Ping Pong

Ping Pong is another one of those joints I love to hate, but come back for more EVERY TIME. I am by no means an expert on Dim Sum, however I do have lips and taste buds and a well functioning appetite, and can usually tell you with geometric margin if a place is the ish.
This place is good because it’s consistent — it’s a chain, which means that you know what you’re getting and you know you’ll be happy with it. Try some of the more popular options, like the puffy bread with pork, the sticky rice — which is actually totes delish– the fried shrimp balls, the sweet and sour soup and their teas. I’ve tried ALL of them by now, and love them.
I go here often. Sadly. I know, chains are the death of humanity and I will burn in hell but oh, cheeky nandos.

Really great place to go for a meal in a group as all the food is perfect for sharing.
The menu suggests you order 5 dishes per person which is far too much! I would suggest 3 – 4 depending on how hungry you are.
Our food arrived really quickly and everything was really fresh. I would definitely recommend the steamed buns, and it is worth getting a loyalty card as you get freebies every time you go!
Only downside it is quite pricey.

I just had dim sum here and had to immediately write a review. I ordered the all you can eat Sunday dim sum. While the food was decent I have to comment on the service. The waiter never offered me tea or any drinks for that matter. After I ate and waiting for the waiter to come around, I read the fine prints of the all you can eat offer and found out that the offer does come with a drink. Even if it did not, it should make sense that I would want tea with my dim sum. Just because I ordered all you can eat, it doesn’t mean that I cannot afford more. So I asked the waiter about drink offee… he went on to say they don’t really offer it. He said its really just for loyal customers. I showed him the print and no where on it that says such thing. he also said they cannot tell all the customer all that is available. It’s not the drink that I cared about its the nickel and dimming this place is doing.

We came hungry after returning from Paris. Got in about an hour before closing and waited about 15 minutes for a table. It was surprising to see the place so crowded late at night. The «lazy Sunday» is pricey, but if you come hungry, it is definitely worthwhile. We enjoyed most of the dishes we ordered. Will return on our next UK visit!

I’ve eaten at this Ping Pong several times and recently the service has greatly improved. The food is always good but is on the expensive side, especially if ordering booze. A meal for two including service charge was £78. A bit much for a mid week bite…

This restaurant had the worst service I have ever received in my life. I created a Unilocal account just so I could negatively rate this place! The waiters were all very condescending, sarcastic and rude to say the very least and we were never actually waited on, we had to get up and ask for everything we needed. Every table around us got served before we were even offered drinks and it’s not like the restaurant was even crowded. The group I was with was not acting disorderly or drunkenly or anything like that so the awful service was completely unacceptable. I was appalled with how terrible it was and was even more shocked when the bartender (who took forever to make our drinks in the first place) sarcastically made sure to wave goodbye on our way out. Aside from the bad service, the food wasn’t the best – not even authentic – and I would not recommend Ping Pong to anyone.

This is a very artistic place to eat.
Typical place that caters for the non-​asian taste.
I ordered the Christmas £15 lunch menu Dimsum Set and a glass of guava tea party drink, which consist of guava, fresh limes and jasmine iced tea. This drink was good. The set consist of a roast pork puff, a duck spring roll, a potato and edamame cake, a prawn toast with sesame toast. Nothing special here.
The second part includes a beef dumpling, chicken and cashew nut dunpling, a spicy vegetable dumpling, a squid dumplings, a seafood dumpling and a har gar.
I only enjoyed the king prawn and scallop sticky rice
We actually forgot about the coconut mochi until after we paid for the bill and the waitress reminded us.
The drinks are good, but the food is more for the looks and to eat. You will not be full.
The waitress told us that every dimsum dish had 3. so we ordered another dish of cha sui, but she gave us two instead of three… Is there a meaning behind this gesture?

