10/06/2026
What started as a converted meat market with eight tables grew into a San Antonio steakhouse that can seat more than 800 people at a time.
Ralph and Lili Hernandez opened the Little Red Barn on Labor Day 1963. Those eight tables held thirty-two diners. Ralph was the butcher and the cook. Lili waited on the tables and worked the cash register. It was a two-person operation built on good beef and hard work.
San Antonio kept coming back, and the Barn kept growing to make room for them. One dining room became several, and the little meat market turned into the spot where San Antonio families went for birthdays, graduations, anniversaries and plain old Friday night steaks.
Today the Hernandez daughters, Marissa Garcia and Nancy Hernandez, run it. That makes sixty-three years now since the first Labor Day, and it is still the same family behind the counter.
Big as it got, the Little Red Barn never forgot where it came from. It all started with a butcher, a cashier and eight tables in an old meat market.
