Walk into Hannah Foy’s specialty coffee shop LauLau in Central Austin, and there’s a good chance her father is washing dishes in the kitchen.
Her mother — whom the cafe owes its name — is usually at the register taking orders for their signature Mala Latte with Sichuan peppercorn or Black Sesame Hot Chocolate. The menu is deeply personal and inspired by her heritage and Chinese American family, Foy told The Barbed Wire.
Foy and her husband Chris relocated from Minneapolis to Austin in 2020.
“I began seriously pursuing what it would look like to open up my shop as a direct result of the pandemic and its aftermath, including the anti-Asian hate that came with it and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement,” Foy said. “I really felt a push to create a space that combated societal challenges that were suddenly at the forefront of everything.”
LauLau officially opened in October 2025. The launch happened in a scary and turbulent time to be vocal, and hers, like other small businesses, faces a myriad of challenges. Still, Foy said she’s determined to publicly take a stand against President Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its legally dubious tidal wave of arrests and deportations — and put their “values front and center.”
“We are anti-ICE, anti-genocide, anti-billionaire, and anti-oppression in all its forms,” the store posted on its Instagram page several weeks ago. “This is woven into the fabric of who we are at Lau Lau, and we stand forever in solidarity with immigrant communities.”
Asian American and Pacific Islander chefs and cafe owners in Texas spoke with The Barbed Wire six years after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020. Some are fearful of the current political and economic climate, but despite it all, said they remain hopeful about the future. Many are struggling with ever-changing tariffs set by President Trump, along with a new frenzy of anti-immigrant sentiments from the federal government, and a complex embrace of Asian foods and culture driven by trend cycles.
In 2020, fears for the lives and safety of Asian Americans during the pandemic were well-founded. Hate crimes against Asian Americans —– from public attacks and killings of the elderly to verbal harassment —– soared in the United States with a total of nearly 11,000 incidents reported between March 2020 and December 2021, according to data collected and analyzed by the organization Stop AAPI Hate.
Texas ranked fourth in the nation, with 103 hate incidents reported. These included the vandalization of a San Antonio Asian-owned restaurant and the stabbings of a father, child, and store-employee in Midland.
Trump himself spent a significant portion of those last months in his first term pushing harmful rhetoric and racist speech that helped fuel xenophobic sentiment on X and in real life. Using the slur “Kung Flu” at a campaign rally, for example, irresponsibly and inaccurately attached an ethnicity to a deadly virus while normalizing scapegoating and prejudice against Asian Americans.
Fast forward to 2026, and stories about Korean skincare and beauty trends, must-try Omakase restaurants, and Adidas’ viral Chinese New Year jacket fill the search results instead. 2026 is the year of the fire horse, a rare sign in the Chinese Zodiac that only occurs every 60 years, and white women are teaching everyone about it on TikTok.
There’s a sense of whiplash: “It’s such a big shift in such a short amount of time,” Foy said.
It seems to be “trendy to be Asian” now, she added, pointing to more and more videos about Asian cuisine and culture by non-Asian influencers in her ‘For You Page.’ On one hand, Foy said it is fortunate that Asian culture is “being embraced so heavily by non-Asian communities.”
But her worry is that this momentum feels “fragile since it is only a few years since I was afraid for my family and friends to leave the house and be targeted,” Foy said.
“We coincidentally opened our shop during this ‘trend,’ but we’re not a trend,” Foy continued. “LauLau really was built for us and it feels like a space that I always have wanted to see myself. We’ve been here since before the trend, and we’ll be here long after it’s over.”
‘Hard to Keep Up’
Meanwhile, raids have targeted immigrants in Asian communities all over the country, leading to detainments, deportations, and deaths.
Two-thirds of Asian Americans are foreign-born, the only racial group where a majority of its members are born outside of the U.S., with 390,000 Asian immigrants over the past decade applying and receiving green cards; 1 in 8 Asian immigrants in the U.S. are undocumented.
Sixty percent of Asian Americans are pessimistic about the future of the U.S., and 41% identified immigration policies as a top concern, according to a January 2026 AAPI Data report conducted by The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago.
Racial profiling and detention of Southeast Asians in Minnesota, where the largest Hmong community in the U.S. resides, prompted the creation of the Twin Cities Rapid Response Fund.
Japanese Americans have spoken out about the glaring similarities between the current crackdown and the more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry who were forced by the federal government to live in hastily constructed internment camps across the West, including in Texas at Fort Bliss.
At least five of the 30 detainees who died in ICE custody in 2025 were Asian nationals, as Russell Jeong wrote for The Los Angeles Times. The deaths of Nhon Ngoc Nguyen, Tien Xuan Phan, Kaiyin Wong, and Huabing Xie received limited public attention. However, when investigators ruled 32-year-old Chaofeng Ge’s August 2025 death a suicide, his family filed a headline-grabbing lawsuit after an autopsy report stated that he was found with his hands and feet tied behind his back.
