The pambazo sandwich at Buenos Dias, a new Hispanic-inspired breakfast spot in Houston.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
A Salvadoran flag is placed on the pupusa on the El Presidente plate at Buenos Dias, a new Hispanic-inspired breakfast spot in Houston.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Doña Leti’s fans flock to the Mexican restaurant’s two locations. They hunt down available parking spots and queue for hours to secure the Lozano family’s soft serve margaritas and surf-and-turf egg rolls.
Soon, they’ll have another place to line up. Buenos Dias, the Lozanos’ Hispanic-inspired breakfast restaurant, opens Friday morning at 7300 Washington Avenue. It will serve an eclectic mix of Mexican morning classics and fusion treats of the Lozanos’ own creation: menudo and breakfast tacos, but also flan-topped pancakes and a chilaquiles burrito.
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The colorful, 110-seat restaurant sits across the street from one of Doña Leti’s locations, decorated with cowboy hats, bright cowboy boot-shaped vases and cheerful tilework. The design — and, in many ways, the restaurant itself — is a tribute to Lozano matriarch Ana Leticia Hernandez, who died five years ago.
Buenos Dias is a new Hispanic-inspired breakfast spot in Houston.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
“My mom, she was a very big breakfast person,” said Marcela Lozano, Hernandez’s daughter and a co-owner at Buenos Dias. “When you come and sit here, I want you to feel like you’re at home, like your grandma, like your mom is cooking.”
Marcela runs Doña Leti’s with her siblings Julio and Carlos Lozano and sister-in-law Kalli Lozano. For Buenos Dias, they planned a menu with a riot of different flavors. There’s chicken funnel cake. Pozole rojo. Buttermilk pancakes topped with Sponch cookies and strawberry syrup.
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Some of the dishes lean into the Mexican canon, like the crisped potato and chorizo pambazo layered with the flesh of a whole avocado. Others stray outside of it: In a nod to the Lozano’s Salvadoran heritage, Marcela designed a platter with pupusas, plantains and eggs with onion and tomato.
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Doña Leti’s famed egg rolls are available too, though here they’re stuffed with carnitas or chorizo-potato-cheese instead of birria or surf-and-turf.
“We have, of course, all of these Hispanic influences,” Kalli said. “But also, just like with Doña Leti’s, a lot of our stuff is also with our own twist.”
Left: Chocoflan pancakes. Right: The El Presidente plate.
Top: Chocoflan pancakes. Bottom: The El Presidente plate.
Kalli also learned from Doña Leti’s in designing the bar menu. This spring, after seeing soft serve margaritas online, the Lozanos put the drink on the menu at the dinner restaurant. It took off so stratospherically that Kalli added a soft serve mimosa to Buenos Dias’ offerings.
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Like the food, many of the other cocktails lean playful: watermelon margaritas with tamarind tequila, frozen mangonada mimosas. Others are familiar to all: espresso martinis, Bloody Marys.
And on the non-alcoholic side, customers can sip Salvadoran fruit punch, atol de elote and champurrado, or opt for coffee from the cafe de olla cart making its rounds around the dining room.
Buenos Dias owners Julio Lozano, his wife Kalli and his sister Marcela pose in the new Hispanic-inspired breakfast spot.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
As much as the Lozanos love breakfast, opening a breakfast restaurant wasn’t part of the plan. For that matter, neither was turning Doña Leti’s into a two-location restaurant that went viral on social media.
Around 2003, when Marcela, Julio and Carlos were kids, they started knocking on doors to hawk their mom’s mixed fruit cups out of an Igloo cooler. Demand grew, so the family expanded to the back of a pick-up truck. Then a small trailer. A proper food truck. One restaurant, and then another.
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“Every growth step we’ve ever taken,” Kalli said, “has really just been out of necessity.”
Buenos Dias emerged from necessity, too, as the Lozanos faced a utilitarian and very Houston problem: parking.
Buenos Dias, a new Hispanic-inspired breakfast spot, is the latest step in a long line of growth for the Lozano family. Their old food truck sits in the restaurant’s parking lot.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
The Doña Leti’s on Washington, across from Buenos Dias, offers limited spots for customers to park. Since it opened, customers have stationed their cars at the Denny’s across the street. At first, the Lozanos said, the cars would be towed. Later on, the Lozanos struck a deal to let their customers use the spots.
But then the Denny’s announced its closure. The Lozanos didn’t know what would happen to their parking spots.
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“We literally couldn’t lose it,” Kalli said.
So about a year ago, the family took over the Denny’s building without a definite plan for how to use it. They came up with ideas: A late-night spot? No, those hours would overlap too much with Doña Leti’s. Breakfast it was.
Left: The cemita, with beef milanesa and Oaxaca cheese. Right: The chorizo-potato pambazo.
Top: The cemita, with beef milanesa and Oaxaca cheese. Bottom: The chorizo-potato pambazo.
They brainstormed a menu and redesigned the space. The days before grand opening became a frantic flurry of training as they ironed out the details of their new brand.
“We know what a Doña Leti’s works like and what it is,” Marcela said. “Since this is a whole new concept, I think that’s what makes us a little nervous. But we’re excited.”
Starting Friday, Buenos Dias will be open 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday. It will be closed Mondays.