Jiang previously owned one of the first 10 Kung Fu Tea shops and added a restaurant onto it. When visiting Houston, Jiang realized there were not many places where people could hang out without being in a restaurant setting.
“They have restaurants; they have bars; they have an array of things like that,” Jiang said. “Realistically, if you try to think of something where you can just catch up with a friend, where I don’t have to go to eat a million things, [there are none.] That was the whole inspiration behind this.”
After his business partner Renee Kwan moved to Houston in 2019, Jiang followed suit and opened the shop in June 2020, during the height of COVID-19. The main concept of the shop is “bougie on a budget,” according to Jiang.
“The whole afternoon tea experience came in later on. We want to build something [where] people can feel fancy. We wanted to do something like [high tea] but on the casual level because we don’t want to be exclusive,” Jiang said.
Customers can share pots of tea in a variety of flavors and levels of sweetness. The concept of sharing tea comes from Jiang’s Chinese heritage, in which drinking tea, or “yum cha,” is a form of family bonding.
“The pot of tea is special to us because in Asian culture, tea is in almost every aspect of life. We drink it to bond with our family,” he said.
The menu also features a variety of homemade desserts and sandwiches, including a house egg salad sandwich, a pork tonkatsu sandwich, shibuya honey toast and “croffles”—a cross between a croissant and a waffle. Jiang said he was drawn to Katy due to its upward growth and the similarity to Buffalo, New York, where he lived for many years. For now, the shop’s team is focused on growing and making people in the Katy area more aware of the shop.
“We want it to be somewhere that we can make an impact,” Jiang said.
1223 Grand West Blvd., Ste. B105, Katy
281-717-8174
www.properrosegarden.com
Hours: Tue.-Thu. 11 a.m.-8 p.m.,
Fri. 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Sat. noon-10 p.m.,
Sun. noon-8 p.m., closed Mon.
