Ping Pong Dim Sum

Last night my friend Sperry and I had a long overdue roomie night. We put on our Friday night best and went out for dinner to eat good food, have a few drinks and just catch up.

While Sperry was on her way to work she was reading Express Night Out and texted me to let me know that Ping Pong Dim Sum was voted best new restaurant so we decided that would be a great place for us to try – plus I was craving asian food so this was perfect.

We arrived at 7:30 and just had to wait a few minutes for our table to be cleared. The fact that this place takes reservations is good since it was packed! I was impressed with how many people the restaurant holds and I thought the interior was nice - high top tables and backless chairs in the bar, it wasn’t too dark and it was bustling. We grabbed a drink at the bar and as soon as we paid, our table was ready so we sat down and started to browse the menu.

Our table was right by a window and it was absolutely freezing, so I was a little disappointed with that but I hoped the food would warm me up. As for drinks, they were delicious. I started with a glass of white wine – the drink menu is very very innovative and I wanted to try whatever Sperry got so I could try it first before ordering. By far the best drink that we had all night was the lemon grass and lime which was made with Jewel of Russia vodka, fresh lemongrass and lime and lychee juice.

As we went through the menu we wanted to try at least one thing from every category: baked, fried, steamed, sticky rice, vegetable, griddled and signature dishes (we didn’t get any soup or salad but those were on the menu too).

We ordered:

Overall the food was good, but to be honest I was not super impressed. Everything had good flavor and it was a lot of fun to try and compare each dish. My favorite was by far the spicy basil dumplings. The basil added an interesting flavor twist to the dish. The bun was also tasty and the texture of the bun was something that I had never experienced before.

One thing that did bother me though was that when the food was delivered they took away the covers for the dishes and since we were at such a cold table the food got cold pretty quickly.

All in all, the drinks were decent (if you ordered the right one) and the food was good, but I can’t guarantee that I would put this at the top of my list of places to go back to.