Gloria's Latin Cuisine

I love Tex-Mex, but I really enjoy when I get to try the cuisine from a specific country. For a friend's birthday, we ended up at Gloria's, which turned out to have traditional Salvadorian food in addition to the Tex-Mex favorites usually offered. I decided to branch out and do a sampler plate of the most common foods. This included plantains, yucca, a pork and cheese pupusa, a tamale, black beans, and black rice. It was a ton of food, but really delicious. The plantains weren't too mushy and have a nice slight crunch on the outside. If you never had yucca, it tastes somewhat like a potato...almost like mashed potatoes with a crust on the outside. The black rice is rice made with juice of the black beans which helps tie the flavors into each part of the dish and was a nice twist on the Spanish rice you usually get. The pupusa is really interesting. It is somewhat like a corn tortilla quesadilla, filled with pork and cheese. The tortilla is much thicker than a regular one and it is a lot denser. The filling wasn't too overly spiced and the cheese helped keep everything together. The last thing on the plate was a tamale (which I have actually never had!) It was moist and flavorful, with pieces of chicken. This was a super filling meal (and not at all healthy), but it's a great way to have a sampling of what real Salvadorian food tastes like. So if you are ready to try something other than Tex-Mex, be sure to give Gloria's a try.