Truly appalling, on quite a few different levels.
First off, this was my first experience of Ping-​pong as a take-​away, and not as an eat-​in, so my review is based solely on my take-​away experience. If you want a quick recommendation without wanting to read any further, then I strongly suggest you do not order from here for a take-​away, as you will be extremely disappointed, to say the least.
There are a couple of major flaws which are strikingly apparent the second the meal is underway. The first one is the effects of the packaging. The overall look of the packaging is sort of glitzy/​glam, and it does look very sophisticated at first sight, but it’s not the looks which are the problem here. The dim sums are placed inside these miniature cardboard flip-​top cartons, and as the insides of these cartons are made from waxed-​card, the dim sums soak up both the scent and the flavour of this waxy cardboard coating. The taste/​smell of the waxy card is so strong, that it completely overwhelms the natural flavours of the dimsums. This is a massive fundamental flaw in presentation, and I think they need to have a good look into the entire area regarding packaging, and the delivery side of things as a whole. I’ve always received dim-​sum from takeaways, in those see-​through microwavable plastic boxes, and of course being neutral plastic, they didn’t affect the flavour of the food in any noticeable way. But these card boxes are completely different, and are totally ineffective in what they’re supposed to do (they do not contain the warmth of the dim-​sums either, so the dim-​sums arrive luke-​warm). They just look nice, that’s all it is.
The second problem I encountered, which was with one dish in particular, was sort of a combination of the problems using these boxes entailed, plus the inclusion of a slice of unwelcome sogginess in the form of a large lettuce leaf, which acted as a sort of bed for which to lay the ‘Chili pork tender loin’ on. So these poor shards of meat didn’t even stand a chance; and unsurprisingly, tasted of waxy-​carded, soggy lettuce. Just awful.
The ‘Chicken and mushroom rice pot’ too was quite pathetic, not so much in it’s more than generously-​filled portion-​size, but in it’s portrayal of what was supposedly meant to be an oriental dish of some sort. Fusion-​cooking at its worst; neither here nor there, with a tidal wave’s worth of a pungent earthy mushroomy flavour, that seemed to bully itself passed everything else that was supposed to be vying for top spot in and around the pallette (but of course, none of whom even lifted a finger in not trying to do so). Totally non-​descript, in a sickly, quite off-​putting sort of way. Disproportionately large amount of food though, in this rice pot, if you were to compare it fiscally to the prices of the semi-​ping-​pong-​ball-​sized dimsums
There was another peculiar dish called ‘Roast pork puff’, which sent my taste-​buds into disarray. These were three soldier-​shaped fingers of what tasted like butter-​rich puff pastry, containing a jam-​like substance which was completely unidentifiable but which was meant to be minced-​roast-​pork or something like that. They tasted very desserty, with the exterior taking on a sort of buttery, croissant kind of texture and taste, but with the filling taking on neither a sweet nor savoury stance; just complete neutrality. Although not disgusting, these were quite different from what one would expect. The confusion arose when deciding on whether to chow them down greedily (as you would with any other hearty savoury dish), or to nibble at them daintily (like you would do with a cream-​cake during afternoon-​tea).
The ‘buns’ (both the chicken one and the Char sui pork one) were fairly acceptable, not too bad, but nothing special. And the actual dim-​sums themselves (minus the waxy cardboard flavour that they had absorbed along the way) were okay too.
So as far as delivery is concerned here, Ping Pong was an epic-​fail on all counts.
It must be substantially better tasting if you ate it inside the restaurant, as I’m sure they serve the food on plates or something (maybe even baskets?), instead of inside those waxy cardboard containers.
I think this type of restaurant is aimed at those who are ‘out on the town’ and wish to take a quick, light, relatively tasty dinner-​time snack before moving onto a bar/​nightclub etc, as opposed to those who are after a more rewarding culinary experience and are there for that reason alone. Compared to an authentic dim-​sum eatery, the food here is most obviously inferior; but décor-​wise, it, judging by the pictures and other peoples’ various reviews, seems to blend in with the whole night-​time urban party-​set side of things, and so from this perspective, might be able to carve itself a small niche in the restaurant world, and contribute something to this particular style of dining. And in any case, getting sozzled after eating here might be a good idea anyway.
But as far as delivery is

Wonderful place. I had a late lunch here and I can assure everyone that it was amazing the portion was big and delicious and it got me full for the day.

I’ve never dined in here — only done take away a few times. The food is fine/​average, but I can’t get over how terrible the service is. Why it takes 20 minutes to steam a few dumplings, I will never understand.
There are plenty of other places nearby where the food is better and it doesn’t take a lifetime to get your food.

Very good dim sum. Nice location and cute interior

Dim Sum’s are of Good quality, Not excellent. Service is just normal, Not Meeting the trendy style they’re trying to sell.

