Gloria’s Secret Ceviche & Salvadoran Roots
“This place was never meant to be a restaurant,” says Gloria Vargas, owner of Gloria’s Secret Cafe in Beaverton. Even though starting a restaurant might not have been her original intention, the residents of Beaverton and the surrounding area (including myself) are incredibly grateful she did. When my husband and I first moved to Oregon, we figured Gloria’s was something special because it seemed to always be closed—I wanted in on the secret! Finally, one magical Tuesday we happened to be walking by for a late lunch and Gloria was in the kitchen whipping up the best Salvadoran food in the Pacific Northwest. Gloria has been passionate about good food since she was a teenager, shortly after she came to California from El Salvador, and she started cooking in Beaverton to educate the suburban masses about real Latin American food. She and her daughter Jenny welcomed me into the cafe to photograph them cooking fresh mojito salsa and ceviche and chat about their Salvadoran roots. Read on for Gloria’s story and to get the recipes below. I cannot stress enough how special these recipes are—Gloria was incredibly generous in sharing them. Really, she never gives recipes away!
Be sure to follow Gloria on Facebook and Instagram for updates on daily specials and to see what’s going on in her kitchen.
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Gloria Vargas on learning to cook and using food as an educational tool.
transplanted from el salvador to hollywood at 13 years old, gloria started cooking out of comfort.
“I started little by little,” she says. “I watch a lot of cooking shows.”
Gloria spent a lot of time working for Italian restaurants in California doing various jobs—serving, bartending—which sparked an interest in cooking good food. “I never got into the kitchen, but I loved the food,” she says. “I used to go to these fancy Italian restaurants, and I thought, ‘I need to learn to make these things myself!’” Chicken cacciatore was her first ever dish, and she soon transitioned into making salsas, which would later transform the course of her career.
At 19, she moved to Oregon in search of better schools for her daughter, Jenny, who has fond memories of eating salsas and ceviches on the beach with her mom. “We’d get seafood on the beach and we’d go bodysurfing all day, or we’d go to the river,” Jenny says. “That was the best time.”
Ceviche, Gloria says, originally comes from Peru but there are different types all over Latin America. “I just love ceviches because I knew a lot of Peruvian restaurants in California, and that’s what we’d get. It’s really hard to find in Portland.” Salvadoran ceviche features fresh clams dug out of the sand and cooked right away in lime with cilantro and mint. “In El Salvador we don’t eat hot at all,” Gloria says. “But I decided I wanted to make ceviches with chilies from the market.”
“The peppers are just beautiful,” Jenny says. “They make the salsas, everything she makes just taste so good.”
Gloria’s salsas soon became the talk of her neighborhood. “Oregon was kind of boring for me,” she says, making salsas and tamales livened things up a little. “My neighbors would come over to my house and eat my food. Then they started knocking on my door wanting to buy salsas.” Selling to her neighbors led Gloria to getting her license to cook out of her apartment, which then led to setting up shop at the Beaverton Farmers Market in 1999, which led to meeting a business partner who would bring her commercial accounts to stock her salsas in stores like Su Pan, New Seasons, and more.
Suddenly, Gloria had a mini Salvadoran salsa empire on her hands.
“This thing grew and grew, and now it’s kind of killing me because there’s so much work,” she says. “But I still love it. Doing this is my favorite thing.”
Gloria’s Secret Cafe came to fruition in 2003 as Gloria was looking for a space to make tamales and salsas for her grocery accounts. After an FDA change in commercial kitchen requirements after the Swine Flu outbreak, Gloria wasn’t allowed to cook in her apartment for commercial distribution and lost her large store customers.
The Farmers Market and cafe became her main gigs. The tiny space seats 15 and when Gloria runs out of food, she closes for the day. It might irk some potential customers who aren’t in the know, but Gloria’s food has gained her life-long loyal customers. “The mango-habenero chicken I make, half of Nike come here and they fight over it,” she laughs. “I only have two refrigerators, it’s not packed with just chicken.”
