great people, and wonderful service. Order well — the corn tamales are amazing, the soup is great, and the papusas are wonderful. I love the food — and the juices are made by hand. It can be slow-​ish, but that’s not a fault of the servers or the cooks… it takes time to make things from scratch.
All to often, people get used to fast food, and forget that dining is an experience. It’s authentic food, and well worth the visit.

This is by far one of my favorite places to eat. I love the papusa ’ s and the tamales con pollo! The servers are super friendly, the food is made from scratch and extremely similar to food in El Salvador. The only difference is the cheese. Service may be a little slow getting your food, but they are busy making everything from scratch to serve you the freshest possible food. Love this place!

The place is ALWAYS full. However, you can (and should) make a reservation. We were also warned that the service is incredibly slow. Therefore my Wife and I were not surprised when our food came a full two hours after we first arrived (an hour waiting, and an hour between ordering and getting the food). In any other restaurant this would have ruined everything and I certainly wouldn’t have left a generous tip. But our server was amazingly friendly and kept us entertained whenever he walked by our table. I have never had a better server! The second time we went (a Tuesday evening) it was quiet and we had no problem getting a seat. The amazing server was not there but the staff were relaxed and the food was equally as good.
The food is unbeatable.
We ordered:
— Sangaria
— Chipotle Jalapeño Cheese Pupusa
— 2 Mojitos
— 2 Vegetarian Combination Platter #2 (salad, burrito, 2 pupusas, 1 enchilada)
— Vegetarian Combination Platter # 3 (salad, burrito, 1 pupusa, 2 tamal, 1 enchilada)
In my opinion the thing that makes the food exceptional is the care the people take in making it. They also make plain (unseasoned) beans taste wonderful. The pupusas and the tamal’s are extraordinary and the enchilada’s made every other enchilada look pathetic. In contrast, the burrito and the salad seemed fairly standard. The mojitos were very good. The sangaria is not very sweet, which is a requirement for me.
All in all it was a wonderful time, the food was a good price, and I would recommend the place to anyone. However, I would also tell them that they need to make a reservation or they will spend the whole evening waiting for food.

Good flavored food, large portions. Small restaurant with simple atmosphere, slow service but very friendly staff. Will go again just not too often.

Went back after a long break from this restaurant only to find whatever they had before is mostly gone. For the most part the sauces came out of a can, and the rest of the preparation was OK as best. The cost verses the value of the meal was not what I remembered or require from a restaurant. Over all two simple combo meals and an appetizer along with some non-​alcoholic drinks the meal came to over $ 50. The service, and the drinks were very good, but based on this last visit I can not recommend the food. We have decided is we will not return here, as there are to many other places we would rather go and vote with our dollars, If it was not for the service, and the drink I would have knocked this down to one star.

Nice atmosphere, good owners, good food. :-)
The food isn’t mind blowing by any stretch BUT the overall experience is nice.
I certainly recommend trying La Fiesta.

The food is really good. Service is a little slow, however considering how many different dishes come with your platter, understandable. Definitely worth checking out.

A bright, El Salvadorian inspired décor welcomes guests to perhaps Winnipeg’s only restaurant of this sort. The hostess was very friendly and you could tell right a way it was a family oriented establishment. The restaurant was very busy even at 8pm, indicating how popular this St. Anne’s Road institution was.
The restaurant was clean and the cutlery was shiny. It was a bit noisy, but I didn’t hold that against them.
This was my first ever dining experience within this genre of food so I had no idea what to expect. However, being the «King of the Exotic» restaurants, I knew I would be up for the challenge!
I have dined at numerous complex menu listings, but this one was quite confusing. So many combinations, platters and entrée dishes presented in a very odd way. My dining partner had to, «basically», instruct me on how best to plan the evening’s food experience. The waiter was also helpful and encouraged a variety of dishes for «1^st Timers».
Starter — Jalapeño Salad. A salad consisting of precut lettuce, onions and tomatoes with a nice offering of jalapenos. The dressing was a vinigrette and was pleasant. Overall, a solid choice.
Entrée — chicken burrito, bean and cheese pupusa, beef enchilada, chicken tamal and corn tama
This dish was quite bland and improperly seasoned. It landed with a heavy feeling in my stomach and in some ways felt prepared in advance and just reheated. I thought it would be a lot spicier and pungent in flavours from the region, but I was gravely disappointed.
I would not recommend this establishment.

I dined at the old Ellice Avenue location years ago; the only memory that remained was that service was brutally slow. Everyone in the restaurant that night was waiting and waiting and waiting. Anyhow, fast forward in time, I decided it was time to give this place a second chance. Although this time, I can say that the food service was really prompt!
I can’t say I am a fan of the suburban location in a giant strip mall as the restaurant has lost some of it’s charm from the downtown location. It’s a small narrow room that’s painted in yellow, blue and some neutral tones — very warm and inviting. We were greeted very warmly by one of the servers there who later on gave us suggestions on what to order and cracked a few jokes with us. This family run restaurant definitely shines with their Latin charms.
As for the food, I felt that many of the items lacked the flavour that one expects from Latin food. This is an El Salvadoran place, not Mexican but there are many dishes that are similar to Mexican food.
There’s a lot of stuff on the menu but it seems to mention the same items in various forms so your best bet are the combination platters. I had Combination Platter #2 which comes with a soup or salad to start, a chicken burrito, two pupusas (pork & cheese and bean & cheese), and a beef enchilada with a side of salsa. I chose the soup to start, even though they say it’s «home-​made soup of the day», it’s always the same soup — a chicken soup with tortilla chips. The soup was a warm and flavourful chicken broth with rice, chicken, green onions and tortilla chips. It had a hint of heat but I could barely detect it.
The chicken burrito tasted quite bland. It was filled with home-​style rice, chicken breast, & mozzarella cheese. It tasted like plain white rice was stuffed in there with unseasoned chicken. I used a lot of the spicy tabasco tasting sauce on it. The salsa that came with the platter is more on the watery side, not the salsa that one expects but maybe El Salvadoran salsa is suppose to be like that? I didn’t find the salsa to be very spicy or flavourful. The pupusas, El Salvadoran specialty, are round tortilla shells that tastes more like a flat-​bread with fillings like bean and cheese and pork and cheese (El Salvadoran cheese called «queso»). I found the pupusas quite filling, the overriding flavour was probably the queso cheese, which reminded me of melted mozzarella.
The beef enchilada was probably one of the better items in the platter as it offered more flavour. A small fried tortilla disc topped with ground beef, beans, slice of boiled egg, and cheese.
I am a fan of the corn tamal that my dining partner had in his combination platter — I enjoyed the sweetness of the corn in this dish.
Many of the platters average $ 16 and you’ll likely end up doggy bagging the generous portions. I really wanted to like this place because Winnipeg definitely lacks good Latin food but this place really didn’t provide the strong Latin flavours I was looking for so I left a bit disappointed.