Carlos Rebollar, owner of Rana’s Mexican Grill, was not sure at first whether his restaurant would stay in business in Conroe, but September 2015 was the pivotal moment for him.

“I was short $8,000 [for the month] and had my little granddaughter here when I was cooking in the kitchen. She peeked her little head out and said, ‘Grandpa, can we leave?’ and she’s breaking my heart, so I say, ‘yeah, you can go,’” Rebollar said. “I was thinking I’ll wait and if anybody comes, I’ll be able to serve them. It was 7:30 or something. When I came out, she left the report right on that service table.”

The report showed the day’s income added up to only $358.

“I didn’t run back and clean the kitchen. I just sat there thinking how in the world am I going to pay,” Rebollar said. “That month, it was almost over for me. I talked to God: ‘Hey, what am I going to do, God? I just want people to try my food.’ … I wanted to turn everything off, go home, and I was not going to come back.”

He did not have the willpower to clean the kitchen before going home to sleep his usual two and a half hours between closing and opening.

“But I wake up at 3 a.m. and start thinking about how I am going to survive. I say, ‘please God, forgive me, I’m going back,’” Rebollar said. “I took a shower, came and cleaned my kitchen, opened the next day, and in the month of October I was able to pay everybody—and everything has gone up since then.”

He started the authentic Mexican restaurant in Conroe five years ago this November after working in restaurants his whole career.

“Between kitchen, bartending, serving, I was doing any of this stuff working for somebody else,” Rebollar said. “When I was working for other owners, it was never enough, and that made me go on my own.”

Hailing from a town seven hours south of Mexico City, Rebollar said he believes his restaurant is the closest anyone can come to eating authentic Mexican food outside Mexico.

“I have Tex-Mex on the menu barely, and everything else is authentic Mexican food,” Rebollar said. “Most of my recipes are iterations mom got from grandma, and I got it from my mom, and this is how we grew up eating it back home.”

For the first two years after opening the grill, Rebollar was the chef, opening and closing it himself every day. His three daughters have all helped in the restaurant over time, and he also has five grandkids in the Lake Conroe area.

But the competition is fierce: Located across the street from Conroe High School, the nearby Taco Bell is not the only restaurant battling for lunchers and football Friday pre-gamers.

Rebollar has steadily grown his business by focusing on bringing back repeat customers, catering and take-out orders.

“After five years still here now I can really say I made it,” Rebollar said. “If anybody around here beats me in flavor in anything you can order on the Mexican side, I will buy their dinner or lunch. Nobody has the flavor I have.”