I can see this being a great place for a first date as it has small portions (nothing worse than having to snarf down food as quickly as possible), attentive staff and the pricing is a bit higher to make you do not look cheap.
The manager was amazing and really made sure that my friend and myself felt like we were the only ones there. He was very honest in his opinion of what was most fresh on the menu that night, what his favourites are and why and was very funny to boot.
Now that being said, I was not impressed with either the portion size (I was very hungry!) or the Dim Sum. I will admit that it is unlikely I will visit again should I want a mouth watering meal, but maybe it would be better as a place to meet for drinks before going out.

Three Words: Dim Sum Sunday. Yes, you can get all you can eat Dim Sum for 14 pounds on Sundays, and I think that’s a great bargain considering I can eat a lot of Dim Sum. Although the food isn’t amazing, I enjoyed most of what I ordered especially the delicious baked vegetable puffs.
I haven’t been here since 2008, so it may have gone downhill since then, but I thoroughly enjoyed my experience and had the muffin top to prove it!

I have walked by this place hundreds of times without going in; I should have stuck with that pattern.
My boyfriend and I would always mention that we should try it, the sleek décor almost beckons to you like a nightclub, but you should ignore it and keep on walking. This place is formulaic, overpriced, and just a pure waste of calories. And no one likes that…
We started with tea drinks, mine was to be a ginger lychee tea. It was essentially packaged flavoured sugary tea over ice with some raw ginger chucked on top (the only palatable part). My boyfriend’s was similar involving apple and lime. Very underwhelming and more than a little diabetic.
We then moved on to the extensive dim sum menu which you choose from a finely printed menu (the text, so as to fit on one page, not finely as in quality) for dim sum items. Depending on what you are getting you are paying over a pound or two per bite of food, so in theory it would be of decent quality. Despite the long lists of items, there really was little inspiration here.
We tried to order one dish with extra garlic and were told that it was pre-​prepared and the chef couldn’t do it. This totally made sense once the food showed up. The vegetables seemed like they were poured directly from a bag of Tesco’s finest frozen. Another item could have doubled for a frozen dinner entrée. They charged 3 pounds just for the sauces to dip the items in, and even then you couldn’t get past how bland everything was. Many of the orders arrived stuck together breaking entirely when separated. The only genuinely tasty item was a spinach and mushroom wrap bite which actually tasted like the only two ingredients.
I know that my dim sum experience has been formed in the Chinatowns of San Francisco, Las Vegas, and New York, so I do have high standards, but this place was just such a waste. There really was very little redeeming value at all. I would like to give them two stars for being clean and sleekly decorated, but frankly, the cute little tables left use struggling to find places to put drinks, place, and servings containers, so one star it is.

Though I’d like to give this place a resounding 5 stars, I would have to say that this place didn’t inspire me at all. The Dim Sum was good enough but the service was not very good (and to say that service was bad in London, you’d really have to piss me off somehow). Well, technically they didn’t piss me off, but they were very good at ignoring. There wee many times in the meal where we had no Dim Sum because our server didn’t visit our table enough.
Anyway, also coming from San Francisco, where i think Dim Sum is the best outside of China, I would have to give this place credit as I compare most of my Dim Sum experiences to the Yank Sing dim sum experience in SF.

Der Dim Sum Spezialist. Bitte nicht mit einem «Chinesen» in Deutschland vergleichen … Inneneinrichtung in dunklen Tönen gehalten. Hervorragende Qualität, guter, charmanter Service. «Vernünftige» Preise. Wenn man ein bisschen für sich sein möchte ist der «Private Room» eine gute Sache :-)

Love it. I really enjoy coming here. Sometimes when it is busy the service can become a bit poor, but the food is so lovely. Several times I have ordered drinks, and they have just completely forgotten and left me waiting half an hour, only for me to find out they hadn’t even given the bar my order. Apart from this I would definitely recommend Ping Pong

Un restaurant à né pas manquer pour les amateurs de dim sums affamés.
La carte est détaillée et comporte de nombreux dim sums, salades et petits en-​cas. Les cuisines sont partiellement ouvertes, et on voit que tout est préparé à la commande.
Cela se ressent dans l’assiette, où les plats sont bons, fins et frais.
Notons par ailleurs le menu dim sums à volonté du dimanche: pour 18£, vous aurez droit à des dim sums à volonté. On commande à la carte, donc tout est frais. Cela n’est rentable que pour les grandes faims (la carte est peu chère par ailleurs), mais pour ces dernières, ce brunch asiatique vaut absolument le détour!

Nice atmosphere, yummy little boxes of steamy goodness. Would have been nice if the chairs had backs on them.

