By Samantha Husted 

Charlotte’s restaurant scene, much like the city itself, is a melting pot. In this series, we interview local chefs, brewers, and restaurant owners from various cultural backgrounds to get the scoop on the authentic dishes they love, the spots where they like to eat, and the unique ingredients they use. 

For Dairelyn Glunt, co-owner of Salud Cerveceria, representing her Dominican heritage is paramount. 

“ Everything that we do, it is with the intention of showcasing my culture,” Dairelyn says.

Dairelyn was born in Brooklyn, New York, but she didn’t stay there for very long. When she was just 18 days old her mother, a nurse, moved her and her brothers from the city down to the Caribbean while her father remained in the States to work.

It wasn’t until the year 2000, when Dairelyn was 13 years old, that the family relocated to Statesville, North Carolina. Knowing very little English, she found herself in the rural south, thousands of miles away from home. It was a complete culture shock.

“Some people were less than pleasant,” Dairelyn says. “You can only imagine: a small town in North Carolina in the 2000s, pretty racist and closed-minded. Most people didn’t give me the time of day.”

Faced with adversity in a brand new country, Dairelyn hit the ground running. She quickly learned English thanks to her parents’ insistence, ESL classes in school, and American television. In 2008, she moved to Charlotte for college, where she met her now-husband and future business partner, Queen City native Jason Glunt. In 2017, they opened Salud Cerveceria.

Today, Salud Cerveceria is a James Beard nominated brewery in NoDa, renowned for its delicious pizzas, cold beers, diverse selection of wine, and coffee service (they even have pastries!). While the Cerveceria isn’t exclusively a Dominican spot, Dairelyn and her husband have made it a point to incorporate Latin culture into almost every aspect of the space. For example, many of Salud’s beers include the fruit Darielyn grew up picking in her backyard such as guava, mangos, passion fruit, and tamarind. 

“We try to sprinkle all the Latin things that we can and showcase our culture through everything that we do,” Dairelyn says.

Alongside their Dominican-inspired beers, Salud also hosts a Latin dance party on the first and third Saturday of every month called “Noche Latina.” They also broadcast almost every soccer match, and recently, they started hosting a Latin-run club.

Dairelyn gave us the scoop on her favorite spots to eat around the city for authentic Latin cuisine, the struggles she’s seen other Dominican restaurateurs face, and her hopes for the future of Charlotte’s food scene.

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Unpretentious Palate: Describe your cultural background.
Dairelyn Glunt: I’m originally from the Dominican Republic. I grew up there and then I moved here. It’s always in the back of my mind, what can I do to show people bits and pieces of the Dominican Republic?

UP: How would you describe Dominican cuisine to people who are unfamiliar?
GH: Dominican food is very rich. We cook with a lot of seasonings: a lot of garlic and oregano. We don’t cook with cumin, so it’s very different from the Mexican food flavor. You don’t have to add anything to it. You do not have to add salt. You don’t have to add pepper.

UP: What are some dishes from your culture that hold significance to you?
DG: Every country has a sancocho (meat and vegetable stew), but the Dominican one is thicker, and it has seven different meats, 10 root vegetables — it’s insane. It’s a whole thing

UP: Who has been your biggest culinary influence?
DG: Both my mom and dad are amazing cooks, and they taught me and my two brothers how to cook. So, all three of us can cook very well. I’m very thankful for that.

UP: Where is your favorite place to eat in Charlotte to experience authentic Dominican cuisine?
DG: If I want sancocho, which is a Dominican stew they only make on Sundays, I get it from Punta Cana, a restaurant on South Boulevard.

I went to a new Dominican restaurant last Friday. It’s called La Isla Tropical, and I am so happy to report that it was absolutely amazing. The food tasted just like back home. It’s part of City Kitch, so it’s to-go only, but oh, my god! I can’t wait to go back and try their entire menu. I’m so happy to finally have food that tastes like my grandma’s kitchen.

We live on the east side, so we have the most amazing Latino restaurants around us. There’s actually one right around the corner from our house called La Cocina Latina, or “The Latin Kitchen.” We go there at least three times a week because it’s very inexpensive. It’s a bunch of ladies cooking there and the food is always so good.

UP: What do you order when you go to La Cocina Latina?
DG: I get the costillitas, which are pork ribs cut in smaller pieces, and they make it into this green sauce, and oh, my god, it’s so good! Then they serve it with rice and beans, and they make homemade tortillas to order. 

UP: Where is your favorite place in Charlotte to shop for authentic ingredients?
DG: Compare Foods. That’s pretty much where I get all of my Latin ingredients, because it’s kind of like a Dominican supermarket, but they also have other things. And then just the Asian market, that’s pretty much the only place where I can find lemongrass. Even though that’s not Latino whatsoever, I just love food. It’s not just Latin food. I love Vietnamese food, so I cook a lot of noodles and stuff like that with the Vietnamese flavor.

UP: What are some misconceptions about Dominican cuisine?
DG: The biggest misconception is just how people think it’s just too much flavor for someone who is used to eating more, you know, simple? I don’t feel like there’s many misconceptions. Our flagship for Dominican food is pretty much rice, beans, and stewed meat with a green salad like cabbage and tomatoes. We do put a lot of seasonings in it, but it’s delicious. That’s what makes it good. There’s nothing wrong with that, right?

UP: What would you like to see more of in regard to Dominican culture and Charlotte’s culinary landscape?
DG: I would love to see more Dominican food. I feel like they open, but they close because it’s not busy enough. Americans don’t go to Dominican restaurants. There is a Dominican food truck that is always parked on North Tryon, and it’s amazing. They do rotisserie chicken, Dominican-style, and their food is really, really good. It’s called Pollo Al Carbon Los Mocanos. I mean, their food is amazing. I would like to see more of that, more Dominican restaurants doing it right and hopefully succeeding.