This 85-year-old dive bar in San Francisco’s Chinatown is perfect

The old bartender came flying from behind the bar and was actually attacking the young door guy. Eventually the door guy subdued the bartender, and things went back to normal (by Li Po Lounge standards), but only after lots of yelling in Chinese and some awkward grappling where the bartender was not punching, but literally pushing the door guy’s face with all his power.

That was nearly 20 years ago, and I’ll never know what the fight was about, but considering how strong the drinks are, and how much dice is played at that bar, it was bound to happen eventually. Goddamn, I love Li Po Lounge. 

A look in at Li Po: Bartender Wayne Chu, upper left, shakes up a cocktail; the 85-year-old bar is well-known for its Chinese Mai Tai, upper right, lower left. (Photos by Emily Trinh & Kevin Kelleher)
A look in at Li Po: Bartender Wayne Chu, upper left, shakes up a cocktail; the 85-year-old bar is well-known for its Chinese Mai Tai, upper right, lower left. (Photos by Emily Trinh & Kevin Kelleher)

Despite that experience, violence is not a common thing at Li Po. That’s the only time I’ve ever seen it, but unexpectedly memorable nights like that one are why people have been going there for the past 85 years.

Opened on February 10, 1937 (Chinese New Year’s Eve), Li Po Lounge was one of the first post-Prohibition bars in Chinatown. The original proprietors were Wilbert Wong, one of the organizers of San Francisco’s first Chinese New Year Parade, and William Jack Chow, one of the first Chinese American lawyers in the U.S. At the time, many of the Chinatown bars catered to white Americans looking for something “exotic.” 

When World War II came around, places like Li Po were extremely popular with GIs about to head to the Pacific. In those days, it was also an underground gay bar, according to an article by Michael Flanagan in the Bay Area Reporter.

“During World War II Li-Po at 916 Grant served as a refuge for a while from wartime bar raids. As Berube’s book ‘Coming Out Under Fire’ tells us, after raids on several bars in town: ‘Displaced customers started to fill up Li-Po’s, a discreet gay bar in Chinatown that until then had attracted ‘well-dressed, handsome youths’ including servicemen.’”

By the time I found Li Po Lounge in the early 2000s though, the clientele was a mixture of old Chinese men during the day and tourists and hipsters at night. And boy, was it hipster! 

Back then, Li Po hosted loud, poorly ventilated indie rock and punk shows in its spartan basement. And by spartan, I mean that when it wasn’t packed with dancing twenty-somethings sweating through their skinny jeans and fogging up their thick-rimmed glasses, it looked rather terrifying. The dimly lit room was almost completely undecorated and entirely made of concrete. It looked like the kind of place where they always find the one victim who is still alive in “Law & Order: SVU.” It was perfect.  

That actually seems to be the only thing that’s changed at Li Po Lounge since… well, 1937. Sitting at the big wraparound bar a few weeks ago, Vincent Lee, Li Po’s manager, told me how almost everything in the bar is original. This means that the big golden Buddha, the dangling lanterns and the fading paintings have all been around since it opened. 

“We don’t really touch anything,” Lee explains. “The owner wants to keep everything original. We have a very long legacy here. But we do a deep clean on things like the Buddha every year for Chinese New Year.”

Legacy seems to be the perfect word. In 2019, Li Po Lounge became a legacy business, helping cement its future in San Francisco. And the year before that, the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) helped the bar repair its neon lantern sign, which is more than 70 years old. If you’re a neon nerd like me, it’s a beautiful sight on a foggy San Francisco night.

Possibly the most famous thing about Li Po Lounge is its Chinese Mai Tai, a potent cocktail created by current owner Kenneth Lee (he’s not related to Vincent). It’s made up of pineapple juice, three kinds of rum and some kind of “Chinese Liqueur”. While it was well known locally for years, it became world-renowned when Anthony Bourdain got shickered on it during the SF episode of his 2012 show “The Layover.” I, for one, don’t touch it anymore because it’s given me wicked hangovers, but I’ve heard from multiple people that it also leads to long, deep, emotional talks. My wife and her grandma definitely once had a drinking-and-crying session over a few of the drinks. 

But like so many things these days, supply-chain issues have even impacted this fabled cocktail. “We’ve been out of pineapple juice for a year,” Vincent Lee tells me. “So, we’ve been using mango juice instead. People still order it.”

“Some people call me the Mai Tai Lady of Chinatown,” Connie Lam tells me down at the other end of the bar. She’s the daytime bartender at Li Po, and while she’s bartended all over town for nearly 30 years, she’s been behind the stick at Li Po for the past six.

“People come back after a few years and say ‘Oh mama! You’re still here!’” Connie continues. “People come first for the history, but then return for the staff and of course the Mai Tais,” she explains with a mischievous smile.    

Connie is an absolute character and the consummate bartender, sweet and welcoming, while completely willing to bust your balls if given the chance. And in a way, that’s a perfect way to describe Li Po Lounge as well. Everyone is welcome within its big double doors, but don’t take yourself too seriously because everyone ends up at the bottom of a Chinese Mai Tai eventually. Even Anthony Bourdain.

Stuart Schuffman is the editor-in-chief of BrokeAssStuart.com.