On Sunday evenings at Lil’ Danny Speedo’s Go Fly a Kite Lounge in the East End, you’ll find a purple tent on the dive bar’s patio with a speaker pumping out dance-y music from the likes of Boy Harsher, PinkPantheress, and horsegiirL. Under the tent, Houston’s patron saint of pupusas, Beatriz Isabel Umanzor, is stuffing balls of masa dough with tasty fillings, flattening them into pucks, then releasing them onto her sizzling flat-top griddle—all while dancing to the rhythm.

After cooking the pupusas until both sides sport a nice crisp, Umanzor loads them onto plates with heaping portions of rice and slaw, then delivers them to hungry barflies waiting eagerly at tables nearby. This scene will repeat itself for hours. Dubbed “Pupusa Mami” by her fans, Umanzor is usually dressed in colorful, Miami-esque ensembles complete with heels and a full face of makeup. Her pupusa pop-up, Allwayz Hungry, has developed a steady following since she started it in 2020 during the pandemic. 

Umanzor, whose family is from El Salvador, was born in Galveston but raised in Houston’s Meyerland area. Her mother was never a big fan of cooking, so it was Umanzor, who taught herself to cook largely through the internet, who made much of the household meals. When the pandemic reared its ugly head in 2020, Umanzor, then 26, with a husband (who she has since divorced) and a young son, was looking for ways to bring in extra income to support her family. Drawing on her Salvadoran roots, she started cooking pupusas and selling them from her apartment. The corn cakes don’t require a lot of expensive ingredients, she notes, allowing her to feed as many people as possible while minimizing overhead costs. “It’s efficient,” she says. An order of one Allwayz Hungry pupusa will only set you back $6.

Both by word of mouth and through Umanzor’s adept use of social media, where she is known to push out quirky and upbeat videos, her reputation started to grow. In the summer of 2021, she was invited to do her first pop-up at a bar where her friends were throwing a market. Although nervous, she committed to doing it. “I was just so scared,” she remembers. “I’m vulnerable in front of people. It took me a while to get out of my shell, but I just kind of left it to God. I said, ‘If it’s going to be good, it’s for me.’” She sold out completely. 

After the success of that first pop-up, Umanzor was all in. Her now-ex-husband quit his job and they started doing pop-ups full-time throughout the week at places like Grand Prize Bar, Lil’ Danny’s, and breweries like Equal Parts Brewing, using a flat-top griddle supplied to Umanzor by her father. “I owe a lot to him,” she says, noting that she comes from a family of entrepreneurs.

Allwayz Hungry offers pupusas deli-style, setting it apart from other local purveyors. Instead of premixing her fillings, Umanzor spreads them out on her table—a mélange of options like pork, chicken, cheese, beans, spinach, jalapeños, mushrooms, and loroco (an edible flower common in Salvadoran cooking). Customers are able to customize what they want inside their pupusas to their taste. Since Umanzor always has vegan cheese on hand, she’s developed quite a following among Houston’s vegan community, especially those of Salvadoran descent, who she says are often ecstatic about being able to eat food they grew up with without having to sacrifice their dietary restrictions. 

Although Umanzor continues to hustle with her pupusa slinging, she admits that running a successful food pop-up is not always easy, especially now that she is a single mother and is back living with family. “If you’re weak, don’t do it,” she says. “If you cry a lot, don’t do it. You have to be a tough cookie.” After separating from her ex, Umanzor had reduced the frequency of her pop-ups due to the demands of single motherhood. At the back of her mind, however, she’s always had a dream of owning a brick-and-mortar. 

That dream is finally becoming a reality. Umanzor, with the help of her family, recently signed a lease for a small kitchen space at 3530 Scott Street, across from the University of Houston’s TDECU Stadium, right next door to B’s African Kitchen. Come this August, it will be the official headquarters of Allwayz Hungry, although she will continue her weekly pop-ups at Lil’ Danny’s and a monthly one at Paradise Palace, with a few others sprinkled in. Through a pickup window at her new spot, Umanzor will sell pupusas as well as deep-fried pupusa balls and other Salvadoran treats. She plans on putting some tables and chairs on the patio outside, and maybe stringing up some lights and a neon “Allwayz Hungry” sign, which she hopes will be visible to Coogs fans from the stadium across the street.

It’s been a difficult year for Umanzor. But the brick-and-mortar has reinvigorated her spirits and become a new creative outlet for her entrepreneurial hunger—the “Allwayz Hungry” moniker apparently doesn’t just apply to her stomach. “I’ve been going through a lot of tribulations lately, and I’ve been getting a lot closer to God and my family,” she says. “My family is so happy for me. They all see the potential. I didn’t think it would ever get this big, but it did, and I’m so grateful.”