Lucky Danger was born as a delivery-only Chinese-American pop-up in the thick of the pandemic and landed in Arlington as a carryout shop. Now, founder and chef Tim Ma is expanding the concept into a full-service restaurant in Penn Quarter. It’s got a whole new menu with crab lo mein and short rib-bone marrow dumplings—plus a mahjong- and whiskey bar hidden in the back. It’s set to open Wednesday, May 21.

“This started in the pandemic as a function of the pandemic. That’s how Lucky Danger existed because it had to. It doesn’t mean that’s how it had to stay,” Ma says. “I got into restaurants to have a restaurant like this.”

You will find some familiar Lucky Danger dishes like crab rangoons—here they’re dusted in Old Bay—but the new menu, overseen by executive chef Robbie Reyes, takes a more refined approach. Ma’s all-day cafe in Navy Yard, Any Day Now, is known for its scallion pancake breakfast sandwiches. Lucky Danger offers allium pancakes packed with all kinds of onions, and served with whipped tofu and caviar.

A Taiwanese noodle dish with scrambled eggs and tomato is reinterpreted as housemade egg noodles with a tomato-y XO sauce (made vegetarian with shiitake mushrooms). “It’s like an XO meets funky pomodoro sauce,” Reyes says. “Kind of spicy.”

There will also be some large format platters, like a Chinese-spiced prime rib or Peking duck with lettuce wraps instead of pancakes. Whole crispy flounder is showered in strands of ginger, scallion, and lemongrass, plus chili oil. It’s served with papaya salad and rice. The restaurant is open for dinner only to start, but Ma is looking to expand to lunch and takeout.

The restaurant, formerly home to the Partisan, is divided into several different spaces, starting with a bar and dining room near the entrance. There, you’ll find Asian takes on classic cocktails, such as a milky oolong tea old-fashioned or a gin and tonic with jasmine green tea tonic.

Head further back and you’ll enter the red lantern-lit “Lucky Club,” where you’re greeted by a Chinese sign that essentially translates to “let the Champagne fly and the good times roll.” The same phrase hung in a Chinese restaurant that Ma’s uncle owned in New York. The cocktails back here are a little more elevated and experimental.

Bar Director Sunny Vanavichai, who previously worked at Moon Rabbit and with Daikaya Group, took inspiration from herbal teas as well as traditional Chinese medicine. She makes a lollipop out of Pei Pa Koa, an herbal remedy for coughs that also supposedly “helps balance your life.” It garnishes the “James Carter,” a Manhattan variation with sesame-infused Japanese whiskey, an herbal-floral Italian amaro, and five-spice bitters. Another tea-infused cocktail, “Forbidden Knees,” is a play on a Bee’s Knees with smoky lapsang souchong honey plus some herbal notes from yellow Chartreuse.

Head back even further and you’ll find a small green-carpeted room with a handful of automatically shuffling mahjong tables and a menu of overproof whiskey and overproof classic cocktails (no food). Ma previously developed the menu for Sparrow Room, a cocktail and mahjong parlor in Arlington that has since closed. The owner asked if Ma knew anyone who taught mahjong, so he and his dad volunteered. “My dad ended up doing two classes a week sometimes. It was very popular,” Ma says. They’ll both continue to teach weekly classes at Lucky Danger.

“The more that people are interested and introduced to the game, I think is just better for the culture,” Ma says.

Ma is a big fan of Jackie Chan, and particularly, the Rush Hour series. In one famous scene, Chan and co-star Chris Tucker go to a Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles seeking information, walk through the kitchen, then bust into a back room (run by Don Cheadle) where everyone’s playing mahjong. “That was the inspiration for this room,” Ma says. “People will be able to hear it happening, but won’t be able to see it happening.”

Meanwhile, it’s shaping up to be a big expansion year for Ma. He’s a partner in recently opened Kata, a nightlife destination in Penn Quarter.  Tacocat, an Asian-fusion taco bar, is coming soon to Western Market food hall in Foggy Bottom. All-you-can-eat sushi restaurant Sushi Sato will arrive on H Street Northeast later this spring, and another location of Any Day Now will follow in the neighborhood this fall. And in addition to opening a Lucky Danger kiosk that just debuted at Nationals Park, Ma will also debut two more of the Chinese-American carryouts this year—one on the Johns Hopkins campus in Baltimore and another in Virginia.

Food Editor

Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind D.C.’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.