SAN ANTONIO \u2013 Hundreds gathered early Tuesday across two San Antonio staples to get their hands on a necessary holiday tradition \u2014 tamales.<\/p>\n
KSAT\u2019s Patty Santos and photojournalist Santiago Esparza visited two tamale shops, Tellez Tamales\u2019 General McMullen location and Ruben\u2019s Homemade Tamales on the East Side. <\/p>\n
Luis and Manuela Tellez founded the General McMullen location in 1975. Recipes are a family secret, and the same employees have made the tamales for years. <\/p>\n
Tellez Tamales has another location, its factory, located on the 1800 block of Bandera Road.<\/p>\n
While Tellez Tamales is closed after Tuesday through Christmas, Santos met one man in line who was buying jalape\u00f1o and barbacoa tamales to \u201clast from now through Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n
People gathered in line at Tellez Tamales’ General McMullen location around 5 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 23. (KSAT)<\/p>\n
Brenda Tellez, one of the shop\u2019s owners and the daughter of Luis and Manuela, said one person even arrived at 10:30 p.m. on Monday to wait in line.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s incredible that they do that, that\u2019s their tradition,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Around 9 a.m., KSAT visited Ruben\u2019s Homemade Tamales located on the 1800 block of Rigsby Avenue, to find about 100 people in line. <\/p>\n
Employees at Ruben’s Homemade Tamales preparing orders on Tuesday, Dec. 23. (KSAT)<\/p>\n
Ruben\u2019s will be open at 7 a.m. on Christmas Eve to take orders, the shop\u2019s owner said. <\/p>\n
Read more:<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 Hundreds gathered early Tuesday across two San Antonio staples to get their hands on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[7748,96,49,1972,82,84,83,4937,18720],"class_list":{"0":"post-98773","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-christmas","9":"tag-east-side","10":"tag-food","11":"tag-holidays","12":"tag-san-antonio","13":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","14":"tag-san-antonio-news","15":"tag-south-side","16":"tag-tamales"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}