‘We want to have fun again’
Spice Island Tea House closed but will offer pop-ups
Spice Island Tea House, one of Oakland’s longest-standing restaurants, closed at the end of September.
“It’s time,” says owner Ron Lee. “Everything comes to a point where we should say ‘Let’s move on.’ That’s basically it. 28 years is a long run.”
Lee and his brother, Alex, opened the restaurant on Atwood Street in 1995. Lee’s cousin, Hai Jing Leong, serves as the restaurant’s primary chef.
Over its nearly 30-year history, Spice Island Tea House built a diverse following for its broad menu of Southeast Asian cuisine. Although Thai dishes were a primary draw in the early years, the menu included fare from Myanmar (formerly Burma), Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. The establishment also offered a strong selection of vegetarian and vegan dishes long before serving meat-free dishes was more commonplace at Pittsburgh restaurants.
Last year, we named Spice Island one of our Essential Oakland Restaurants as part of the Post-Gazette’s Eat Pittsburgh series.
Lee says he decided to sunset his restaurant due to a combination of reasons that include burnout from the physical demands of restaurant work, staffing shortages, changing dining habits in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, fluctuating prices on ingredients and a general desire to do something different.
“Almost every place that’s closed for the past few years has a similar story. I don’t think we’re all that different,” he says.
Fans of the restaurant can hold on to some joy because the culinary story of the building won’t end with the closing of Spice Island. Following a break, Lee plans to run pop-ups in the restaurant where he’ll more deeply explore aspects of Southeast Asian cuisine (his family is ethnic Chinese but has multi-generational roots in Myanmar) and other ideas he finds inspiration in pursuing.
“It’s a good way to try out new things rather than keep trying to introduce new things to Spice Island. It’s hard to ‘rebrand’ when you’ve been around for a long time and your menu is consistent,” Lee says. “People always say there’s so many things I want to try, but they always go back to their favorites. It’s completely understandable because you came here because you love those dishes.”
Lee is still pondering the specifics of what he’ll serve, when he’ll start and how often he’ll offer the pop-ups. He says ideas such as Burmese street noodles, Malaysian curries and rice platters and Hong Kong-style interpretations of Western diner food (cha chaan teng) like French toast are possibilities. It won’t necessarily be limited to Southeast Asian cuisine, either.
“We want to have fun again. To have the freedom to play around and see what works. We used to be more goofy when we first started because we were young and full of energy,” he says.