London Celebrations at Ping Pong

Last month was the birthday of my favourite part Panamanian, Martha Stewart fanatic and all round good egg Carla, aka Can Be Bribed With Food.  After a night out shouting "stop trying to make fetch happen" at the Mean Girls bitch along in Leicester Square the following day required a feast for lunch, Carla suggested Ping Pong for dim sum. There are a number of these restaurants dotted around London and on Sundays they offer all you can eat dim sum for £20.95, that's a lot of dumplings. We went to the Soho branch and the restaurant is pretty big, huge round tables downstairs with inbuilt lazy Susans.

The menu is also pretty extensive with most of the traditional dim sum dishes you would expect as well as some new creations. We ordered 4 dishes each to share round and then hungrily waited for their arrival whilst sipping, in my case, green tea.  With a mix of fried, steamed and rice dishes including char siu pork puffs, black prawn dumplings, duck spring rolls plus a chicken and mushroom rice pot we were able to sample a good portion of the menu.

roast pork puffs

duck spring rolls

squid ink prawn dumplings

Har Gau

We were lucky that most of the dishes we ordered came with 3 portions otherwise there would have been fisty cuffs. For the traditionalist dim sum lover this perhaps should not be at the top of your list as they do some different dishes, like the potato and edamame cake which you normally wouldn't see on the menu.  I felt the steamed dishes fared worse as they felt a bit wet to me, more than they normally should, which watered down the taste.

The best dishes we had were the char siu roast pork puffs, stuffed full of pork and very indulgent. The chicken and mushroom rice was also excellent, really nicely seasoned with garlic, ginger and soy. Probably the best dumpling was the squid ink prawn and garlic one, it tasted quite different but was also a bit luxurious, if you can call a dumpling luxurious, which I am.

some of the feast

I would recommend Ping Pong as a good place to meet up with friends after work for a nibble and a chat, It's not the best dim sum in London to be sure but you get a good tasty feed and for a mini chain it is miles ahead of what a lot of them offer. The all you can eat dim sum offer on Sundays is pretty good value when you consider how much you would normally pay to sample that many dishes. To see what else Ping Pong have to offer check out their website.

The Birthday Girl and Myself