A few blocks down the road from Emery lies a delicious, authentic Mexican restaurant by the name of Tamales Don Pepe. Due to its proximity to the school, Tamales Don Pepe caters to many Emery students year after year.

Tamales Don Pepe’s versatile menu offers many flavorful dishes from the widely popular, breakfast tacos to omelets to their infamous specialty tamales. Customers can even opt for Nutella waffles with maple syrup and whipped cream on top. Although, according to the owner and manager of Tamales Don Pepe, Chef René Hidalgo, the most popular dish on the menu are chilaquiles, a traditional Mexican dish consisting of fried tortillas with cheese, onions, sour cream, and the customer’s choice for the addition of eggs or beef.

Since its opening in 2018, Emery students have frequently visited the breakfast and lunch spot. Chef Hidalgo speaks highly of the Emery community, “I didn’t expect that we would get so many Emery students and faculty to become customers.” However, he is grateful for how much every member of the Emery community has helped the restaurant grow. Remarking that a great deal of Emery students and faculty had become “regulars” at his restaurant exclaiming “it’s good to have customers who will come back over and over.”

Specific “regulars” of the eatery are Tanya Meinecke’s Spanish classes, attending class field trips multiple times a school year to the restaurant. Natalie Burdine, a rising junior and student in Meinecke’s class, expresses how she loved the visits to Tamales Don Pepe because of “the opportunity to use Spanish in a practical context” while also getting to enjoy “delicious authentic foods.”
Two anonymous Emery Juniors remarked, “The delicious breakfast tacos keep me going back,” and “I recommend Don Pepe to all the new students coming to Emery.”

Tamales Don Pepe and Emery each majorly impact one another as Emery students are able to give their patronage to the establishment and in return get the privilege of eating at one of the only truly traditional and authentic Mexican restaurants left in Houston.