Random Letters to the Public

So okay, you caught me, I'm posting another food review that is not cupcake based. But I do not hang my head in shame! Hey! So I live my life eating a little (or mass quantities) of everything! And Ping Pong Dim Sum was down the street of my next review...a cupcakery!

Being of Cantonese decent, dim sum to me is tradition as I grew up having "yum cha" (tea drinking) on a regular basis. Dim Sum is where I witnessed my parents fight with others on who was going to pay the check.(that's really Asian) Basically, dim sum is little plates of food being wheeled about by ladies screaming out what kind of foods they have in their cart. Once you make a signal or eye contact with the cart pusher, they stop, you choose what you want and they stamp your card to mark what you stuffed your face with. The carts come around over and over again, until you are stuffed! And even then, when the cart has come around to you 4-5 times they still are trying to get you to take their food. All the carts have different food preparations: steamed, fried, cold dishes , larger family style dishes, dessert, tofu, and veggie to name a few. By far the most popular is the steamed cart carrying items such ha gou (steamed shrimp and bamboo dumpling), shu mai (pork steamed dumpling), ha cheong fun (long rice noodle with shrimp and soy sauce) and many other fun items like chicken feet and spicy tripe. (You know fear factor items that Chinese have been eating since they were able to chew!)


I went to Ping Pong Dim Sum with two people (one friend and one new acquaintance.) First off, the name Ping Pong? I sorta was skeptical with the name. This place was located in Chinatown but across from the Verizon center. So there is SOME street cred. From further review this place is a UK based restaurant that has locations in the UK. But really PING PONG? I mean okay, it is a sport, AND Chinese people are good at it. But really? Well now that we have taken medals in the past Olympics in Gymnastics, Badminton and Swimming how about that name? Maybe it is just me. Anyways, back to the food.

We ordered our drinks, the menu is full of exotic drinks with lychee, passion fruit, ginger and more. I decided to stick with the bubble tea and was not disappointed. But then again, I'm pretty much happy with any bubble tea as long as the bubbles have the right chew texture. Thumbs up. My two fellow dinners ended up with bubble teas and some fancy liquored up drinks, which were hit or miss. Overall, the food was good. The menu was sushi like - where you pick you items and mark it off on a sheet. No cute asian people wheeling carts around. Items in steamed baskets we were told come in threes or twos, in a real Chinese dim sum, food comes in four, three, two. But for ha gou, Ping Pong gave us 3 and OG dim sum gives 4. Where's my 4th piece? JERKS! My friends and I all get the seafood sampler, which is a little taste of everything on the menu. After I ordered I looked into the open kitchen where all items are handmade, happy to see one asian guy (or was it really a latino?) and a really tall white guy. Alright. SIGH. Street cred gone. The Asian person should of been there for show, you know like some of the sushi bars around here! (HA!)

The first platter was two vegetable puffs that were handmade. Inside of the puffs were sauteed veggies stuck inside puff pastry (puff pastry is NOT very asian) coated with honey and a pumpkin seed. First thoughts were, HEY! These things are uneven! (Look at the picture!) My mom would not be happy with uneven items that were the same! I mean there have been many times where I tried to help make little asian goodies and was sent packing from the table for ruining the consistency of the shape! Oy. Puffs were okay, nothing special, perhaps a touch too sweet with the honey glaze.

Next was the fried platter. This is where our server messed up, they only came out with ONE fried platter, but came out with the extra ha gou and veggie steam buns we ordered. How unfair! We eventually were given our fried platters course, and it was a distant version of the OG dim sum fried goodies. The three fried goodies that they gave us were: Crispy prawn ball (king prawn and spring onions in shredded egg pastry), vegetable spring roll, and prawn toast (prawn on toast with coriander and garlic with sesame seeds). The veggie spring roll was nothing to write home about and the crispy prawn ball had A LOT of crispy shredded things all over the place. But I have to say their shrimp toast rocked! It was definitely a fancy approach to the regularly rustic shrimp toast. But the positioning on a melba toast and the seasoning on the shrimp was delicious! Let's just say, if shrimp toast was served in traditional dim sum, it would probably be better than the OG shrimp toast! Shhhh. Don't tell my mom I said that!

Next was the steamed platter full of the best goodies that any cart pusher would fight over in the back to push. (I always imagined that all the dim sum cart pushers would want to get the cool cart and not be stuck with the fried radish cake cart...or the eggplant/asparagus cart-so there would be endless arguments on who would push the steamed cart and they would have like dim sum MXC challenges!) In this steamed box (from top to bottom, left to right): Seafood sticky rice (sticky rice with king prawns, scallop, carrots and bamboo shoots wrapped in lotus leaf), Scallop and shitake dumpling (scallop and king prawns with shitake mushroom), Ha Gau (king prawn and bamboo in white pastry), Seafood dumpling (snow crab, prawn and scallop in a carrot pastry), Chive dumpling (king prawn and chives in green chive pastry),and Coriander dumpling (king prawn and coriander in white pastry). All in all, pretty tasty-but most of these steamed goods were things that you wouldn't often find on a dim sum cart. Nice try Ping Pong Dim Sum. I wish that Dim Sum would inherit the bubble tea idea, but would mos def stick with the OG dim sum. Twice the amount of food, twice the taste (that you don't want to cover with chili sauce) and half the price. SO FYI, Ping Pong dim sum, watch out for my new restaurant I'm planning on opening next door, Hockey Hamburgers. How do ya like that?