Behind the counter at The Lady Tamales restaurant in Carson City, the first dollar that Fidelina Suarez ever earned hangs on the wall in a wooden frame. The date, from August 2003, is written in black ink on the bill. In the years since, Suarez has won awards and media attention for her cooking – mementos of those victories decorate the walls of her restaurant.

This year, Suarez celebrated another milestone: the 20th anniversary of her original restaurant, located in Carson City. Five years ago, Suarez expanded her business when she opened a second location in Dayton.

But Suarez didn’t start off with a restaurant. She began selling food out of her car. She says that she would go to the local high schools and her then workplace to sell tamales.

“When I would go to the schools, they would say, ‘Well, pay attention, the lady tamales is in the front office,’” Suarez said in Spanish.

And the name stuck.

However, there was one big problem: In those early days, she was selling food without a permit. Someone alerted the health department that she didn’t have one and Suarez got a ticket. Officials told her that if she wanted to continue, she would have to get a business license.

“Thanks to that, I bought my license,” she said. ”Now my business is going to be 20 years old, and I’m happy.”

At Suarez’s restaurants, she sells a variety of Mexican dishes, with tamales being a specialty. She often gets up as early as four in the morning to prepare the tamales, as well as enchiladas, homemade salsa, fresh homemade drinks, including horchata, and more. Throughout the day, customers come in to order food. Friends and family will come into the restaurant as well.

Suarez has lived in the U.S. for about 30 years, but she grew up in Michoacán, Mexico. When she was young, Suarez learned how to cook in her mother’s restaurant, where she cooked some of the food that she’s making now.

However, once she moved to the U.S., her mother’s restaurant closed.

“My mom had a restaurant for 30 years,” she said. “My mom sold a lot of tamales, birria, carnitas. When I moved to the United States, no more.”

Suarez still uses the recipes that she learned from her mother in her own restaurants. She’s also working to pass the recipes along to the rest of her family, including her nephew, Alberto Suarez – whom she calls her son. He’ll sometimes help cook and run the front of the shop.

“We have a lot of regulars that come once or twice a week, at least,” Alberto said. “And she has so many plans that she wants to go ahead and put on the road.”

Randy Barnhart is one of those regulars. He’s lived in the area for about a decade, and said the food is what keeps him coming back.

“We’ve been here, I don’t know, countless times,” he said. “We’ve been coming here for at least eight or nine of the years that we’ve been here.”

And his favorite item on the menu:

“The tamales, hands down. Unless I’m starving, then I’ll go for a burrito,” Barnhart said.

Suarez has accomplished a lot in the last 20 years, but she’s not planning to slow down. In fact, she wants to continue growing her business. She recently began serving breakfast – and she’s looking into starting a food truck.

“People can do anything they want, but they have to have discipline,” Suarez said in Spanish.

KUNR’s Ember Braun, a student at the Reynolds School of Journalism, reported this story. KUNR’s Maria Palma contributed to this story.