{"id":424553,"date":"2026-09-03T01:54:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T01:54:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/424553\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T01:54:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T01:54:20","slug":"dedicated-mahjong-parlor-bamboo-room-makes-fort-worth-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/424553\/","title":{"rendered":"Dedicated mahjong parlor Bamboo Room makes Fort Worth debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mahjong madness has hit Fort Worth with the opening of the Bamboo Room<\/a>, a mahjong lounge now open in The Village at Camp Bowie shopping center, in a former mortgage office at 6115 Camp Bowie Blvd. #144. The lounge, which opened on August 31, is a game parlor hosting mahjong sessions and classes, as well as a retail shop selling mahjong gear.<\/p>\n

Mahjong is a centuries-old tile game that started in China, but has been enjoying a massive surge in popularity in the U.S. Fans love that it encourages in-person socializing and is a hobby that is not online. There’s a huge collector market for the colorful tiles that are used in the game, and it counts celebrities like Meghan Markle and Sarah Jessica Parker among its fans.<\/p>\n

Mahjong began to surface in DFW in recent years with mahjong nights hosted by restaurants, hotels, boutiques, and bookstores<\/a>, as well as a few dedicated mahjong clubs opening such as the Charleston Club<\/a> in Dallas and the Mahj Clubhouse in Fort Worth.<\/p>\n

The Bamboo Room is a mother-daughter venture from Kristen Trapnell and her mother Carolyn Penny, who’ve created a space in which every detail is designed with players in mind: inviting tables, elevated sets, and a nurturing atmosphere that accommodates beginners, seasoned players, and everyone in between.<\/p>\n

“To us, mahjong is more than a game \u2014 it is conversation, connection, tradition, and joy,” Trapnell says.<\/p>\n

Penny was the first to get into the game.<\/p>\n

“My mom has played mahjong for 20 years with her girlfriends,” Trapnell says. “They began when a friend needed a distraction, and they would play with the same group. I never had interest \u2014 I’m a radiologist, and had two daughters, now in college. But my mom decided she would teach us. We had a party where I invited my friends whose mothers are my mom’s friends, and all our daughters. So it was three generations who got together, and we all very quickly got obsessed. I started buying sets and going crazy, and finally asked my mom, ‘Would you like to open a lounge?’ She said yes.”<\/p>\n

From there, it was finding a location and creating a welcoming space.<\/p>\n

\"Bamboo Bamboo Room game room.Photo courtesy of Bamboo Room<\/p>\n

They’re in a 2,000-square-foot storefront with two large rooms, including a game room and a retail space up front, with a bar serving beer, wine, and a few wine-based cocktails, plus packaged snacks like popcorn, cheese straws, and cookies.<\/p>\n

The playing room is designed with a gentle nod to the game’s Asian roots with a pale green and pink color scheme, bamboo chairs, mirrors with geometric frames, and evocative flowered wallpaper. An adjoining “high-roller room” is where they’ll host classes and private events.<\/p>\n

“Our spiel is that we wanted to be a beautiful space for community where people can come and play or learn to play,” Trapnell says. “To provide a pretty place to sit and play mahjong and feel a sense of community \u2014 and that’s for anyone, whether you’re in a group or you can come alone. You book a seat and show up and play with whoever is at your table.”<\/p>\n

One priority was to be open and offer mahjong all the time, versus the limited hours observed by some other venues. They’re open 9 am-9 pm Monday-Thursday, 9 am-4 pm Friday-Saturday, and are considering opening on Sunday afternoons.<\/p>\n

“Our goal is to have open play sessions going all the time, plus classes running throughout the month,” she says.<\/p>\n

They also have an electric mahjong table, a show-stopper that does all the heavy lifting of shuffling the tiles and building them into the elaborate wall that’s a cornerstone of the game.<\/p>\n

“Mahjong is appealing for people looking for an escape from their phones and computers,” Trapnell says. “It’s wise to take a lesson, but it’s pretty easy to learn, and then it only takes a time or two to get the hang of it. But as my mother says, it also takes a lifetime to master.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mahjong madness has hit Fort Worth with the opening of the Bamboo Room, a mahjong lounge now open…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[24361,116,118,117,16298,66215,23786],"class_list":["post-424553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-camp-bowie","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-games","tag-lounge","tag-mahjong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}