David's Mai Lai Wah reopened its dining room on Monday at 1001 Race St. in Philadelphia's Chinatown, bringing back sit-down service for the first time in six years and debuting a new cocktail bar alongside the restaurant's longtime late-night Cantonese menu. The reopening caps a renovation that started in February 2026, during which the restaurant stayed open for takeout, and closes out a stretch that began when the dining room shut down during the pandemic.
David Chan, who opened the restaurant in 1982 after arriving in Philadelphia at age 13 and working his way up through local restaurants, still owns the business, according to Inquirer.com. His daughter, 33-year-old Priscilla Chan, is now the restaurant's general manager, a role she stepped into after leaving her nursing job at her father's request that she take on more responsibility at the business. Her husband, Barry Li, left his own engineering job to help run the restaurant alongside her, and the pair overhauled the point-of-sale system as part of the transition.
The renovation replaced the dining room's old uneven floor and swapped out the pink-tablecloth tables long associated with the space for rectangular tables without linens. The overhaul follows a six-year run as a takeout-only operation that began when the restaurant closed for just two weeks amid early pandemic restrictions in spring 2020 before reopening as a window takeout business, a resilience that kept the restaurant's vintage exterior neon sign reading Eat In Take Out continuously lit even while the dining room sat empty, the same Inquirer.com report notes.
A Cocktail Bar Joins the Late-Night Menu
Li designed a new cocktail menu for the restaurant, which now includes a yuzu margarita, a gingery old fashioned, and an espresso martini made with Vietnamese coffee. The restaurant is open for dine-in and takeout without delivery, with hours running from 4 p.m. to 2:15 a.m. and last call for drinks at 2 a.m., according to the report. Reservations and questions can go through the restaurant's phone line at 215-627-2610.
On the food side, the kitchen is still serving its salt and pepper chicken wings, along with salt and pepper shrimp and salt and pepper scallops. The wings themselves have a well-documented origin story: Chan introduced them around 2006 at a customer's request, adapting a Cantonese preparation traditionally used for squid into what had become one of the restaurant's signature dishes, selling roughly 100 orders a day by 2016, per the Inquirer's earlier reporting on the restaurant's history. Roast duck, meanwhile, has been pulled from the current focus, though the restaurant says it may bring the dish back down the line.
Priscilla Chan told the Inquirer the restaurant is concentrating on getting the reopened dining room running smoothly before expanding further, saying the focus right now is on opening, finding its flow, and sticking to staples. She also asked customers not to fight in the restaurant, a request included in the same report.
Decor Nods to Hong Kong and Chinatown's Own Landmark
The new interior leans into the restaurant's name, which translates to beautiful magnificence: photographic murals depict the neon-filled streets of Hong Kong's Wan Chai district, paired with a new green neon sign spelling out the Chinese characters for Mai Lai Wah. The space also features an image of Philadelphia's Chinatown Friendship Gate, the archway at 10th and Arch Streets that was dedicated in 1984 as the first authentic Chinese archway built in the United States, constructed by artisans brought from sister city Tianjin, according to AIA Philadelphia.
Before the 2026 overhaul, the 60-seat dining room carried a distinctly 1970s look, with glass-topped tables over pink tablecloths, parchment-patterned wallpaper, and chrome-accented mirrors, as Visit Philadelphia has described it. That retro identity took shape after the restaurant adopted a late-night dining model in 1992, turning it into one of Chinatown's go-to destinations for post-shift restaurant workers, night-shift employees, and clubgoers looking for a meal after hours.
The restaurant's late-night reputation has drawn a steady stream of notable regulars over the years. Iron Chef and Philadelphia restaurateur Jose Garces has repeatedly named David's Mai Lai Wah his favorite late-night Chinese restaurant in the city. More recently, Eagles defensive tackle Brandon Graham celebrated a shutout win over the Las Vegas Raiders in December by ordering takeout from the restaurant, singling out the salt and pepper wings, sweet and sour chicken, and General Tso's chicken as his favorites.
Beyond the restaurant walls, the reopening lands at a moment of real pressure for the neighborhood around it. Philadelphia's Chinatown, established in 1871, was added to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's list of America's Most Endangered Historic Places in May 2023, according to WHYY. Against that backdrop, a family-run business investing in its physical space and handing day-to-day operations to a second generation represents its own quiet bet on the neighborhood's staying power.
For now, Priscilla Chan and Barry Li are focused on the basics of running a newly reopened dining room, even as life outside the restaurant has moved quickly for the couple, who bought a house in July 2026 and got married the following month. Both milestones arrived in the middle of overseeing the renovation and relaunch of a restaurant that has anchored this stretch of Race Street for more than four decades.
