Tamale-making mom and son went viral on TikTok. Check out their new restaurant in Fresno
Sometimes, life takes you on a wild ride.
Take Cristina Leon of Fresno. A little over a year ago, she was working 10 hours a day, six days a week in a frigid meatpacking plant.
Since then she quit to sell tamales from her ex-husband’s driveway and went viral on TikTok with some videos getting millions of views.
Her son, 25-year-old Ruben Vazquez, is the architect of the Tamale Mama TikTok account, behind the camera and often in front of it.
Now, the duo has opened a restaurant in Fresno.
Tamale Mama opened late last month on Tulare Street in downtown Fresno. The little restaurant is in the spot once occupied by Tulare Street Bistro in Chinatown.
Leon has come a long way from the day she left Mexico for the United States with one suitcase and a phone number for a friend’s mom she wasn’t even sure worked.
Now, to be running her own restaurant, with 364,000 followers on TikTok?
“This is a big jump,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m dreaming.”
Tamale Mama menu
The restaurant specializes in tamales, of course.
The most popular option is red pork, though you can also get green chicken or Leon’s favorite: jalapeños and cheese.
You can get one tamale for $3, and order them by the dozen or half dozen.
A popular order is a plate of two tamales, beans, rice and salsa for $10.
The tamales are made daily, Leon coming in at 7 a.m. to slather masa — the soft dough made from corn — onto dried corn husks with the back of a spoon. She scoops meat mixed with red or green salsa on top and folds up the tamales with a hand so practiced she barely needs to look at what she’s doing.
The tamales go into giant pots on the stove. They’re tall enough that workers use a step ladder to get the food out when a customer orders.
There are a few other things on the menu, including a $5 guajolota — essentially a tamale torta or sandwich. It’s an unwrapped tamale tucked into bolillo bread spread with mayonnaise, refried beans, lettuce, tomato and sour cream.
The dish isn’t common on Fresno menus. It’s popular in Mexico in Puebla, said Leon (who’s not from there, but instead from Michoacan).
Customer Gabby Linares of Huron was following Tamale Mama on TikTok and came in to try the restaurant.
“I saw it was popular,” she said. “I was in town today, so I came in to try.”
Another specialty is champurrado, a Mexican hot chocolate, made here with cinnamon, three kinds of milk and masa mixed in.
Chicharron tacos and burritos are also on the menu.
There are lots of changing specials, too, along with pozole (a soup made with pork) on Saturdays and menudo (a soup made with tripe) on Sundays.
Family and TikTok
There’s a reason the Tamale Mama logo has a heart in it.
“My secret ingredient is love,” Leon said, “because I made it for my family. I made it because I love to cook.”
The third of nine children, Leon started cooking for her younger siblings as a kid.
She and her son, Vazquez, are as close as a couple of tamales nestled in a pot. He has two older sisters, the youngest 14 years older than him, so Vazquez and his mom spent a lot of one-on-one time together.
“She has the recipes and the flavor, but I’ve got the business know-how,” he said. “We’ve been through thick and thin.”
While Leon often says these rapid changes are scary, Vazquez encourages her.
A doctor told Leon she was headed toward arthritis, working with her hands so much in the cold meatpacking house. Vazquez is the one who urged her to sell her tamales.
She was originally going to try it on a Saturday. She asked for a day off from her job. They said no, so she gave her two weeks’ notice and started selling tamales from the driveway near Weldon and Cedar avenues.
Vazquez, meanwhile, saw a grandma making bread go viral on TikTok and got inspired to film his first video of Leon making salsa.
“Wow, if she could just be slapping dough on a counter getting millions of views, why can’t my mom making salsa?” he said.
Soon after, the TikTok account took off, their first viral video getting 3 million views. In addition to the more than 300,000 followers on TikTok, they’ve got more than 121,000 on Instagram.
Vazquez starts most of his videos with, “What are you making, Ma?”
TikTok and the social media side of the business is all Vazquez, Leon said.
“I don’t really understand much about that. I’m old-fashioned,” she said. “I know that it’s helped us a lot.”
A question about their most-viewed video inspires an eye roll.
Leon was making a shrimp dish involving ketchup, mayo and chili oil. They didn’t film her deveining the shrimp. Viewers assumed she didn’t and a flood of disgusted comments poured in about “caca” (the shrimp’s intestinal tract) in the food.
“What gets a lot of views is negativity,” Vazquez shrugged.
They eventually did another video showing Leon’s method for deveining shrimp without a knife.
Positive videos do well, too, including jokes about how Mexican mothers adore their sons and more.
The pair had always eventually planned to open a restaurant, “way later on, when I had money and was older,” Vazquez said.
Vazzquez said in a moment of seeing what God and the universe would bring, he made a post online that said “restaurant coming soon.”
There were no plans for a restaurant at the time. But then landlords starting calling them, offering spaces.
Fast forward a few months and the restaurant is selling as many tamales each week as they sold over their entire Christmas season from the driveway.
When Vazquez looks back at where his mom came from, and what they’ve been through together, it amazes him, he said.
“The odds against her were so high,” he said. “It’s just crazy how someone can come here with nothing and have everything, and have more than they could ever wish for.”
Details
Tamale Mama is at 1342 Tulare St. in Fresno. Hours: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays.
The restaurant is still working on taking debit and credit cards. It takes cash, along with payment apps such as Cash App, Venmo, Apple Pay and Zelle.
Note: In Spanish, “tamale” is not a word. The singular of tamales is “tamal,” (which is itself an appropriation of the native Nahuatl word “tamalli”). The Bee is deferring to Associated Press and Merriam-Webster guidance, along with the Tamale Mama owners, in our usage of the common English-language term tamale.
This story was originally published March 3, 2023 at 11:28 AM.
