A family recipe passed down from mother to daughter is now the heart of a growing tamale business making its debut at the Houston Ballet Nutcracker Market.
Momma’s Tamales is one of the new vendors at this year’s market, which runs through Sunday at NRG Center. The Bellaire-based business started by selling tamales at farmers markets before opening its first brick-and-mortar location in December 2020.
The inspiration behind the business is founder Ana Soria’s mother, Leonar Arenas, affectionately known as Momma.
Arenas spent her entire life making tamales and wanted to make sure her family’s secret recipe lived on. Before she passed away, she challenged her daughter to perfect the recipe, telling Ana she would never be able to make tamales as good as hers.
That challenge sparked the beginning of Momma’s Tamales.
Soria spent countless hours making batch after batch until her mother finally gave her tamales her blessing.
Today, the Bellaire location serves as the business’s home base, where tamales are made with the family recipe and sold by the dozen or half-dozen to go.
Although Arenas is no longer here, her legacy lives on in every batch.
For Soria, Momma’s Tamales is about more than serving food. It’s a way to keep her mother’s tradition alive and share a special piece of her family with the Houston community.
Visitors can stop by the Houston Ballet Nutcracker Market through Sunday at NRG Center to shop Momma’s Tamales and other local vendors.
