Gloria's

So I went to a screening at another school today. When lunchtime came around, the nurse said she wanted to go to a small family owned place down the street called Gloria's. The ladies in the office had really talked this place up, so we decided to go try it. (This area is a highly Hispanic populated area.)

We walk in and immediately I begin to think, "We should go somewhere else." 

WARNING #1 to leave

There is no one inside eating, and the place did not look very clean. A woman from the back met us and only spoke Spanish...and the 4 of us only speak English. This should have been the warning bell and lights flashing in our heads to let us know to turn around and run right there. 

WARNING #2 to leave

 The woman is saying something in Spanish and pointing to tables. (On a side note...I'm really good at understanding what is said in Spanish. There are a few things I have not picked up, but for the most part I can understand what someone says to me...I just can't respond back. I could not understand a word this lady was saying. I don't know if she was speaking a different dialect, or if because she was old she was slurring her words together, but it just wasn't working out.) We pick a table and sit down and menus are put in front of us. As we start looking through the menu, another woman comes out from the back and begins asking us in English what we would like to drink. She says they have a pineapple drink and some other kind that I can't even remember now. She asks if we want to try a sample of them. We all politely decline and order normal drinks. I order water, the lady across from me orders iced tea, the lady next to her orders iced tea, and the lady sitting next to me orders a diet coke. The lady says, "Coke from Mexico?"

WARNING #3 to leave

 After explaining she wanted a diet coke...not the Mexican kind of coke, the lady that speaks English gives the lady that speaks Spanish our order. It goes something like this, "Uno iced tea, Uno iced tea, Uno agua, Uno diet coke" as she is pointing to each of us. Not sure what there was to translate there, but that was 

WARNING #4. 

The lady sitting next to me gets up to use the restroom and asked me to ask if they had cheese enchiladas with chili con carne on top. We didn't see it on the menu. When the lady that speaks English comes back, I ask her and she goes into a long list of the lunch menu items. She gives me every combination of meat and sauce you can get for enchiladas, and there are none with chili con carne. They don't even make chili or queso sauce. The options were red sauce, green sauce, or mole sauce. Not gonna happen!! So I turn in the menu to look at the tacos. At this point I'm thinking that I really don't want to eat here, but I don't want to be the difficult one. So I'm thinking I can force feed myself a taco to eat something so I'm not the only one at the table not eating. I start looking at the tacos and my choices are: goat meat tacos, beef stomach tacos, beef tongue tacos, or chicken tacos. 

WARNING #5

 I'm completely grossed out and thinking I'm just gonna be a party pooper, not order anything, and sit and talk while they eat. About this time, the lady that went to the restroom comes back. When she sits down she says, "There is a bag of rat poison by the restroom door." 

WARNING #6

WARNING #7

WARNING #8

WARNING #9

WARNING #10

 Thankfully at this point, the lady across from me says she is not going to be able to eat there because there is nothing she can find on the menu and the rat poison had just sent her over the edge. The rat poison turned the other 2 away as well. I told them that I was thankful they decided they didn't want to eat there either because I didn't, but I didn't want to hurt feelings. 

So we're sitting there trying to figure out how we're going to just get up and walk out. We see the waitress coming back our way with the drinks. Luckily the nurse who's screening it was today was wearing scrubs because the rest of us were wearing jeans. We quickly came up with an "emergency" at her school that she had to leave for. I felt bad...but I WAS NOT going to eat anything from there. 

Once we got in the car, we were laughing so hard we were all crying. The previous 10 minutes were crazy!! We all told the nurse to tell the people at her school that recommended it that the place was probably good for locals...but for us "grinas" it did not work out so well.