Large crowds filled with hungry newcomers and regulars alike have helped fuel Doña Leti’s exponential growth. Any time you walk into one of its two Houston locations, you’re bound to be met with a wait, but from the food to the party vibes, it’s always worth it.

For an outsider looking in, the restaurant might seem like it was an overnight success, but behind it all are decades of hard work from Ana Leticia Hernandez, better known as Doña Leti. Hernandez moved her three kids from El Salvador to the United States in the late ’90s, after they lost their father in a car accident. Once on American soil, she always worked three to four jobs at a time to give her family more opportunities and a better life. But she still needed additional income. Using skills she learned from a kitchen job at a hotel, she started selling fruit around her apartment complex in Southwest Houston.

If you ask any of her kids, they’ll say this is really when the business started. Her operation’s popularity grew steadily from there: She began to sell the fruit out of the back of a pickup truck, then around 2010, she expanded with a trailer. Named Frutas Doña Leti, it still focused on fruits, but Hernandez noticed a lunchtime crowd had started coming by. So, she decided to slowly introduce dishes like tacos.

“The more people were responding to [the food] and reacting to it, the more we were able to add to the menu,” says her son Julio Lozano, who now co-owns the restaurants alongside his wife, Kalli, and siblings. “My mom’s cooking was amazing.”

In 2019, after Julio and Kalli came home from college, they joined Hernandez and Julio’s sister, Marcela, who had been helping her mom with the truck. The couple decided it was time to take the business even further with an Instagram account, to build on the already loyal customer base. The “Frutas” was dropped from the name. Doña Leti started selling birria tacos as a limited menu item on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. One day, Julio posted a video of him dipping a taco into the consommé—it went instantly viral.

“It just absolutely blew up to the point where we were on like three [to] four-hour waits,” Kalli says. Today, Doña Leti’s has more than 230,000 followers on Instagram.

The demand left them with no choice but to make a transition to a brick-and-mortar. To stay true to the family’s roots, they decided in 2020 to open the restaurant not far from where the food truck sat on S Post Oak Road. Of course, the first year coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. With social distancing in place, Doña Leti’s could only open at 50-percent capacity, but Julio describes it as a blessing in disguise.

“There was a lot of growing pains, and things that we had to learn so that [social distancing], I would say, helped us navigate where we were going before we were at 100-percent capacity,” Julio says.

The experience was all trial and error. Kalli and Julio both recall it being rough at the beginning and often had to endure 20-hour workdays. They say it all paid off, though, because loyal customers kept coming in to support the restaurant.

The family wasn’t able to enjoy this success together for very long: Tragedy hit again when Hernandez unexpectedly passed away. Her funeral was held on the day of the restaurant’s one-year anniversary.

“After she passed, we took about two weeks, and we kind of just had to look at each other and really push and give each other strength, and just say ‘hey, this is what mom wanted. This was her dream,’” Julio says.

During those two weeks when the restaurant was closed, they lost all their employees—people couldn’t go without pay. The siblings kept trudging along and quickly rebuilt the restaurant. Today, it’s something their mom would be proud of. Julio focuses on the day-to-day kitchen operations and bigger picture things; Marcela helps with the recipes and prepping; Kalli works on staffing, payroll, hiring; and Carlos, who left his job as a police officer to help out in 2020, deals with inventory and orders. They’ve also since brought on Kalli’s sister, Ashlyn King, to help out with marketing.

In 2022, the family expanded the restaurant to Washington Avenue, and this past March, they opened a newer spot in the Meyerland area to replace the original location, which Kalli says they had outgrown. People from all over have come to love the restaurant for its birria tacos and unique menu items, which can be credited to Marcela’s cooking.

“His sister really carried on that gift from their mom,” Kalli says. “She just has a very unique knack for trying things. Even if we go to a restaurant, she’ll try a sauce and she’ll be like, ‘This is good, but I think I can make something better.’ She’s really good at pulling inspiration or just thinking of cray things and putting them together.”

It’s thanks to Marcela that the restaurant introduced one of its most popular dishes: the surf and turf egg rolls, which are halved then stuffed with carne asada steak, jumbo grilled shrimp, cheese, and rice, with a side of ranch, queso, and guacamole. Originally, it was only offered at the Washington Avenue location, but Kalli says they realized diners wanted to have access to the same menu at both restaurants.

Julio and Kalli hope Doña Leti’s becomes known for what they call “H-Mex.” Although the restaurant is rooted in Latin American cuisine, inspiration for the menu partly comes from Houston’s culture—and the city’s love for shrimp, cheese, and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Which is why they added the Texas burrito to the menu: shredded cheese, queso, steak, shrimp, chicken, lettuce, tomato, rice, beans, Hot Cheetos, and french fries. And to capitalize on the birria craze that helped put Doña Leti’s on the map, the family has created birria ramen, birria grilled cheese, and birria egg rolls.

The menu’s innovations keep customers coming back for more and help bring in new people each day. With the growing demand, the family hopes to expand Doña Leti’s again soon, possibly to Pearland. Through it all, Kalli says the memory of her mother-in-law keeps the family going, and they can’t wait to continue to share her legacy with more of Houston.

“This is how they keep their mom alive,” she says.