Venue Review: Gloria's Latin Cuisine
Gloria's is a Texas chain of Mexican & Salvadorian food with separate bar areas good enough for hosting an early stage date. A few locations are feasible for approaching/pickup on Friday/Saturday nights. It is well known as a restaurant so you'd need to specify drinks only if you don't want to do a meal date there.
Gloria's has 17 locations around Dallas-Fort Worth, 3 in the Houston area, 1 in Austin, and 1 in San Antonio. I don't think it has any room to grow in DFW anymore, so the future growth of the chain would come from the other Texas big cities.
This is a 4 in 1 venue review as it will cover the 3 locations in Central Dallas neighborhoods plus the one in suburban Addison because that's the best one for initial pickup and approaching. All 4 of these locations are long time locations as the newest of the 4 was opened in 2010. I have been on early stage dates at all 4 and done pickup at the Addison location.
The 2 closest locations to Downtown Dallas are both on a street called Lemmon Avenue. The two Lemmon locations are the best for dates. They are located at the following intersections that are only 1 mile apart and have managed to co-exist.
Lemmon & Cole
Lemmon & Douglas
Lemmon & Douglas existed first and then Lemmon & Cole was added when a mixed use building with 4 floors of residential apartments was opened in 2010. That Gloria's is on the street level and Floors 2-5 of that mid-rise mixed use building are apartment units.
Lemmon & Cole is considered the Uptown location whereas Lemmon & Douglas is just called Lemmon Avenue on the website. The best bit of advice to give when scheduling a date at one of the Gloria's locations off of Lemmon is to specify which one. Without doing so, it's possible to get mixed up on which one to go to.
Parking is a little bit easier at the Lemmon & Douglas location because of an underground garage. That is offset by a cramped bar area with less good ambience. There's a Title Boxing location in the same building complex as the Lemmon & Douglas Gloria's so a male Title Boxing attendee might be persuasive enough to get an instantaneous date after a boxing/kickboxing class at that Gloria's location. This is somewhat improbable though as people will be sweaty after that class and possibly not in the mood for a nearly hour long date post class. In general, most dates at Lemmon & Douglas wouldn't be after a fitness class. It's a serviceable date location but probably better if you're getting a table for casual meal, either as an established couple or meeting a male friend.
Lemmon & Cole has the best ambience so I'd call that the best date venue. Parking can be a little challenging there so I'd recommend an Uber/Lyft there if you don't live within walking distance of it. As mentioned previously. that location is on the bottom level of a 5 story mixed use building with 4 stories of apartments. It's possible that a guy living in the apartments above Gloria's would schedule a date there. Another apartment building is across the street too.
The biggest problem is that Gloria's closes early on weeknights. It closes at 9 PM now. I think the 2 Lemmon locations used to close at 10 PM and Greenville has always closed at 9. That's a consideration when scheduling dates there.
Margaritas are now $12 and domestic/imported beers are $6. It's only open until 9 PM now on weekdays, so you'd want to start a date around 7 PM for sufficient time for completion. At the Lemmon/Cole location, an easy multi-venue date could be starting at Gloria's and then walk 2 block to Uptown Pub for a 2nd drink (more reasonable drink prices there as it is more dive-ish).
The Greenville Avenue location only makes sense for dates if Greenville Avenue happens to be a convenient meeting point based on where you and her live. The Gloria's location is near the border of Lower Greenville and Upper Greenville (discussed in Post #203 -- Mockingbird is the border). Greenville Avenue is most active for the St. Patrick's Day Parade (the Saturday closest to St. Patrick's Day and is covered in Posts #187-189 and Posts #195-206). For the other 364 days of the year, Lower and Upper Greenville are a decent singles scene and I might need to mention that in another post. The Gloria's location on Greenville has difficult parking and not much else near it. It's an ok venue under the right circumstances.
The Greenville Avenue and the Lemmon Avenue locations aren't recommended for initial pickup.
The Addison location works well for initial pickup on Friday and Saturday nights because around 10-10:30 PM, tables are removed and it becomes a salsa music/salsa dancing nightclub with a live band/DJ, starting at 11 PM. From 11 PM - 2 AM, it's a typical loud nightclub environment. It brings in a good Hispanic/Latina crowd and it's likely one of the best places to meet classier, non-ghetto Latinas. If you can salsa dance and are into classier Latinas, that's a great option for you. For White males looking to meet Hispanic/Latina women at salsa nights at Gloria's Addison, I recommend salsa dancing ability at a reasonably high level + Spanish language proficiency at a higher level (closer to fluency). Gloria's Addison gets real noisy inside with the band/music so moving women from indoors to outdoors is needed to have an actual conversation.
Salvadorian-inspired appetizers, entrées, and desserts are paired with signature ****tails to round out your culinary experience south of the border.
gloriascuisine.com
