Ping Pong has really put the art of eating dim sum on the map in an easy, informal and satisfying way. This is fun food to be enjoyed at any time.

The Venue
After just two years Ping Pong has seven branches around London and has proven to be a good idea, serving different types of dim sum simply and without all the fuss that the restaurants of Chinatown can often impart. The Marylebone branch is a corner site, a long thin room in the signature, elegant, all-black design, with some tables and chairs outside for summer dining. Inside there’s a long bar and assorted well-spaced tables, both square and round for larger parties, for which dim sum is ideally suited, as you can choose many dishes and all enjoy a taste of everything that’s going. It’s an informal pick-and-mix style of eating that gets people talking and thus generates good will.

The Atmosphere
The staff are very friendly and this attitude seems to transfer to the diners who are well-mannered and polite. It all seems very civilised and an ideal way of passing the time for either a speedy lunch or a leisurely dinner. The fact that the food is also exceptional is a real bonus.

The Food
These little steamed parcels of deliciousness, as Ping Pong likes to call their dishes, are made from translucent rice or wheat starch skin like a soft, squidgy pastry. All the baked, steamed or fried dim sum are under £3.00 a portion which is several separate pieces for sharing. The set menus (around £10.00 - £12.00) include seafood, vegetarian and mixed items. They begin with a choice of pastry puffs, hot and freshly made from the lightest of light pastry with fillings including delicious pork and onions, chicken and pineapple or vegetables in a sweet honey sauce. The seafood menu has a selection of dumplings with king prawns and coriander, snow crabs, prawns and scallops, king prawns, chives and har gau (king prawns and bamboo shoots). All bring the flavours of the sea to brilliant life in these tasty morsels, with fresh pieces of seafood delicately flavoured and enrobed in the chewy pastry parcels, making dim sum a welcome change from regular Chinese food.

The vegetarian menu also has good combinations of dumplings, including spinach and mushroom well seasoned with ginger and garlic, spicy vegetables with rice vermicelli intensely flavoured with chilli and garlic, sauteed vegetables in a translucent crystal pastry, and vegetable buns with piquant barbecue sauce. To vary the dumpling diet, the fried dishes are also worth tasting. Aromatic duck with tender slivers of the duck meat blended with crisp shreds of cucumber and spring onion are served with a hoi sin fruit sauce to make for really tempting mouthfuls. The very appetizing Vietnamese spring rolls, filled with prawns, noodles and vegetables wrapped in rice paper, are deep-fried to a crisp and served with a piquant chilli fish sauce. Whatever you order, it comes up piping hot and beautifully presented in wicker baskets in which the food is also steamed. For dessert the cool mango pudding and the toothsome chocolate buns (they look like snowballs filled with chocolate sauce) will stop any further gaps in your appetite.

The Drink
The jasmine tea really is de rigueur at Ping Pong; a jasmine flower is immersed in a glass of hot water where it blossoms into live, providing the flavour to the tea. There’s also a good range of cocktails – try the strawberry and vanilla iced tea with or without the rum. With the lemonade comes a glass of raspberry, strawberry, mango or peach syrup to give it a kick. Wine is from around £3.50 a glass and from about £13.50 a bottle, plus there are all the usual beers, sake, spirits and soft drinks.

The Last Word
Ping Pong beats any other sort of fast food outlet into the ground. This is fun dining with really good and interesting cuisine, well presented with civility and charm.

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