Why Bay Area Restaurants Are Embracing the Century-Old Chinese Tile Game Mahjong - Eater SF
"Years before Jenn Lui and partner Alan Chen met and opened up the two-level, restaurant-slash-snack-shop Baba’s House in Oakland, they both held a deep fascination with mahjong. Growing up in the Bay Area — in Daly City for Lui, in San Jose for Chen — mahjong, with its white tiles and detailed characters on its face, was a part of family life. Older relatives would often play in the evenings at family parties as younger kids would sit nearby and watch. But often, children weren’t invited to play and instead were admonished. “I would ask my mom to teach me,” Chen says, “and she’d say, ‘No, don’t gamble,’ and then proceed to play. I think a lot of us grew up not learning it, but watching and then having to learn for ourselves after some time.” So when Lui and Chen opened up Baba’s House, they decided to make space for mahjong. The second story of the business is a snack shop selling specialty Asian goods, but there’s also a room for mahjong. Inside, four-sided mahjong tables, tiles, and stools similar to the ones Lui’s relatives would use during games fill the space. In some ways, it’s a room packed with nostalgia, but updated for a younger generation of players with moody blue-purple lighting, flashy tiles, and drinks. When Lui toured the space, she says the room was meant as extra storage. But she couldn’t get the idea of having an area dedicated to mahjong out of her head. “That one small room just really sparked something in me,” Lui says. “I really wanted to build something speakeasy-like, but also have a mahjong table that’s dedicated there because it fits into this idea of a little, underground taboo bar.”" - Dianne de Guzman
