Aug 22, 2026

Story Behind the Choking Sign: Maya Congee Cafe with Layla Chen, Ray Sison, and Yuan Wei

Ray Sison was a regular at Maya Congee Cafe in Bed-Stuy for months before its owner, Layla Chen, asked what he did for a living. When she found out he ran Playlist, a design studio, it sparked an organic collaboration: one that actually turned into a full rebrand once Layla decided to open a more grown-up, sit-down second location of the restaurant. Ray brought in his studio partner Yuan Wei, and together the three of them built an identity around something deeply personal to Layla: a 90s calendar print of Shanghainese women playing mahjong that she'd kept since childhood, an image she tied to a specific era of newfound freedom and comfort for women in China. In this episode of the Cultural Fingerprints podcast, we talk about how that calendar print hanging on the walls found new life on Maya's choking sign, how popular folklore about the Lazy Susan’s American origins gave the branding its cross-cultural throughline, and how Ray’s years teaching design shaped his approach to running a studio and mentoring the people in it.