It’s the middle of May and you’re walking in downtown Baton Rouge when you unexpectedly hear music and chatter coming from around the State Capitol building.

As you follow the noise, the large lineup of food and art vendors accompanied by a center stage quickly explains that it’s a street festival.

A ticket to enter is just $7. It would’ve been $5 had you paid the early bird price online, but it’s all right anyway because a portion of ticket sales go toward a scholarship for the Southern Lotus Lion Dance group.

After going through security, you can’t help but stroll past every table. One stand is selling ube cheesecake and white chocolate matcha brownies. Another offers seafood eggrolls and spam musubis. Amid all the food is a table selling crochet dolls and plushies. Someone else is making watercolor paintings.

Before you can decide on what foods to try first, the stage fills with dancers and K-pop music comes from the speakers. Dinner and a show, what more could you ask for?

You leave the festival with a full stomach and heart after getting to learn about Asian cultures in such a fun and unique way. This gathering showed you how prevalent the Asian community is in Baton Rouge.

That’s the kind of experience Laura Siu wants every attendee to have at The Night Market.

Siu is a consultant who recently started a creative business called Table Story Communications. Aside from that, she’s also the curator and founder of The Night Market, which came to life after she and her husband were inspired during a trip to California.

“We went to this festival called 626 Night Market,” Siu said. “I told him we need to bring an event here that celebrates our culture. Why not us? Why not Baton Rouge?”

Because of her background in marketing and her familiarity with the food scene, Siu said she thought it would be a missed opportunity if she didn’t try to create a similar event for Baton Rouge. She planned food festivals before – one about mac and cheese and another that offered all-you-can-eat chicken wings.

So, with the help of her connections in both the street festival and restaurant business, Siu executed the first Night Market in 2023. She spent 31 days planning the festival with some help from her husband and expected a turnout of 100, maybe 200.

2,500 people showed up.

The overwhelming support received at the first festival told Siu that the Baton Rouge community needed an event like The Night Market. After taking in feedback from vendors and attendees following what Siu called the “guinea pig event,” The Night Market happened again in 2024. 

Siu is Honduran and Chinese, so The Night Market has a personal connection for her. Growing up in Honduras, she said she never felt like she had an Asian community and struggled with her self identity. This has been an opportunity for Siu to strengthen that connection, but it’s also much more than that to her. It’s about Baton Rouge and how she can best serve the city’s ever growing Asian population.

“Night Market isn’t about me,” Siu said. “It’s about the community we have here in Baton Rouge. It’s about being able to spotlight different individuals who want to do cooking, have their arts and crafts or just want an opportunity to be seen.”

For this year’s Night Market, Kenny Nguyen and Liz Koh will co-host the event. Nguyen, the executive vice president of operations at Nguyen America and chairman for ThreeSixtyEight, is also Siu’s husband. Koh is a news reporter and anchor for WAFB.

Koh attended the first two years of The Night Market as a participant and said she’s excited to be involved as a co-host this year. She’s originally from Chicago, Illinois, where she said the Asian population is much larger than in Baton Rouge. She was surprised by the smaller, less visible Asian community when she moved to the South, so she’s been delighted to see how many people come together for this event.

“The beautiful thing about the celebration of all of our cultures coming together – especially during AAPI month – is that we get to put all of it on display,” Koh said. “We all get to be together for one night, not only with Asians but with people who want to learn more and people who want to celebrate.”

And for those who may be thinking that The Night Market isn’t the place for them, you couldn’t be more wrong. As Koh put it, The Night Market has “something to see, something to try, something to take in” for everyone.

“It’s a less threatening way of trying a dish that you might not be familiar with,” Koh said, “or it’s a good way to immerse yourself in a way that doesn’t seem so otherworldly.”

The Night Market also serves as a chance for young entrepreneurs to try something new. Philong Phan, a 23-year-old University of Louisiana at Lafayette alum, is bringing Birria Boys to the festival.

Phan said it’s always been a goal for him to start a restaurant because he loves to cook. He and his business partner, Braydon Kongphongmany, are looking forward to seeing the potential of their work come to life.

“This is kind of like a kickstarter,” Phan said. “We just want to have fun. We’re two dudes making birria… even though birria isn’t necessarily Asian culture, it’s more so about the love for the food.”

Aside from birria quesadillas, Phan and Kongphongmany are also offering matcha banana pudding and biscoff banana pudding. Kongphongmany will have a clothing brand pop-up at the market, too.

“I love Louisiana, and this is super big for the representation of cultures there,” Phan said. “Not a lot of people know about Asian cultures. This will just bring more light to it and more diversity for the city.” 

The Night Market is a one day, once a year event. This year, it will be in downtown Baton Rouge on May 10 from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. in front of the State Capitol building. The market is an opportunity to learn about different Asian cultures while also supporting some of the aspiring businesses in the Baton Rouge community, Siu said

“Besides being a food festival to experience culture, this is an opportunity to give other Asian Americans a platform,” Siu said. “[The Night Market] is about them. It’s about the community. It’s about the vendors. It’s about the people that are coming to see what we’re all about.”