Gloria’s features dishes from all over Latin America, including a few Salvadoran specials like tamales wrapped in banana leaves and filled with capers, olives and potatoes. She’s dedicated to traditionally made fresh food. “I wanted to show Beaverton and educate Beaverton about Latin America because they just know burritos and tacos and enchiladas,” she says. “As soon as they walk in the door and want a burrito, I’m like, ‘No. Do you know what pastelitos are? And pretty soon I started training people how to eat these things and I started getting regulars.”
Gloria has become a regular in the community scene as well. She says she can’t go anywhere west of the Willamette without being recognized. She tributes her local celebrity to the connections she has with her customers in the cafe. “They come in and they just want to talk with me,” she says. “I’m like a counselor to them or something.”
Although her daughter Jenny isn’t interested in a career in the food industry, she’s learned a lot from cooking with her mom over the years. And she’s making sure her children are soaking up the knowledge as well. Gloria’s grandkids occasionally help in the cafe, as does Jenny. “She’s trained me well, I’m grateful,” Jenny says. “My friends appreciate it and I’m like, ‘My mom was the one who taught me it all.’”
But after 21 years total in business, Gloria is finally thinking about slowing down. She’s no longer at the Beaverton Farmers Market, saying it got too expensive to justify the cost and the hassle. “5 a.m., get up, unpack, pack up—is it really worth it? Not when you’re 60. Those days are over.”
Gloria’s next ambition is to write a cookbook full of traditional Salvadoran recipes, techniques, and stories. But currently, the expense of publishing is too much for her. Another thought is starting a YouTube channel where people can subscribe to her recipes—if her grandson has the time to help her out.
She hints that the cafe also might have limited time left. She’s faced a number of health issues over the past few years, and though her daughter and grandkids are in Oregon, the rest of her family is in California, and she misses them—especially with the current pandemic and being stuck in her apartment all the time. “I have very little time left here, so people really need to come here and take advantage because eventually it’s going to disappear,” she says. “My family are like, ‘Get out! Just walk out and come home.’ But I’m like, ‘You don’t understand! This is my baby.’”
“This is her life,” Jenny emphasizes.
Whether Gloria’s the restaurant stays or goes, one thing is for sure: The secret is out, and Gloria the passionate cook has made her mark on the community and will always make time to be in the kitchen.
—Gloria’s is currently having a pandemic special on Tuesdays of 12 tamales for $20, take out only. Call ahead and visit the cafe at 12500 SW Broadway in Beaverton.
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Gloria’s Secret Ceviche & mojito salsa
Gloria serves her ceviche during private events in the cafe as an appetizer. Make these recipes entirely to taste, she says—you like it more tomato-y, add more tomatoes, like it spicy, add more peppers, etc.
Ceviche is a great summer food. Get the peppers while they are in season for the best flavor.
INGREDIENTS
1 pound shrimp, cooked in salt water and cilantro. Remove shells after cooking and chop into pieces
Half a red onion, chopped
2 medium tomatoes or 1 1/2 large tomatoes, chopped and seeded
Half bunch cilantro, chopped
Handful of mint leaves, chopped
A small spoonful kosher salt
5 limes
1 or 2 cayenne peppers (“This is what you want when they are in season. They are hard to find, not all the markets have them.”)
Half a poblano pepper, cut into small pieces (“This one isn’t very spicy but it has a lot of flavor.”)
Half a patron pepper (“This one is only available in the summer. In the winter you’ll have to find a store that imports them from Mexico. Patron is a really yummy pepper. It has a lot of flavor but is more of a bell pepper.”)
DIRECTIONS
Chop your red onion first. Add your cayenne peppers and tomatoes and stir.
Add the poblano and and patron peppers, juice of the 5 limes, salt and stir.
Mix in the cilantro. Then move about half of the mixture to another bowl. One mixture will be your ceviche, the other will be your mojito salsa.
For the mojito salsa, add mint and stir. Add any more lime or salt to taste. Use to top fried white fish, or just eat it with chips.
For the ceviche, add the shrimp and stir. Mix in any more desired salt, lime, peppers or tomato. Eat immediately.
If you know anyone who would like to be interviewed and photographed for this series. I’m interested in profiling professionals in the food industry who can connect their food stories to heritage and identity.
Thanks for reading!
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