Every place has a story. The best ones have a family behind them.
Secret Little Garden did not appear out of nowhere. It is not the product of a business plan or a market analysis or a trend report about the rise of boutique garden venues in mid-sized Texas cities. It is the product of three generations of a family that has been feeding, gathering, and caring for San Antonio — quietly, steadily, without fanfare — for decades.
This is that story.
Papa Zhao and the Foundation
It starts, as so many good stories do, with a father.
Papa Zhao came to San Antonio and built something simple and essential: a place where people could find the ingredients of home. Asia Market became a community anchor — not in the abstract, marketing-language sense of that phrase, but in the literal sense. Families who had moved to San Antonio from across Asia, from across the diaspora, from across the country, found in Asia Market the things that connected them to where they came from. The specific brand of soy sauce. The right cut of pork belly. The vegetables that don't have English names at the H-E-B.
For decades, Papa Zhao showed up. He learned his customers' names. He stocked what they needed. He fed San Antonio families in the most fundamental way a person can feed another person — by making sure they had what they needed to cook for themselves, for their children, for their own families.
That is the foundation. Quiet, steady, generous service to a community. Everything that came after is built on it.
Kristina and the Next Chapter
Kristina Zhao grew up watching her father build something that mattered. She absorbed the lesson — not the lesson about groceries or inventory or retail margins, but the deeper lesson: that hospitality is an act of care, and that the most meaningful businesses are the ones that make people feel seen.
She took that lesson and applied it to restaurants.
Sichuan House was the first expression of it — her family's celebration of bold, authentic Sichuan cuisine in a city that had never quite seen it done this way. The flavors of 四川 (Sìchuān), the numbing heat of Sichuan peppercorn, the complexity of doubanjiang, the kind of cooking that demands patience and precision and a genuine love of the tradition. San Antonio took notice. Guy Fieri came. The regulars came back every week.
And then came Dashi.
Named for the Chinese word for great artist — 大师 (dàshī) — Dashi Chinese Kitchen & Bar was something different. It was a place where the boundaries between restaurant and gathering place dissolved. Chefs, bartenders, artists, musicians, creatives of every kind came together under one roof. The food was extraordinary. The drinks were inventive. But what people remember most about Dashi is not the menu. It is the feeling of being in a room where something was happening — where San Antonio's creative community had found a home.
The memories Dashi made for this city are still being talked about. That is not a small thing.
Along the way, Kristina was recognized by the James Beard Foundation as a Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership Fellow — one of the most prestigious recognitions in American hospitality. It was an acknowledgment of what people in San Antonio already knew: that she was building something that mattered, and that she was doing it with intention.
Brandon and the Partnership
No story about Secret Little Garden is complete without Brandon La Lanne.
Brandon is a San Antonio native whose background spans oil field operations, corporate policy architecture, hotel operations management, restaurant management, and — because San Antonio contains multitudes — DJ performance. He is the operational backbone of everything the family has built together. Where Kristina brings vision and hospitality instinct, Brandon brings the infrastructure that makes vision real.
They are, in the truest sense, partners. The kind of partnership where each person's strengths cover the other's blind spots, where the whole is genuinely greater than the sum of its parts.
The Garden
And so we arrive at Secret Little Garden.
One acre in the heart of Southtown San Antonio — the neighborhood that has always been the city's creative and cultural soul, the place where the King William Historic District meets the Blue Star Arts Complex, where the River Walk gives way to something more intimate and more real.
The garden was always here. What it needed was a family who understood what it could be.
Secret Little Garden is Kristina's most personal chapter yet — a place where the hospitality she learned from her father, the culinary vision she developed through Sichuan House and Dashi, and the operational excellence Brandon brings all converge in a single, extraordinary space. A place designed not just to host events, but to make people feel something.
A portion of every event at Secret Little Garden supports the Ciao & Zen Collective, the family's nonprofit dedicated to cultural arts and community in San Antonio. Because the obligation to give back to this city — the obligation Papa Zhao modeled for decades through Asia Market — does not stop at the garden gate.
What This Means for Your Event
When you book Secret Little Garden, you are not booking a venue. You are booking a family's life work.
You are booking the hospitality instincts of a woman who grew up watching her father care for a community. You are booking the culinary vision of someone who has spent a career honoring the flavors and traditions of her heritage while building something entirely her own. You are booking the operational precision of a partner who has spent years making sure that the beautiful things in life actually work.
You are booking three generations of San Antonio hospitality, distilled into one acre of garden.
We would be honored to host your celebration here.
Secret Little Garden is located at 1119 S St Mary's Street in Southtown San Antonio. To schedule a private tour or begin planning your event, book a tour or contact us directly.