The Tile Club

On a sunny afternoon in early June, eight women gather in Amagansett Square to play mahjong. It’s the first game in a new summer series, Tile Tuesdays, hosted by Montauk Mahj (also known as Mahj Island) at Doubles, the popular Caribbean roti-slash-smashburger joint.

Two outdoor tables under big umbrellas are set with floral tablecloths, bright mats, matching dies held in handmade decoupage shells, and thick, milky tiles that make a pleasant clacking sound when they touch.

The group divides into a beginner and an advanced game. At the beginner table, the Montauk Mahj founders, Donna and Karen Vigliotti — cousins by marriage who started playing about four years ago — stand over players, surveying their tiles and offering advice like, “When in doubt, count it out.” The advanced table speaks in fractured declarations: “Nine crack,” “Hold it,” “One dot,” “West,” “Flower,” “Six bam,” and finally, “Mahjong!”    

Almost none of the players have met before, but when it’s time to shuffle tiles they kibitz like old friends, discussing new restaurants, sharing favorite books, decrying the early-summer pollen, and comparing notes about other mahjong games. At the end of the session, the advanced group makes a group chat called Amagansett Maj.  

The game’s popularity on the East End, says Donna, has been building gradually for the past two or three years. “But this year it just exploded.”

The craze arrives on the heels of a proliferation of pub-quiz trivia nights since the pandemic. It offers a similar format — for a couple of hours, a restaurant or business converts into a communal venue where strangers can socialize through the shared structure of a game. Interestingly, mahjong first caught on in the U.S. in the 1920s after the so-called Spanish-flu pandemic of 1918 to 1920.

“I’m in a game where someone’s from Montreal, from Chicago, and from Vancouver,” says Esther DuVal, the most experienced player in the advanced group. “It’s a universal game with consistent rules.” With a good group of players, says DuVal, “you all get into a rhythm.”

If you want to join the mahjong movement, you’re in luck. Regular games have started popping up all over the place, and players can now find one nearly every day of the week.