Honduran restaurant La Glorieta de Martin opens in Copiague
Pollo con tajadas (fried chicken with green bananas) is a Honduran specialty at La Glorieta de Martin in Copiague. Credit: Newsday/Erica Marcus
Hicela Artolas’s description of pollos con tajadas as “chicken with green bananas” doesn't fully prepare a diner for the towering dish served at her new Honduran restaurant, La Glorieta de Martin in Copiague.
Certainly there is fried chicken in there — a leg and a thigh — but they are obscured by a shower of cabbage and two sauces, one made from raw tomatoes, the other, a pink mayonnaise. The chicken rises from a platter cobbled with fried slices of unripe bananas and the whole work is surmounted by blood-red slices of pickled onions.
Pollo con tajadas, a beloved street food, is just one of the Honduran specialties served at this new restaurant. There’s sopa de caracol, conch soup made with coconut milk, and homemade flour tortillas that are folded over combinations of meat, cheeses and vegetables for a variety of baleadas. The kitchen also has a charcoal grill from which issues the parillada de carnes, grilled steak for two accompanied by rice, beans, salad, tostones and pickled vegetables.
You’ll find most Latin American greatest hits here — tacos, quesadillas, nachos — and, since Hicela’s husband and partner, Martin, hails from El Salvador, excellent pupusas. Plus chicken wings, pasta, chicken Parm and Marsala and other local favorites.
Hicela and Martin opened Martin’s Coffee Cafe, a Latin deli, in Lindenhurst five years ago. But Hicela felt constrained by the small space: She wanted to host parties and events, particularly for the charities she supports, such as Latina Sisters Support, an organization that helps women with cancer and their families. Accordingly, La Glorieta has a full bar, a new floor and even a floral “selfie wall.”
A proud daughter of Las Vegas in Santa Barbara in the west of the country, Hicela commissioned a mural dedicated to Berta Cáceres, the indigenous Honduran environmental activist who was assassinated in 2016.
La Glorieta de Martin, 377 Oak St., Copiague; open every day except Monday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; 631-608-1172, laglorietademartin.com.
