Fiesta Villa

I’ll start with the good points. The drinks are strong and the location is great for meeting some friends downtown. The bar is pretty good overall.
They have a patio in the summer that would be nice, but it’s immediately adjacent to train tracks. Trains pass frequently and the siren is deafening. Don’t sit there.
The food is terrible, and it’s not just because we are far removed from Mexico in North Dakota. It’s just bad, like high school cafeteria bad. Never ever order the food, just enjoy the margaritas in the bar.

I’ve never written a bad review before but I’ve never been treated the way I have tonight at fiesta villa. I’m in Bismarck visiting for the holidays and some lady friends suggested chips and salsa with a margarita at fiesta villa. Waitress said «no menues» but I ordered a simple house margarita.
No salt but a simple house was brought. I have no problem with that but at 12:40 I heard a nasty «You’ve been nursing that all night now get out,» conversation to which my friends said «no really… they’ll kick us out super early.» Then we get the waitress who says «you need to leave.» Me: «What time do you close?» Waitress: «NOW.» So we get ready (it’s 12:40), head towards the door and my friend explains our ride is on the way and that it’s cold outside to which the waitress responds «It’s North Dakota get used to it.» I’ve never been treated this way. Our ride got there and we were home by 1am which is crap. DO NOT support this place! They are complete jerks who expect that college folks/​folks who are home for vacation will just accept this behavior. I plan to call tomorrow as well.

Cool Mexican restaurant in a 100 year old train station building. The service was very good, as was the food. The refried beans were not the typical watery kind that so many places serve. The salsa was what you’d expect, not real spicy… but that happens everywhere. I like very spicy food, so I just added some hot sauce to it. The sauce on my main dish was very spicy, and quite flavorful.

This place is a shadow of what it was 18 years ago. Service was poor. Food was horrible. It looked and tasted like it was thrown together with pre-​packaged goods from a grocery store.

Very disappointed; was here a year or so ago and thought we’d come back; poor service; poor quality; Taco Bell is far better and less expensive. Definitely spend your dollars elsewhere!

My husband and I stopped here on our trip through ND because the place looked cool (as it was an old train station) and saw it was open late as we drove by. The décor was somewhat strange inside– a mixture of old historical photos of the station with Mexican paintings and pictures of palm trees.
Service was poor. We barely saw our server.
We had the standard chips and salsa. Salsa was okay but the chips seemed like they came from a bag you buy at a supermarket. We also had pico de gallo which was a bit sour tasting. I ordered the chile rellenos and my husband got the fish tacos. I got my food first but my husband had to wait another 5 – 10 minutes before his tacos came.
I was not impressed with the chile rellenos. I didn’t care for the taste and I didn’t like that they were undercooked. My husband– who hates to waste food, struggled to get through his fish tacos. He had to get up and find the server (who we barely saw) to get more salsa to pour on top of his tacos to make them easier to eat.
Overall– probably one of the worst Mexican restaurants we’ve been to.

Badly need remodeling!!! Also need more beers on tap! They have good service. And a good location with plenty of parking.

If you want the worst food you’ve likely ever had, go here. The food was inedible. The carne asada, was really just their fajita mix with what tasted like pre-​cooked American bbq meat. The soup appeared to be salt and velvetta, with extra salt. Gross. I signed up for Unilocal to help sway you away from this «restaurant»

The worst Mexican food ever. Nothing homemade all from a can and microwave. Terrible service food that taste like frac water. Not even a good place to go for a beer the chips are terrible and their salsa taste like watered down tomato juice. Can’t even give it a star but Unilocal make you

Really couldn’t be worse. I made the mistake of not looking at the ratings and going for the cute building. Really horrible food. Even the chips were bad!!!

Great food, wonderful drinks, the patio gets really loud when the train runs through.

I’m from Mpls, visiting a friend for the 2^nd time. In Dec she took me to Paradiso. I didn’t like the food at all.
But tonight we went to ‘the villa’. I loved the ceiling art, but don’t like the open floor plan cuz it’s too noisy. I had to yell to talk to her. The chips– what can I say?! Why do Mexican restaurants have the worst chips? I agree w/​previous reviews– they should be homemade. But it’s the norm for Mexican joints, for some reason.
I LOVED the salsa. The touch of freshness from the cilantro was great. The flavor besides the cilantro was great, too. It’s the best I’ve EVER had of that type of salsa.
I loved my food. The rice had a wonderful flavor and it wasn’t dry or boring. My cheese enchilada was good and I loved the verde sauce. Nothing was too spicy, but was flavorful. I like flavor not heat. The chile rellano needed fine tuning, which I’ll explain to the head chef, but it’s on the right track. And the ‘red’ sauce I had on the rellano was interesting– I’m not done evaluating that. But it had flavor, and not just the same flavor as other things.
I’m a chef myself, so I would never do something like order a fish taco, which is fried fish in a tortilla, and then expect wow! Go to a fish place if you want fish. And why they even have fry bread on the menu is beyond me. I still haven’t tried fry bread, but I know that when I do it’s going to be at a place that has something to do w/​the Native American heritage.
Mexican/​Tex-​Mex food has the most wonderful sauces and seasonings– why order fried fish or fajitas for that matter, which are just sautéed/​fried strips of meat, peppers ‘n onions in a tortilla… I don’t get it.
Ever heard of when in Rome? Get something where you can experience the renowned Mexican flavor profile.
And yes the margarita was great!
I can’t wait to go back to try the carnitas, guacamole, one of those terrific-​sounding burritos or more of the enchiladas.
Four stars from me!

