Zing Zing

For what looks like a slick operation from the outside, the reality is that Zing Zing is appalling. The menu sounds fairly enticing, but when we went to order, several items had been discontinued. In the end I ordered a duck katsu (sounds good, right?), and my girlfriend went for thai green curry. These are by no means cheap options, either. The staff took their sweet, precious time preparing (reheating) our dishes with a studied disinterest.
We took the food home — there’s no seating at the restaurant — and the misery began in earnest. Initially, the prawn crackers were just plain bizarre. Maybe they were authentic, or organic, or in some way «food» in the traditional sense, unlike your typical prawn cracker. Unfortunately, the net result is that they called to mind refried yak hoof, when in honesty the beauty of prawn crackers is usually their Skip-​polystyrene hybridity. My main, the duck katsu, was simply worse. The duck itself was dry, tough, and tasteless. More alarming were the breaded nuggets that in fact weren’t duck at all. Squidgy, full of seeds — I concluded they were aubergine. When you don’t expect squadgy goop, and are expecting meat, this is an extremely unwelcome surprise. I have no idea whether this was actually part of the recipe, or they’d included this by mistake or as some kind of prank. Not good. The green curry was utterly devoid of any flavour, but not quite as offensive. For £8−9ish per dish, you expect a lot more.
One redeeming note. The seaweed was OK.

I ordered Zing Zing for delivery after seeing their well marketed and intriguing pamphlet menu. What a mistake… I’ve never eaten worse Chinese food. It came packaged like airplane food and tasted like it too. I will never eat from this place again.

This was the second time of trying Zing Zing. They really stand out due their great branding and I saw a few great reviews, unfortunately my own experience did not mirror what I had read. I had to wait so long for my order and it seemed the kitchen and it’s staff were in disarray. I had ordered steamed rice with my food and was told they don’t have steamed rice, they’re a chinese takeaway how can you not have steamed rice! I was given brown rice which I saw a cook scope from a plastic container, when I got home to discover it was brown rice, but what I can only describe as rice mush. It was awful and I had to throw it away. My other dish the meat was all fat so again a disappoint, this was truly the worst takeaway I’ve had. I won’t be returning, waste of money.

Wish I could have the £30 back that we spent on a takeaway from this place last night, the food was very disappointing. The disappointment began when we took the food out of the bag and saw the size of the portions. The black bean sauce didn’t even taste of black beans, the chow mein was so salty I am still drinking like a fish the next day and the kimchi dumplings didn’t really taste of anything. The salt & pepper squid was quite decent tasting, minimal portion size again though. Overall the food was really bland apart from over use of salt. It is a shame as we fell for the smart branding and were looking forward to a ‘cleaner’ version of some Chinese takeaway favourites without the «hangover» you get afterwards. Won’t be going back.

Zing Zing is a new addition to our neighbourhood.
We’re not regular takeaway eaters, but then Zing Zing doesn’t seem like your regular takeaway. We popped in to grab a menu one Sunday and everyone worked there was very friendly. The website is very slick and easy to use, and they are very vocal on twitter– offering to recommend dishes to customers based on their likes and dislikes.
We’d had one of those days… It rained all day, work was hard, hair was frizzy, queues at Sainsbury’s were too much… Takeaway and a glass of wine were the only answer.
We ordered, they said 40 minutes, it was actually less than 20.
You can get standard Chinese takeaway fayre, but they’ve also got some more inventive dishes. We ordered prawn and pine nut wraps to start. I’m not sure how traditional pine nuts are in Chinese cooking, and I’m not convinced this dish fully worked, but the idea, and the execution were good. Sliced king prawns, baby corn, peppers and baby courgettes were combined with toasted pine nuts in a light soy dressing. Crisp leaves of Little Gem lettuce were packaged up with hoisin sauce so we could make the wraps ourselves. The end result was light, and refreshing.
We shared a a quarter crispy duck along with six pancakes. Crispy duck is pretty much the bench mark for us, and this raised the bar! The duck was crisp and not greasy or fatty and came still on the bone, to be shredded by us, and means it was still very hot when it arrived. We could have done with more cucumber and spring onion, but the overall dish was excellent.
We were intrigued by everything on the seafood menu, especially as so often all you are offered is king prawn or scallop. We were very tempted by chilli sea bass but in the end we went for for the squid in caramelised soy. This was excellent, brilliantly cooked, with real bite and exactly the right texture.
Edamame fried rice was a nice accompaniment, and the spicy crackers were really addictive. Our whole meal cost around £20, and was more than enough for two.
Food was fresh, tasty, without MSG and didn’t feel overly guilt inducing. Welcome to Finsbury Park Zing Zing, you could be dangerous for the bank balance.