Doña Gloria (5200 S. Grand) stands as a testament to a remarkable woman, the late Gloria Delgado, who years ago opened Mi Tierra Tienda y Taqueria (now Mi Tierra Bonita) in Fairmont City, Illinois. Now, one of her granddaughters, Celina Delgado, is bringing her grandmother’s legacy and dishes to the Carondelet neighborhood.
The Menu
Find the best food in St. Louis
Subscribe to the St. Louis Dining In and Dining Out newsletters to stay up-to-date on the local restaurant and culinary scene.
Peruse the extensive menu while noshing on house-made chips, served with a red and a green salsa. The kitchen also makes the guacamole—lemony, properly chunky, and well-seasoned—to order in small or large portions. Six soups are available daily, including caldo de camaron, a shrimp soup.
Entrées include familiar favorites (burritos, tacos, quesadillas, huevos rancheros), as well as made-from-scratch specials (Parrillada, Chicharron in salsa verde, Molcajete with green salsa and a vessel with chicken, steak, shrimp, chorizo, onions, cactus, and fresh cheeses). Plates also include chile rellenos, chile Colorado de Puerco, Pozole rojo, carnitas, pork ribs in green chile sauce, Mexican mole, and combination plates. And there are sopas, flautas, tostadas, tortas, and more.
The menu allows for ordering many items a la carté: street tacos, gorditas, puerco tamales… “A lot of people aren’t familiar with sopas, gorditas, or the way we make our enchiladas,” she says. “This way, they can try things out.”
For dessert, there are cinnamon crispis with ice cream, as well as fried ice cream, sopapillas, and chimi-cheese cake with ice cream. Drinks include four versions of house-made aquas frescas—horchata, tamarindo, Jamaican, and pepino con lemon (cucumber with lemon)—as well as bottled Mexican coke and Jarritos.
The Space
The colorful restaurant, which seats 60 plus an additional eight at the bar, is filled with plants, fresh flowers, paintings, and art. (Seating will double in mid-May when the patio opens.) The bright interior is also an homage to Gloria and to her Mexican home state, Michoacán. “If you’ve ever been to Mexico, you know everything is bright: red walls, orange walls, yellow walls, blue walls,” Delgado says. “She has a lot to do with the look of this place.”
The Backstory
Delgado credits her grandmother, who raised five sons and four daughters alone, with getting her started in the food industry. Delgado worked at Mi Tierra, where she learned her grandmother’s recipes. “She was a hard-working woman who had to raise all those kids by herself,” she says. “I was very close to my grandmother and her youngest daughter, my aunt Veronica.”
Today, Delgado and her aunt re-create the dishes they learned from her grandmother at Doña Gloria. “That’s what the restaurant was known for: her salsa and her dishes,” Delgado says.
Delgado’s cousin Vanessa Delgado, who works as a server on Saturdays, recalls, “When we went to Mi Tierra, my parents would say ‘Go say hello to your grandmother.’ She was always in the kitchen cooking or washing dishes. She called me ‘mi pequeño amigo,’ which means ‘my small friend,’ and she would hug me. Sometimes her hands would be wet from washing dishes. In the moment, I didn’t like it, but now I think back to those hugs in a different light. They were happy times.”
Their grandmother is also remembered by the people she served in Fairmont City. “We’ve already had people drive over from Illinois,” Delgado says. “They remember my grandmother’s face just as she is on the wall. They tell me ‘This salsa tastes just like your grandma’s, or ‘You made this dish good as your grandma did.’ They’ve known me since I was a little girl, and I am so glad they remember her.’
“When my grandmother passed,” she says, “I wanted to continue her name.”
Doña Gloria is open 10 a.m.–8 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, as well as 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Sunday.
