Gloria's Latin Cuisine — Restaurant in Austin

A 7 year quest for Great Latin food has ended after finding Gloria's!

My wife and I walked the Domain for some exercise in the cool of the morning and decided to stop for breakfast. We saw Gloria's and it was crowded so we assumed it must have decent food. We got on the wait list and did some more walking to kill the wait time. We were paged much sooner than expected. The wait staff here is exceptional and each person covered for the other to ensure that the customers were always taken care of. I had to search out a couple of staff members to tip them since they were not even working my area when I asked for assistance. The food is hands down the best Latin cuisine we have had in Texas since we moved to Austin in 2014. The salsa in the chips and salsa starter is better than any other restaurant I have tried in Austin and I have been to ALL OF THE BIG NAME chains and very many family owned restaurants so I have sampled a lot of salsa. They also serve excellent lard free refried black beans that are very good as well. My wife had the Chorizo breakfast burrito and I had the bacon breakfast burrito. Both were loaded with meat, eggs, cheese and potatoes. The quality if the bacon is exceptional... if you do not spend at least $8/pound on your own bacon, Gloria's buys better bacon than you! Every part of our meal was GREAT and the restaurant staff was perfect. I asked for a manager and met a young man named Diego who was very professional. I complimented him on the food and the service and what a pleasure it was to dine there. I specifically praised our waitress as she met every need with a smile and speed and efficiency. Diego thanked us and said to let him know if we came back. We returned the following week for the evening meal and Diego was kind enough to comp an appetizer for us. We had the Ceviche and it was AMAZING! The fish was perfect in flavor and texture and even my wife who does not care a great deal for ceviche enjoyed it. We had the taco tamale plate for dinner and thoroughly enjoyed the meal. We topped it off with the Carmel Turtle Brownie for desert and we both loved it. We have now had several meals at Gloria's and every one has been exceptional. All of the servers are excellent and you can not go wrong with any of them but we are inclined to ask for Judith if...

Gloria's is usually my go-to when I have lunch at the Domain. I'm not sure how much longer that will be the case if the service is similar to what we had today. From the word go it was rush, rush, rush. I could understand it if they were busy and we were coming in at twelve noon. That was not the case here as the restaurant was empty as we started lunch at 1 after the rush was over.

My friend arrived before me but the person at the front wanted to seat her right away after she said she was fine waiting for me. Then throughout the meal, the server kept trying to take our food. The first time my friend said she was still working on it, and later on when we were in the middle of our conversation, he cleared off the plate with my guacamole, sour cream, and cheese on it (I was having fajitas and was going to use it on my third one). I never even realized it was gone until he had left the table.

Look, most people are going to lunch at a restaurant to have an enjoyable, leisurely time....not constantly be rushed. We shouldn't have to keep telling your server to just leave us alone so we can talk. Good servers will just fill up your glass without interrupting your conversation and wait for the customers to say if they need anything (and ironically, the one thing the server didn't do was refill my friend's ice tea). I just felt like throughout lunch we were constantly being interrupted and it really did sour the experience. Please train your servers better, in particular to have some situational awareness so your guests have a nice experience.

Addendum to "owner": I did send the email and received no...

As a long time loyal customer to this establishment and spending thousands of dollars here, and yes I said thousands and I have the Microsoft excel spreadsheet to prove it.

The bar experience has gotten so bad that many of the regulars has stop coming, but let me speak on the experience that really got me upset.

#1 I never got offered any chips & Salsa, but the people sitting next to me did.

#2.Never got acknowledge, until 10 minutes later. This was after eye contact was made.

#3. It took 20 minutes to get a drink, enough said.

#4. Because of the time it took to get acknowledged & to get a drink I proactively TRIED to order some food & requested to be billed out. Well after 20 minutes passed by, I noticed that my final bill & my food order was not put in.. It took another 25 -30 minutes to wrap up the transaction. This place has went on their drink prices, no happy hour & no customer appreciation at all. While most of Austin restaurants have happy hour & specials , Gloria's has decided that poor customer service & lack of customer appreciation equals higher prices.

The staff shouldn't complain about getting tips because with this type of service and the owner steadily increasing prices, they should ask the owner to give them away rise.

This place is no longer a destination spot that I recommend to friends, the Domain has plenty of great spots that offer great happy hours & specials and most important great service..

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