Gloria's Latin Cuisine — Restaurant in Dallas

I’ll start off by saying that my family and I are Gloria’s fanatics. We have gone weekly to various locations around DFW and Austin for the past 10+ years. I truly love Gloria’s. I love the food. I love the atmosphere. I love the staff. This review is for this particular location.

We moved to Uptown about 18 months ago and have bounced between this location, the Gloria’s in Oak Lawn, the original Gloria’s in Oak Cliff and the Gloria’s on Lower Greenville. The two off Lemmon are closest to us.

Now, we have been to this particular Gloria’s about 10-15 times within the last year or two. We’ve overall found the atmosphere to be better than the location in Oak Lawn but the service was overall the worst. Not that we didn’t have some great servers. We particularly liked Miguel who often was our server when outside. He’s one of the reasons the review is two stars versus one.

Otherwise, in comparisons to its counterparts, the service wasn’t ideal. Many servers seemed distracted or annoyed to be taking our orders. This didn’t happen every visit, but enough that we noticed the difference in dispositioned. We also had several issues with being seated on busy nights. On about three occasions we would wait for about 45 minutes only to watch various staff members allow “special” patrons to be seated as soon as they arrived (no, no reservations. It seems like in these circumstances these were people known the the staff members). I’m all for treating regular customers with extra care, but this angered those of use who had been sitting and waiting for close to an hour. New customers were turned off by this, and it’s overall probably not the best practice if you want to create new return customers.

Positives are that food always came out within ten minutes of being ordered and was usually warm if not hot. Food has been consistently good which is why we returned even after less than stellar experiences.

That was until last Monday. We ordered food for pick up at around 3pm. It was picked up within 10 minutes of being ordered. We live less than half a mile from this location so the food was in the vehicle for no more than 5 minutes. My food was not great but it was not bad. Temperature was warm, nothing concerning. My fiancé’s food however, was lukewarm. She made the mistake of finishing her verde cheese enchiladas although she felt they tasted off. She later described them as tasting like the cheese was old and had been sitting for hours.

Two hours later she was extremely ill and stayed extremely ill for about 24 hours. Once the physical symptoms stopped she continued to feel lethargic, weak, dizzy and disoriented for several days. We had to cancel our Thanksgiving plans putting us out about $550 dollars for an AirBnB that couldn’t refund us (we were suppose we suppose to leave Tuesday and did not cancel in time for a refund).

I waited almost a full week to post this because we wanted to confirm it was food poisoning and not a gastrointestinal virus.

No one else got sick. We were around several people Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and all of us were symptom free. She felt fine all day Monday until about 2 hours after eating her food and then suddenly became violently ill. She felt the food tasted off. All signs point to food poisoning. Obviously you can never be 100% but given her diet for earlier in the day (toast, coffee, banana) I’d say the cheese enchilada was the culprit.

A long winded review, I know, but we’re really sad because one of our favorite restaurants ended up ruining our week and the reputation they always carried with us.

We probably won’t be eating at Gloria’s for awhile due to this incident. I’ll miss the amazing bean dip and the best mimosas and margaritas in Dallas. We definitely won’t be returning to this location. Food safety should be any restaurants number one concern. Scared to think what would have happened if someone in poor health would have consumed...

Ordered a Margarita while my wife was enjoying dinner with work friends. Drink was strong and tasty. Bartenders were attentive without being over bearing.

Don't know what the guy from Spain's problem was (he's linked to almost the same exact review for a different Gloria's location on the same day--- sketchy much), maybe not realizing he is at a tex-mex restaurant, not a true Spanish restaurant. It probably wouldn't taste the same seeing how there is an ocean's worth of several other cultures' influence, plus 500 years or so, on the food. Every Gloria's I've been too is always tasty. Can't expect perfection every meal, every where you go eat out man.

Plus, the people that take the time to go online and complain are also usually the people that are so closed minded that even the best server and/or manager couldn't do anything to fix a "problem" that occurs.

To sum it up: if you didn't like the food here, feel free to not visit again. And by that, I mean America.

P.S. I'm sick and tired of hearing people complain about their ruined meal/night. I have plenty of friends in the service industry. 75% of the time it's your own fault your meal was ruined. First, pay attention to your server when they're present at your table. If you ignore them they will care less about your meal because of your disrespect (reasonable, you feel that way it happens the other way around). Secondly, read the items on the menu completely before ordering something. Management isn't trying to trick you into ordering food you won't like. Lastly, no one is perfect, don't be a dick when someone makes an honest mistake. There's a difference between your server screwing up something on everyone's plate (that IS the time to complain if you really want, but maybe the cook suck at life too) or your server screwing up your one particular plate because you practically reinvented the dish in a way never intended because of some new fad diet. If everyone else's food is correct but your complicated order IS wrong, don't blame the server, blame your own self for trying to make a meal from scratch in someone else's kitchen. And if your plate DOES manage to come out correct, make sure to take care of your server when it's time to tip. Minimum wage for servers in most states has only gone up a few nickels from 1980. Yes, that's right, servers still only get paid $2.13/hour, people. And that all goes to taxes if they're lucky.

Good night and good...

DISGUSTING! Where to even begin? We arrived at 6:28pm and it was 7:02 before we received our drinks. Watered down glass of ICE with almost nothing to drink. We ordered. Appetizer arrived at 7:04pm and dinner arrived at 7:06pm - we had yet to even take a sip of our drinks.

FOOD: GROSS!!!! This is microwave fast food garbage. If you want to over pay for food that is as tasteless and sloppy - go to any number of fast food places. Go open a can of bean dip in the grocery store, it would have been better. The steak: cold, very little flavor and the sides were cheap and sloppy. The Fajitas: what meat? What veggies? It wasn't even steaming when it came out The Pupusas: WHAT? no filling? No Flavor - but dripping in OIL

DRINKS: We ordered Margaritas - all of which were glasses of ICE with a little little bit of liquid. Where was the drink? WTH? Not to mention it was not spicy, it was flavored water?

Service: this must have been amateur night because we saw our waiter three times: took our order, dropped our drinks off and then the check. Someone else brought the food......of course all of that was within 4 mins of each other - after sitting there for 30 ins. They clearly dont know how to run a kitchen when they bring your drinks your apps and your meal all out within 4 mins.

No - I know what you are thinking, ""wow it must have been packed" nope - might have had 10 people in the entire place. Everyone was sitting at the bar. Only one couple sitting outside.

The place looks nice, the girl at the door was nice to check us in, open the door, get us to a table quickly when we arrived. Other than that, this is way over priced and the...