Jingu House sits atop San Antonio’s Japanese Tea Garden, where the restaurant overlooks an oasis of greenery and scenic views. For over a century, the Japanese eatery has undergone numerous transformations alongside the garden, including changes of ownership, names and even nationalities amid anti-Japanese sentiments during World War II.
For better or for worse, the Japanese Tea Garden has endured for more than 100 years as one of San Antonio’s most beautiful attractions. Today, Jingu House continues to operate atop the garden with a menu that nods to its history, serving a mix of Japanese and San Antonio flavors.
Jingu House opened under a different name in 1926
The Japanese Tea Garden was built inside an abandoned rock quarry between 1917 and 1919 under the direction of Ray Lambert, San Antonio’s Park Commissioner at the time. The garden’s construction, which was allegedly powered by prison labor, continued in 1920, adding a small village of houses somewhere along the premises. Sometime during this period, the structure now known as Jingu House was erected at the Japanese Tea Garden.
Following the garden’s opening, the city of San Antonio called upon Kimi Eizo Jingu, an artist and tea importer with roots in Japan, to become its onsite caretaker and to operate a restaurant known as Bamboo Room. Numerous sources, including the Jingu family’s website, assert that the business first opened in 1926. Jingu, along with his wife Miyoshi, would go on to sell food, tea and novelties at the Bamboo Room to visitors of the Japanese Tea Garden in the years that followed…