“I have a tremendous amount of respect for the women in San Antonio, and what they do for the culinary community,” Kristina Zhao told the Current. Credit: Natalia Sun Photography
Name: Kristina Zhao
Job: Chef-owner, Dashi Chinese Kitchen + Bar and Sichuan House
Birthplace: Guizhou, China
Years in food service: 10
Big Impact: Known for her dedication to showcasing authentic Sichuan cuisine at her two restaurants, Zhao’s culinary and artistic prowess has been showcased on TV shows including Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.
Money Quote: “The production of a restaurant is a culmination of many, many moving parts, many people, many masters of their craft. From the food, the ambience, the music, the service, the bar, it’s just a combination of all those things, those little details that that make an exceptional dining experience.”

Tell us how your parents inspired your culinary background.

My culinary background really stems from cooking at home with my father, and then the majority of it otherwise was self-experimentation, in my pre-restaurant days.

I was born in China and came to the States when I was about a year old, but grew up in San Antonio. I did my undergrad at UT in Austin, where I studied communications and public relations.

My mother was a neurologist back in China, and she came over to the United States to pursue her postdoctoral studies. Her lifelong goal was always to be a practicing physician here in the States. My father and I joined her a little bit later.

When my father came to the States, he tried a few different jobs here and there. And of course, there was a tremendous language barrier. So he decided that he was going to go into business for himself. He started his first business in 1997, a concept that has now evolved into the Asia Market, which he has expanded.

His first shop was maybe about 800-square-feet or so. His shop now is, I want to say, close to 6,000 or 7,000 square feet, and it’s located down the street from Sichuan House. So, he’s had that market for a very long time, and he always wanted to branch into the restaurant sector. And in 2015, that’s when the stars became aligned, and he went forward on that opportunity. That’s the same year my mother got an offer to be a practicing physician in New York, the culmination of her lifelong dream.

With my mother leaving for New York and me needing a hiatus from working after I graduated from college, I thought that I’d casually come home to San Antonio and help my father run his new restaurant business.

That’s kind of how it happened. My intention was really only to help out in, like, the first few months — maybe half a year or so, to do the marketing component. Never really with the intention to get that deep into all aspects of the business. But, you know, as fate would have it, that’s not exactly how it worked out.

How do you feel like your marketing expertise helped?

To truly market something, you need to understand your product. You need to understand your community. There’s a lot of Chinese restaurants in San Antonio. When I dined out myself, I wondered: Why? Why is the average price at an American restaurant, easily $30- or $40-plus per person, while Chinese restaurants are clocking in at like $9 or $10 per person?

And this is a stat I was noticing back in 2015, because there were a lot of Chinese restaurants close to us. And this person’s doing an $8.99 special, while the next person is $7.99, the next is $6.99, and I’m just like, this is a race at the bottom. I’ve got to figure out how to market this, because I don’t want to be in this type of price war, so to speak.

It’s not like we’re not working any less hard than the restaurants that have the $35 up to a $100-plus price per average, right? And so it became more of a personal endeavor to change that stigma, the people’s perception of what real good Chinese food is supposed to be.

Why did you name your second restaurant Dashi?

In Chinese, every syllable that you hear is a unique word. [With] Dashi’s particular character set — da and shi — da can mean “big” or “grand” or “large,” and shi means “teacher” or “master” or “artist.” So, you know, dashi together can mean great teacher, great artist, grand master and so forth. And for us, that really resonates … . The production of a restaurant is a culmination of many, many moving parts, many people, many masters of their craft. From the food, the ambience, the music, the service, the bar, it’s just a combination of all those things, those little details that that make an exceptional dining experience.

What do you hope for other women in the restaurant industry right now?

I have a tremendous amount of respect for the women in San Antonio, and what they do for the culinary community. I think there are so many incredible leaders in our community who have so much knowledge and experience to offer. In addition to being able to share about our struggles and pain points, I hope we will normalize talking about business acumen, money, financial literacy — sharing our knowledge and experience, successes and failures with each other to keep lifting each other up and propelling each other to success. You know the common saying is to be a millionaire in the restaurant business, you have to be a billionaire first?

Well, most of us are not billionaires to start. We are blessed to build a career in an industry we have passion for. However, if it is not profitable, it is just a hobby — an extremely expensive one at that. Even though we are out of the “pandemic era” so to speak, the industry is wildly different from what it was five years ago. I think this is so important to talk about because local restaurants are shuttering left and right. Just like my family and I are pursuing our American dream, those businesses were someone’s American dream.

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This article appears in Mar 19 – Apr 1, 2025.