London Food Detective

Chinese New Year at Ping Pong

Chinese New Year began on the 3rd February this year and I was invited along to Ping Pong to sample some of their special dishes and drinks to celebrate the year of the rabbit. 

Ping Pong is a bit of a favourite of mine and Grace's and we often take friends and family if they are visiting and have also held a couple of work outings there.  It's package of decent dim sum, good drinks list, quick service and well designed restaurants is a winner for me.

Anyway, we started off with some of the Chinese New Year specials before Khin, Ping Pong's development chef, ordered us a selection from the main menu to sample.  I'll pick out some of my highlights from the evening.  See if you can spot Ping Pong's PR photos v my phone ones... ;)

Chinese shitake mushroom & chicken hotpot

My favourite of the specials was this hotpot.  The slow cooked chicken and the mushrooms both soaked up all the flavour from the cooking juices and were delicious.

Celery dumpling in pumpkin pastry and Seabass dumpling in red cabbage pastry

As well as being aesthetically pleasing, the seabass was also very good with a generous chunk of seabass being surrounded by bits of water chestnut and prawn.  As a bit of a soy sauce addict I added a generous splash on it which I thought went well with the seabass.

Char Sui buns remain a favourite.

From previous visits I knew the duck spring rolls (like a deep fried duck pancake) with hoisin sauce and the sweet and sticky char sui buns with honey roast barbequed pork were both favourites and I was pleased when Keith had included these in his order.  Both lived up to expectations.

Vietnamese rice paper prawn roll

Out of dishes that I hadn't previously tried then two stood out.

The green chive dumplings with king prawn.  They were a lurid green colour, but you could really taste the chive in the pastry and they were completely different to anything else we had.

I also enjoyed the Vietnamese prawn rolls, which you wrapped in a lettuce leaf and a sprig of mint.  

My only disappointment was the prawn toast.  It used to be a favourite, but a couple of visits ago they changed the recipe and I don't think it's as good as previous.

Pear and Elderflower Collins

Another big plus point of Ping Pong is the drinks list.  They have one of the best range of non-alcoholic drinks I've seen and the cocktail menu is excellent.

We were given a couple of the special Pear and Elderflower Collins to kick start the evening before I moved on to my favourite Lemongrass and Lime.

Overall Ping Pong remains a guilty pleasure and one that I'll continue to go back to.

I'll be honest and say that I haven't visited any of the top London dim-sum places like Royal China or Yautacha (and I'd like to go and compare), but in a dozen or so visits to Ping Pong I haven't had a complaint and the people I have taken along have always enjoyed it.

 

Shanghai Blues is no express

My parents were visiting for the weekend and I wanted to take them somewhere a bit different.  We were going to the late comedy show at Leicester Square Theatre, so I wanted somewhere with food and some music. My dad is a bit of a blues fan and my parents both like Chinese, so Shanghai Blues in Holborn seemed to fit the bill.

On Saturday nights they have live music and despite the mixed reviews I’d read, I thought I’d go and check it out.The venue itself is quite dark and stylish and seems to be modelled on Hakkasan. Overall the food was ok (though pricey), but was let down by some really slow and poor service.

After a bit of deliberating over the menu and what to have we ordered a selection of starters to share and then a couple of main courses and some rice and noodles.

Sesame Prawn Toasts & Butterfly Prawns

The first two starters arrived fairly quickly. Prawn toast was ok, with each piece being a fair sized individual prawn on a small piece of crisp toast. A bit different from the usual way it's served and a step above your average Chinese restaurant version.  The butterfly prawns were also pretty reasonable. Crisp pastry and good, succulent prawns.

It was here that the problems started with the service. I know there is often a wait between dishes and you get them when they are ready, but we waited over 15 minutes for the third starter to arrive.

Spare Ribs

These were actually some pretty good ribs. There was plenty of meat on them and it was tasty and tender and the accompanying sauce was tangy, with a hint of pepper and not overly sweet or gloopy.

The final starter then arrived another 10-15 minutes after we’d finished the ribs!

Once the starters were finished we then waited 20 or so minutes for our plates to be cleared and to make things worse they managed to spill some of the sauce over Grace.  Luckily most of it landed on her napkin.

We then had another 10 minute wait for our half crispy duck to appear. This was pretty standard, nothing bad about it, but nothing particularly memorable either. In the meantime (and after another 15 minute wait) we had to ask where our drinks order was. 

