Taste Buddies
Take passion, drive and daring. Mix in professional kitchen skills, a flair for flavor and bold creativity. Wrap it with friendship and mutual respect. It’s a recipe that culminates in a brick-and-mortar restaurant, owned and run by two culinary soulmates.
Chefs Evelyn Garcia and Henry Lu know how to make the senses of their guests sing in delight as they give the word “multicultural” flavor, taste and texture — from chili-butter-charred oysters with fermented mango to tender pork belly in a fragrant kombu broth all the way to a surprising fish sauce caramel that enhances a pound cake dessert.
For Houston native Garcia, Central American gastronomy is the taste of home. Her mother is Mexican, her father El Salvadorian. With both parents working, Garcia developed an interest in cooking early on and often cooked the family meal.
After high school, she attended the Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park in New York. She graduated in 2010 and worked at New York restaurants such as Spice Market, the Singaporean-focused Masak, and the now-closed modern-Thai restaurant Kin Shop, which was helmed by chef Harold Dieterle, incidentally the winner of the first Top Chef season — Garcia was a season 19 finalist.
When the travel bug itched, she packed her bags. She traveled throughout India and Southeast Asia, where she staged at restaurants and seized every opportunity to immerse herself in local cuisines.
Born and raised in The Bronx, New York, Lu grew up in a Chinese restaurant family. As restaurateurs, his parents knew how grueling the industry can be, so they encouraged a different career for their son. Lu got a bachelor’s in art history. But when the cooking gene surfaced, they supported his decision to go to culinary school.
He graduated from the French Culinary Institute in New York City in 2012 and embarked on an eclectic culinary career based on his personal philosophy: “Only work where I would want to eat.” He worked at modern-Indian restaurant Babu Ji, Peruvian restaurant Llama Inn, small-bites wine bar Sauced, and new American restaurant Pearl & Ash, among others.
The two met in 2013 in New York City at Kin Shop. At the time, Garcia was the junior sous chef and Lu was the first line cook she hired. They rapidly became good friends, drawn together by their drive and passion as chefs and by a sense of humor that clicked. When Garcia moved back to Houston in 2016, the friendship continued. Lu would visit at least once a year and, one way or another, partook in many of Garcia’s projects.
In late 2016, I met the buoyant Garcia at the Memorial Village farmers market where she was cooking pupusas — griddled corn cakes stuffed with beans, cheese or meat that are El Salvador’s national dish. She’d been doing the same for a hungry crowd the night before at Axelrad. She popped up everywhere, cooking street food here, catering multi-course dinners there, all with a penchant for local agriculture and pride in Houston’s diversity. She launched KIN HTX in the Politan Row food hall in late 2019. Kin is a linguistic nod to food and family — two things that are very important to her, she says.
In March 2020, Garcia invited Lu to be the first chef to collaborate on a tasting menu in a new series, Dinner & Friends that she initiated at KIN. March 2020, sadly, also heralded the start of lockdowns, forcing Politan Row to close.
“Through Covid times, I was just in survival mode with KIN and trying to figure out what was next for me and my brand,” says Garcia.
One big thing that came her way was competing on Top Chef Season 19, which was filmed in Houston and aired in the spring of 2022. On national television, Garcia showcased that she is as creative with the ingredients she grew up with, like nopales and chiltepín, as she is with making a curry that blew away even curry authority, Top Chef host and judge Padma Lakshmi.
Partners in Food
If New York City was the incubator for Garcia and Lu’s food-driven friendship, Texas was where the partnership came to fruition.
In the summer of 2020, seeking a healing reset in the high desert of West Texas, Garcia talked to the owners at The Sentinel, a coffee shop and restaurant in Marfa, who wanted to do a chef-in-residence week. She accepted the opportunity right away. “I’m always down for an adventure, especially if it is cooking related,” she says. She asked Lu to join her. He booked a one-way ticket.
At the end of 2020, the two talked about their goals and visions for the future. “Aside from being good friends, our goals are aligned. We complement each other,” says Garcia. Lu adds: “There is no ego between us. What she is good at, I am not. And where I excel, she might not.”
The partnership was born. And Lu made Houston his new home.
“[Moving to] Houston made a lot of sense. Houston is more of a melting pot of food and culture than I could have imagined. It is growing and changing so fast, and I want to be a part of that change and even potentially have an impact on its food scene,” says Lu.
For the next two years, every opportunity to present their food was considered worth the effort. Making brisket bao buns at the farmers market was met with the same commitment as tweezer-plating final touches on a signature ceviche.
The Houston-based yet nomadic chefs cooked all over, from the high desert of West Texas to the waterfront of Seattle to the green mountains surrounding Asheville, while returning home to create multi-course dinners in galleries and gardens in Houston.
Together, they continued to develop a line of KIN condiments — from five-spice BBQ sauce to cleverly named KinChup — in addition to catering and cooking classes. “Our work is our life,” says Lu about their demanding lifestyle, which makes it all the more important for them to keep themselves balanced, mentally and physically, and moving their bodies in different ways. To help accomplish that, they take cycling, yoga and pottery classes.
By the end of 2022, they had secured a location for their first brick-and-mortar restaurant together. January 2023 was a month of finalizing everything, including the many inspections and permits that precede the opening of a restaurant. Jūn by Kin, their bijou restaurant, opened for business early February.
Food and Family
Two chefs running a restaurant together raises questions about kitchen leadership. Lu explains, “When one is in the kitchen, the other will focus on front-of-house. Being chef-owners, we must concern ourselves with the business as a whole. We decided to not hire a GM and know that between us, we can handle those duties with the help of our team.”
“We are only as good as our team,” Garcia emphasizes. A team that is versatile and adaptive creates smooth communication and coordination between the back and front of house. Lu says they learned the importance of teams having been a part of so many for so long. Now they are able to create the teamwork they need as chef-owners.
The dishes they create often contain fond memories of family and home. For instance, Lu’s smoked tea broth with poached salmon, pickled braised turnips and sautéed mushrooms, sprinkled with gremolata, reminds him of the special occasions when his mother made him broth and noodles. For Garcia, it is her refined yet hearty dish of grits and carne seca (dried meat) gravy that reminds her of home.
Those dishes highlight the heart of their cooking, the essence of who they are, and how they work together. It’s a style they define as New Asian American. They are creating a multicultural marriage of flavors that weaves together Garcia’s Mexican-El Salvadorian background, Lu’s Chinese roots, their years of cooking experience and a deep affinity for Southeast Asian flavors. It’s how cod gets wrapped in banana leaf with guajillo chili and kimchi daikon, or how potato and pumpernickel mingle in a noodle soup like laksa.
From their signature food, vibrant in every way, to the eclectic artwork and mementos on the walls down to the artisanal crockery they hand-picked in Oaxaca, Jūn is the pinnacle of their journey together. So far.
Named for June, the birth month of Garcia, her mom and Lu’s sister, Jūn is about that all-important connection between food and family. Says Lu, “This restaurant plays homage to our family and loved ones.”
Jūn by KIN is located at 420 E 20th Street, Houston. Visit junbykin.com
for more information.
