Mox Boarding House

There may be no local restaurant or bar that nerds out as hard as Mox Boarding House in Ballard. It’s part tabletop gaming store, part event space, and part dining room where you’ll find players rolling 20-sided dice with conviction or smearing potato chip-greased fingers over Catan resource cards. Serious gamers can rent private rooms by the hour for intense sessions, but you can walk into the restaurant area with a group and settle into a spacious booth to talk over your Magic: The Gathering strategy (or borrow a game from Mox’s library). While the menu has nothing imaginative, there are enough decent, shareable appetizers—like the juicy albondigas—and a robust beer and cocktail list to fuel a night of role-playing as a half-orc warlock with a penchant for cuddling baby dragons.