This duly turned up with an apology and to be fair to the staff they were friendly and chatty throughout, it’s just that they weren’t actually that good at the waiting side of things!

Our final wait was for our main courses and the clock was starting to tick as we had to make it to the theatre and I was winding my mam up that we were going to be late and the comedian was likely to pick on us.

Singapore Noodles & Shanghai devil lamb

Anyway, the rice and noodles arrived pretty sharpish after we’d finished the duck, but sadly the main courses did not. We were just about to send them back when the first dish arrived, followed, in Shanghai Blues time, relatively quickly by the second dish. Sadly the third dish made it on to our bill, but not to our table.

Salted Chicken Fillets with Ginger & Spring Onion wrapped in Lotus Wrap

As for the food, well actually both main dishes were good and a little bit different from standard Chinese fare. The lamb was a definite favourite. Tender pieces of lamb in a moreish sauce (with a good kick to it) and plenty of sweet peppers. 

The salted chicken was also good with a subtle hint of ginger.  The chicken had steamed in the lotus wrap and so hadn't dried out or taken too much flavour from the salt.

So overall, whilst the food was ok it was disappointing that it took nearly two hours from arriving to receiving our main courses, one of which never arrived.  This meant that we had to rush eating them and had no time for coffee etc. 

The other disappointment was the music (or lack of it) - I hadn't requested a table in the area where the blues band were on and so we were seated in a back room and couldn't hear them. It would have been nice to have been told this at the time of booking.

Cocoon, Regent Street

Twitter Review:

Style over substance Asian restaurant.  Expensive with average service, average food, even design starting to fray at edges.

Full review:

It was a special occasion.  My girlfriend's mate had been to one of the Queen's garden parties at Buckingham Palace (it was cold, wet and they didn't get within 20 yards of the Queen, but never mind...) and wanted to go out and celebrate the occasion.

We decided on Cocoon on Regent Street after really enjoying their food at the Taste of London festival in May.  It's a long, dark, stylish bar with huge green chairs, rose petal tables and a number of sushi stations and plenty of bling. 

The menu is quite eclectic with a mix of sushi, dim sum and mains with a Thai, Chinese and Japanese flavour.

Service was slow from the start.

20 minutes to order a drink. 

Another 10 for them to arrive and take our food order.

A further half an hour for the first starters to appear,which were a fairly average bunch of dishes and no better than anything you'd get in Chinatown (but were twice the price).

The crispy aromatic duck rolls were more veg than duck and weren't any better than you could get from M&S.

Their take on prawn toast was an unusual prawn ball covered in sesame seeds, which was trying too hard to be clever and just didn't work.

Tempura sweet potato and baby corn was good and came with a sticky orange sauce and to be fair the crab cakes were very good - plenty of well spiced succulent crab meat, although not much in the way of accompanying chilli jam.

The lowlight though was salt and pepper squid. It was badly overcooked, with tiny, rubbery pieces of squid which was overwhelmed by the tempura.

I'm going to pause here to rant about the service.  I've already mentioned they were slow, but they were also trying to be overly fancy.  For example, they kindly took away our wine to keep chilled, but then failed to top it up when our glasses were empty (we had to ask twice) and then shoddily poured the wine and dripped it over the table.  To be fair though, one of our waitresses was quite friendly and smiled her way through her incompetence.

I wish i'd taken my camera with me to show their idea of rare lamb.  I would normally have sent it back, but it was one of those awkward situations when you're out with people you don't really know (and to be fair they were really enjoying the food) and you don't want to appear fussy and show up the missus!

The best thing anyone had all night was the beef redang, which came with roti bread and chutney.  The beef just melted in the mouth.

Desserts were ok (though again we had to wait a while to order), though not particularly Asian. I had a suitably gooey centred chocolate fondant.  A yogurt cake was lovely, with a soft centre and mango sorbet and the pistachio creme brulee was well received.

My main problem with Cocoon came with the bill.  The quality of food just didn't justify the £75 per head cost. It was no better than you'd get in China Town or somewhere like Ping Pong, both of which would've been less than half the price. 

Alternatively, for a bit more we could have gone to the amazing Hakkasan (stylish and great food) or Yauatcha.  Even the stylish interior was starting to look a little past it's best.  The chairs were starting to fray and the walls were scuffed, which is always the problem with places where the style comes before the food.  When the style starts wane, then the compelling reason to go there diminishes.

Don't get me wrong, we had a good evening, but Cocoon just doesn't deliver the 'wow' factor it promises and its prices demand.