I’m giving this place 4 stars even though our service was sub par. The ambiance was awesome. It was a pretty big place with indoor and outdoor seating. There was a band playing outside which was really neat. They brought chips and salsa to our table that were good but were store bought chips Mexican restaurants should usually make there own fresh tortilla chips but I’m not that picky. Ordered steak fajitas and they were on point! Ordered a Ceaser that lacked a little flavor but hey I should have ordered a Margarita like the rest of my table did. Really really liked this place. Food was good, atmosphere was awesome, our server was a little flustered I think. It was about 9:30 and she seemed to be pretty busy. Not too bright but could have just been a long day. There are a few things that could make this place 5 stars but overall I was super impressed.

The food here tastes as if someone tried to cook Mexican food after only reading about it. The dishes are far overpriced. The fact that the dining room was empty at 6pm should have been an indication. The waiter charged the wrong food to our tickets (including a dessert we didn’t order) and then pretended that we were trying to rob him.

Hands down the WORST Mexican food I have ever tasted. As many have said, the empty dining room should have been a large indication at what was to come. When we were first seated we were promptly brought chips and salsa that were mediocre at best. Hoping for an improvement, a friend and I ordered guacamole — MISTAKE. It wasn’t vibrant nor fresh, it was dull and brown and certainly lacked any flavor. The sangria I ordered was by far the worst sangria I have ever had, tasting very much like cough syrup.
I ordered the fish tacos, which was by far my biggest mistake. They were absolutely dreadful. I received dull, hard, dry, grey pieces of «fish» that could easily be mistaken as looking like dry chicken. I could not eat more than a bite of this horrendous food.
I showed my waitress the horrifying quality of the food and explained I was unable to eat it and I NEVER received an apology. She said she would «see what she could do.» She did end up comping my meal but I still had to pay for my glass of iced cough medicine that I had also not been able to drink.
Terrible food. Terrible service.

My boyfriend and I went there on the Saturday after Thanksgiving at around 2 or so in the afternoon. The dining room was completely empty but the bar seemed to be pretty full. This should have been my first clue. We both had margaritas which were pretty good, chips and salsa were ok. I ordered the fish tacos; absolutely awful! The fish wasn’t breaded and was just a long skinny chunk that looked like someone cut off a finger and put it in my taco, kind of grey in color and hard as a rock. The worst fish tacos I’ve ever had. His meal was ok but nothing special. Expensive and won’t be back.

‘Great patio even with the occasional flypast’ by the trains. The chips and salsa came out quick as did the beer. Nice. But then it went downhill. It took forever to get my dinner, steak fajita’s. sadly when the food arrived, it was not worth the wait. While it was visually appealing, there was a complete lack of seasoning. At first I thought it was okay because I had mixed in the spicy salsa, but when I tried the Spanish rice, it had zero flavour. I then tried the steaks and onions on the platter. The meat was well cooked but zero flavour. Same with the veggies very disappointing.
The last thing to mention is the idiotic rule that customers cannot get access to the wi-​fi. I am away from home on business so it would have been nice to be able to log in and read ‘stuff’ when I wasn’t getting blasted by the train’s horn

Went there on Tuesday night to enjoy the breeze and some cocktails with friends. Too bad the service was so awful, one friend said he wouldn’t be coming back.
1. Don’t pressure us to put in a food order.
2. Don’t take one person’s drink order then leave mid-​sentence to help another table.
3. Don’t come back to take the 2^nd person’s drink order, then leave WITHOUT TAKING THE THIRD PERSON’S DRINK ORDER.
4. Don’t pressure us again to put in a food order.
5. Don’t act surprised when we got our chips refilled by a different server. You know, one who actually paid attention to our table.
I’ll be back, because I like the food and atmosphere, but I’ll take care who’s section I sit in.

I can’t say much about the food. I have been there a couple times but they have screwed up my order both times — and they are always out of mushrooms … which is a huge fail.
But, personally… they have the best margaritas in town. They a tad spendy, but extremely yummy. I usually keep it simple with a strawberry-​banana with patron.
It’s a great place to get together with a group of friends to have a few drinks and lots of laughs! Summer nights, they even have bands which is pretty fun as well.

I hate to say it but it sucked. Chips and salsa to start were nothing special. Beer was fine, can’t screw that up but then came the entrees. Boyfriend got carne asada with no flavor whatsoever and enough for two tiny tacos, not to mention a whole plate of onions. I got a steak burrito that was all rice and sour cream, couple pieces of steak I could barely find. Luckily I love cilantro but honestly it was the only thing I could taste.
We thought we would go out on a limb and ignore what other reviewers had to say and form our own opinion but Unilocalers prevail again. For the prices especially, stay away.