A tale of two Mei Meis — and an EMei — stirs a restaurant-name dispute in Philadelphia

For three years, Tony Ren worked to turn a former traditional Chinese-medicine pharmacy in Chinatown into an enormous restaurant, with three floors of dining, banquet, and private karaoke rooms.

He named it Mei Mei, after his wife.

He never got to see it open. Ren, a construction company owner who suffered a debilitating stroke in August 2024, died June 14. His wife, Mei, and their son, Atom, finally opened Mei Mei at 926 Arch St. last week.

Without realizing it, they walked into a restaurant-name dispute.

Philadelphia now has two Mei Meis in Center City. To complicate matters, a third restaurant with a similar name, the popular EMei, is directly across the street from the newcomer.

EMei owner Dan Tsao said he has seen confusion with the Old City Mei Mei, especially in online reviews. “When Mei Mei was closed after a flood [in February 2025], we got a few phone calls from their customers trying to book parties,” Tsao said. “Since their profile was not active for several months, EMei would pop up directly on the top when someone searched for Mei Mei.”

The first Mei Mei, a stylish modern Asian restaurant and lounge at 33 S. Second St. in Old City, opened in March 2020 under Jay Ho. EMei — which opened at 915 Arch St. in 2011 and appeared in The Inquirer’s 2024 edition of The 76 — specializes in Sichuan cooking.

The similarities haven’t escaped Google Maps. Search for Mei Mei, and the Chinatown restaurant appears as “Mei Mei Restaurant.” Last week, Google added “Philadelphia” to the Old City restaurant’s name.

For the owners of the two Mei Meis, the names are more than branding.

“Mei Mei isn’t just a name to us, it’s our family’s legacy, dedicated to my own sisters,” Ho said of his Old City restaurant.

Ho has contacted the Rens through an intermediary and hopes to meet them in person. He is not seeking immediate legal action.

“We truly want every new restaurant in Philadelphia to succeed,” Ho said. “Yet we owe it to our family, our team, and our guests to make sure no one is ever confused about whose table they’re sitting down at and that they’re getting the Mei Mei experience in Philadelphia. I very much want to come to a friendly resolution.”

Tsao noticed the new restaurant’s sign going up across Arch Street before its opening.

“We’ve had customers confuse EMei with Mei Mei in Old City [with online reviews], so naturally, I was concerned about another Mei Mei opening directly across the street,” he said.

“I’ve known the Ren family for years, so I called Atom directly to share my concerns,” Tsao said. “Personally, I would have avoided choosing a name so similar to an existing restaurant, but I recognize they may have the legal right to use it.”

Tsao said Atom Ren told him the restaurant’s signage and other materials were already finished, making a change difficult.

Ren, who operates the Chinatown restaurant with his mother, said they did not know about the Old City Mei Mei before opening and were unconcerned about the similarities.

His mother’s given name is Mei-qing, and she has gone by the nickname Yi-mei, also rendered as Mei, for more than 60 years.

Atom Ren pointed out that the three restaurants’ names, despite their similar English spellings, have distinct meanings in Chinese. His family’s Mei Mei uses characters associated with beauty. Ho’s uses characters meaning younger sister. EMei refers to Mount Emei, a mountain in China’s Sichuan province. The names also are pronounced differently in Chinese.

“They merely share similar Romanized spellings,” Ren said in an email. “In English, it is very common to have brands or names with similar spellings.”

The restaurants themselves could hardly be more different.

Ho’s Mei Mei is a high-energy dinner destination with contemporary Asian cooking, cocktails, dramatic lighting, and a basement lounge.

The new Chinatown Mei Mei is a sprawling, 300-seat operation whose ground-floor dining room serves a budget-friendly $8.50 lunch buffet combo of four dishes and soup. Selections include braised pork belly, mapo tofu, Chinese broccoli, and salt-and-pepper shrimp.

Dinner emphasizes Cantonese dishes. Upstairs are banquet rooms; downstairs are karaoke rooms. The extensive renovation included transforming former apartments into restaurant space and installing an elaborate chandelier imported from China.

The Rens are also partners in Grand Palace, the block-long restaurant and catering hall at Sixth Street and Washington Avenue in South Philadelphia.

“The culinary concepts and target demographics of these three restaurants are completely different,” Ren said. “We do not overlap or directly compete with the other two. Diners come for a specific taste and experience, not just a phonetic name.”

Chinatown has been through this before — and the Rens have a connection to one of its more tangled restaurant-name disputes.

Mei and Atom Ren were among the partners in the original Dim Sum Garden, which opened on 11th Street near Arch in 2008. After restaurateur Shizhou Da and her daughter, Sally Song, opened another Dim Sum Garden at 1020 Race St. in 2013, a legal fight erupted over the name. The 11th Street restaurant eventually became Tom’s Dim Sum. The Rens are no longer involved.

The Tom’s name figured in another legal dispute in 2019, when competing restaurants called Tom’s Dim Sum Media and Tom’s Dim Sum Mania operated within feet of each other in Media.

Other Philadelphia restaurant-name disputes have involved Middle Child and Garage/Garage Sale Vintage. At other times, similar names have coexisted without litigation, such as the myriad restaurants with “Fiore” in their names.

For now, the owners of the two Mei Meis remain at odds, though the public disagreement could not be more civil.

Shortly after Mei Mei’s grand opening, Tsao walked across the street and bought a $500 gift card from the Rens. “I understand their position, respect the challenges of opening a new business, and wish them all the best,” Tsao said.