Wer gern Dim Sum ist, der ist hier richtig. Etwas entfernt von Chinatown (welches in Soho liegt und ca. 30 min. mit den öffentlichen Verkehrsmitteln weg ist), ein guter Platz um Freunde zu treffen und auch unter der Woche in einem gefüllten Restaurant ein gutes Essen zu erleben.
Der Service ist freundlich, relativ schnell und hilft gerne bei der Auswahl der kleinen Köstlichkeiten. Meine Favoriten sind die Shrimps mit kleinen Teigcrackern ummantelt sowie die verschiedenen gedämpften Päckchen mit Fisch und Fleisch.
Auch die alkoholfreien Saftvariationen und Cocktails sind es wert, dazugeordert zu werden. Für diese gibt es auch öfters Gratisaktionen, wenn man den Newsletter abonniert.
Der Laden ist geschmackvoll in dunklen Tönen eingerichtet und Sonntags gibt es all you can eat «Lazy Sumdays».

It’s amazing how times change. I would’ve bitten your hand off to write me a 5 star review of Ping Pong’s noveau dim sum four years ago, but now that Unilocal has caught up with the times in London, and Tom E has caught up with the times abroad all can I offer is a two-​star ‘Meh’
…because after the early noughties wonder of Yauatcha and Ping Pong making this accessible to all, modern Dim Sum was VERY 2005. And although I loved it then, and their food hasn’t changed much either since, I think I’ve changed.
It’s 11am Saturday morning, Ping Pong — WHY ARE YOU CLOSED?
Where are the copious Chinese people?
Where are the chicken feet?
Why is it so quiet?
Why don’t you serve Xiao Long Bao?
How come I spent £20 per person?
I think I’ve gone and become a Dim Sum Snob. I’m going to go hang my head in shame for a few weeks and then come back and see if I can forget about real weekend dim sums and enjoy what Ping Pong does best… like flower teas and black prawn dumplings.

Stylishes Restaurant das sich hauptsächlich auf Dim Sum spezialisiert hat.
Die Inneneinrichtung ist sehr geradlinig in dunklem Holz gehalten mit schönen Lampen die gedämpftes Licht abgeben.
Das Publikum ist größtenteils eher jünger, was auch daran liegt, dass die Preiskategorie für London recht günstig ist. Die Sitzbänke und Hocker sind leider nicht sonderlich bequem: es gibt keine Polsterung und die Hocker haben keine Rückenlehnen. Ausserdem ist es sehr laut, vermutlich weil die Einrichtung ohne Textilien auskommt, was sich ungünstig auf die Akustik auswirkt.
Die Karte ist ziemlich umfangreich und bietet die verschiedensten Dim Sum und andere Kleinigkeiten, sowohl recht nah am chinesischen Original, als auch thailändisch inspiriert.
Wir hatten 9 verschiedene kleine Gerichte und fanden alle gut.
Lobenswert sind die guten und ausgefallenen Cocktail-​Kreationen.
Wenn man gerade in der Gegend ist und einen kleinen Hunger hat, ist es empfehlenswert. Für einen längeren gemütlichen Abend weniger geeignet, weil es zu laut ist um sich gut unterhalten zu können und wegen der ungemütlichen Sitze.

I have visited Ping Pong in various locations across London and have generally enjoyed the wide range of tasty, steamed Dim Sum that they serve there — that was until the last time. And it really will be the last time — I’m not going back.
In short, service was slack and slow; when I tried to pay on an American Express card, the waitress was rude and offhand in explaining that they no longer accepted it as payment as «it costs them too much in merchant fees» — thats a nice customer service touch, I think. I when I said that I did not know that this had changed, she said that it had been announced on their website that week. Nice. How many of you check with restaurants to ensure that they still accept the payment method that you used there previously?!?
I’m sure that many of you will not experience the terrible service that I did… so…good luck… enjoy, because the food is great here.

Ping Pong in Notting Hill is a trendy dim sum restaurant serving authentic Chinese dishes. The interior looks more like a trendy bar than a dim sum restaurant and teh décor certainly reflects the quality of food.
The set menu is great for the indecisive eater and is really great value at £11.50 and their ‘Lazy Sundays’ offer unlimited dim sum for only £17.50. If you have never tried dim sum (where have you been???) you will not be disappointed. There really is something for everyone’s tastes.
Ping Pong is a great place to catch up with friends and enjoy some great dim sum in a stylish environment.