And in 2026, those numbers have kept climbing: Lorth Sim, 59, immigrated to the U.S. in 1983 as a Cambodian refugee. He died in immigration detention last month in Indiana.
In this climate, it’s not surprising that 35 Asian American individual retailers and restaurant owners in Texas did not respond — or declined to be interviewed — for a news story when reached by The Barbed Wire.
And there are new challenges now, as inflation from Trump’s rash of tariffs have driven up the cost of buying goods for Sip Munch Cafe, a Vietnamese Boba shop in North Austin owned by Han Bui and his fianceé.
“It’s very hard to keep up because we cannot just keep increasing the price of our menu based on the changing supply all the time,” Han said. “It affects not just the macro but micro level as well: People are more cautious with spending and staying in more.”
Han is a first generation business owner who immigrated to the U.S. 16 years ago with a background in information technology. Sip Munch, he said, was started with the vision and goal of expanding people’s access and exposure to Vietnamese snacks and drinks.
While he has enjoyed personal growth and hopes to turn the cafe into a franchise by 2027, Han said he believes the U.S. is in a recession that could last years.
“The unthinkable policies the Trump administration could push out has everyone in a ‘it depends what comes next’ mode,” Han said.
The “inconsistent” trade policies and unclear communication have trickled-down on her as a small business owner too, Foy said. It’s been hard to balance paying her employees a livable wage and keeping her store accessible to customers, while the vendors she buys from raise prices to compensate for tariffs.
Imperial-grade matcha powder, for example, is imported from across Japan.
“The popularity of matcha tea and lattes has skyrocketed in the past couple of years as part of a wellness craze,” Foy said, but she’s still trying to figure out if she can even afford the amount required to meet demand.
“It’s very difficult to plan for the future,” she added.
‘Function Out of Chaos’
As executive chef and owner of Koffeteria, two-time James Beard Award semifinalist Vanarin Kuch knows a thing or two about having to adapt and plan for the future in unprecedented times.
Kuch is a self-taught pastry chef who found success early in his career, working in fine dining in Chicago and New York for more than 20 years. Kuch appeared on cooking shows “Chopped” and “Top Chef” before moving back home to Houston to start his own shop, he told The Barbed Wire.
When he decided to take the plunge and open his cafe, COVID-19 hit just three months later.
Keeping everyone safe became a priority, Kuch said, and he immediately closed indoor dining and required masks. Still, Kuch and his husband weathered the storm. Today, the couple manages the front and back of the house while Kuch’s father is the accountant.
“It’s all about adaptability and trying to find the function out of chaos,” Kuch said.
All the flavors and recipes of Koffeteria are Cambodian inspired, but Kuch likes to infuse Houston staples and other cultures’ cuisines, he said. This is easy due to the fact that it’s one of the most diverse cities in the country, with a robust Chinatown, a well-established Czech community, and one of the largest Vietnamese populations in the U.S. As David Chang once wrote for GQ, “When you get a collision of immigrants, the food scene is guaranteed to be bonkers.”
Kuch’s most popular item is a mouthwatering Beef Pho Kalache, a brisket stirred in pho wrapped in a milk roll with sriracha and hoisin.
“I wanted to come back and open up something that was a love letter to Houston, the progression of my life, where I’m at now, and tying this inevitable force between cooking Cambodian food and what it means to be Cambodian American,” Kuch said.
Thankfully, Kuch said, the tariffs are not affecting Koffeteria’s business as much as other purveyors report, since many ingredients can be grown or sourced in Houston, which has a similar climate to Cambodia. Sourcing is so local, Kuch said he has a whole garden wall of lime leaves right outside his home.
He made The New York Times Best Bakery List for the U.S., and he’s getting a second Koffeteria location up and running in Houston.
“It became something more than just making pastries,” Kuch told The Barbed Wire. “We are a Cambodian-owned, and a Cambodian-inspired bakery that is just trying to tell a story of what it’s like to be Cambodian American in the United States.”
‘There’s Hope’
All told, Han said he felt like this attention and increased popularity of Asian food and culture is a “benefit for consumers,” both Asian and non-Asian American identifying.
“Before, we had to go to Houston or Dallas a lot just to get this kind of cuisine, but nowadays we don’t have to drive that much,” Han said. “It’s more competitive in a good way since we need to have more options and evolve faster in this current climate, but, for me it still is a double edged sword.”
And there’s hope, Foy said, in finding allies in and outside of the AAPI community .
“So many people have our backs in the way that we have theirs as well,” Foy said. “I don’t really believe that anyone is coming to save us. The more we rely on, support, and get to know each other, the stronger we will be to face whatever comes next.”