05/01/2026
Welcome to AAPI month! One of the most important parts of building out this restaurant for is ensuring Asian Americans see themselves in this space. If you know her intimately, you’d know her long history of AAPI advocacy, support, and uplifting the work of others. She was entirely intentional about pulling in Asian American history while highlighting modern day artists. We can’t cover everything on our walls, but here are a few worth mentioning:
“I AM AN AMERICAN” photograph by Dorothea Lange, Oakland (1942). Japanese American store owner and a UC graduate, posted this banner across his window the day after Pearl Harbor. The store was still shuttered and he, along with 110,00 other Japanese Americans, mostly native born, were sent to internment camps.
“Aunts and Uncles” photograph by Michael Jang (1973). is a San Francisco-based photographer known for his candid, witty documentation of 1970s and ’80s California life. This photograph is the first thing you see entering our restaurant as an intimate invitation to a joyful family gathering, just like his family here.
“Midnight Gator Wranglin” acrylic and mixed media on linen by Loc Huynh (2022). is a Houston-based artist who recently moved to NY. His work is vibrant, blending Vietnamese and Texan culture, and draws on pop art, nostalgia, comics, and autobiography to explore diasporic Asian American identity.
Albert Gee celebrated as “Houston Restaurateur of the Month” in the Houston Restaurant Association magazine (1965). He and his two brothers, stood up a dozen restaurants in Houston, leaning on their networks as part of their business success—all while still being subjected to Jim Crow laws as Asians in the South.
“Houston Asiatown” print by Felicia Liang (2025). is a Taiwanese American artist based in the Bay Area as an illustrator and risograph printmaker whose colorful work celebrates food, Chinatowns, and Asian American identity. As part of our opening, we asked her to make Houston our own print based on your input of restaurants, plazas, and markets that have earned their rite of passage as an institution. Pick one up the next time you’re in!
