Baba's House
Restaurant · Downtown
410 15th St, Oakland, CA 94612
Highlights
Asian snack shop, mahjong lounge, gallery, karaoke, and eatery
Asian snack shop, mahjong lounge, gallery, karaoke, and eatery
"The ground-floor restaurant at the mahjong venue will offer its own individual menu during the July 25–26 takeover; expected items mentioned for the main-restaurant portion of the event include banh mi with braised pork belly or bánh tằm bì and "pintailed noodles" with shredded pork or mushrooms." - Dianne de Guzman
"At the back of Baba’s House in Downtown Oakland is 13 Orphans, a speakeasy mahjong den with tea-based cocktails and multiple rooms for drinking, dancing, and, of course, playing mahjong. To eat, there are Canto-Filipino dim sum sets. We haven’t been here yet, but want you to know this spot exists." - Julia Chen
"A ground-floor restaurant and community hub founded to honor one co-owner’s late father, it grew out of community-driven events—kamayan meals, comedy nights, live music, and heavily booked mahjong nights—and has hosted free mahjong classes for multiple years. Run by the same ownership team as the upstairs tea lounge, the project built a loyal following and is now being refined into a more intentional, upscale concept; its current food and drink menus are still forthcoming." - Paolo Bicchieri
"One of the teams behind the Neo Lunar event and a food/wine contributor at the Alkali Rye Bones & Tiles event; wines and food from this team will be available for purchase at the Alkali Rye program on February 15." - Dianne de Guzman
"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
