Fiesta Café Offers Big Breakfast

Fiesta Café is one of those restaurants I’ve driven past dozens of times on the way to someplace else. A funky old-fashioned red truck caught my attention and piqued my curiosity each time I passed the restaurant on South 1st Street in Walker’s Point. The restaurant looked inviting with its bright yellow exterior and an adjacent parking lot, always occupied, so friends and I decided to check it out on a recent rainy Sunday.

We were greeted by a friendly host who guided us to the only free table. This welcome was followed by a server who brought a basket of conchas, colorful sweet Mexican bread made daily in the restaurant, according to our server.

This was one of those places where a multi-page menu filled with mouth-watering, lip smacking photos, complicated our decision about what to order. An extensive list of three-egg omelets, all served with toast or pancakes, baby red potatoes, and fruit, included a couple of unusual choices. The Del Jardin set on red and green sauces, with fresh epazote, a Mexican herb reminiscent of oregano, plus tomato, onion, zucchini slices and panela, sounded interesting, as did the Albanil, tomato, onion, fresco cheese, and jalapeno, covered with Mexican sausage over black bean sauce.

Also, on the menu: pancakes and French toast, including the almost irresistible Churro with cream cheese, peanut butter, and a sugar-cinnamon mix, chilaquiles, crepes, and our choices, Florentine Eggs Benedict and the Fiesta Fritata, rounded out this vast breakfast extravaganza.

The frittata, filled with pulled chicken, chorizo, tomato, onions, potato, and thinly sliced jalapeno, overflowed the plate. It was rich with all those combined flavors, albeit slightly overdone. Chicken and chorizo gave it a dense meaty quality, and jalapeno added bursts of spicy heat. The accompanying fruit bowl toned it down, a cooling complement to the egg dish.

The Florentine Benedict was equally tasty. A generous pile of sautéed fresh spinach under nicely poached eggs and more than enough lemony hollandaise, made this an exemplary benedict.

At Fiesta, the owners aspire to serve healthy, fresh, organic ingredients. This was evident at brunch as well as at a recent lunch where we ordered a salad, a sandwich, and the traditional Mexican Molletes.

For the molletes, the chef layered black beans on small rolls, added a four-cheese mix, then, topped it with sliced avocado. Despite its enticing photo on the menu, it looked better than it tasted. There was an unfortunate flaw, the Pico de Gallo did not taste fresh. Perhaps it started out as pico, but when it came to the table, it tasted more like yesterday’s tomato juice with some chopped tomato, onion, and jalapeno floating in it.

A companion’s Monterrey Club Sandwich on sourdough had the requisite three layers of bread filled with turkey, bacon, avocado, greens, sliced tomato, and cheese. Unless you had a hinged mandible, enabling you to open your jaw (very) wide, you would find this sandwich problematic. That said, it was delicious, perhaps because there was so much, maybe too much, of everything in between the bread layers. The fries, tasted more like well-seasoned skinny potato souffles, a pleasant surprise, which my companion devoured along with the super-sized sandwich.

The Chicken Avocado Salad, chopped romaine, corn, black beans, feta, and slices of tortilla chips, had six generous strips of chicken breast, more than enough to call it a chicken salad. It would have been better if the chef had used less chipotle dressing. As it was, the dressing overwhelmed the formerly crunchy romaine. I would order it again, as it had great flavor in the mix of corn, beans, and nicely seasoned chicken, but I would request the dressing on the side.

From the bar, there’s wine, a brief list, a choice of bubbly drinks, and several cocktails to choose from, including a Southwest Bloody, a Paloma, and the Fiesta Café Mimosa: Brut, raspberry liquor, and a splash of freshly squeezed orange juice.

We especially appreciated the freshly squeezed orange juice at brunch. If fresh and healthy is the owner’s goal, then that eight ounce glass of juice nailed the concept. It spoke to the integrity of the restaurant along with the rest of the mostly tasty, healthy meals we enjoyed.

On The Menu

Photo Gallery

The Rundown

• Location: 1407 S. 1st St.
• Phone: 414-914-9569
• Hours: 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mon-Sun
• Neighborhood: Walker’s Point
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FiestaCafeMKE/
• UM Rating: 4.25 stars (average of Yelp, Trip Advisor and Zomato)