QYPE*

We were all sat in the Nelly Dean pub on a Friday night, on roughly our fourth and fifth drink, all wondering where we could take our Mancunian visitors for some good food where it wouldn't be ludicrously expensive or stuffy and not too crowded.

We were completely stuck, even ringing around places for non-existent reservations...until someone suggested Ping Pong.

This place used to be a pub called The Cambridge. they served burgers, chips, ham, egg and beans and showed the football on a big screen. So it was quite a surprise for me to walk past one day and see it turned into a slightly trendy dim sum place.

Ping Pong has a daft name and they are becoming a little ubiquitous across London (someone mentioned there were 12 of them in the capital now?!) but I can forgive them because the concept is just great.

We strolled in there on a Friday night, six of us all starving and half-cut and we were immediately shown to a huge round table in the middle of the restaurant, and for th enext two hours we managed to demolish their (excellent) cocktail list (mmm Mojitos!), and sample pretty much everything on the menu.

Delicious parcels of loveliness (I think) is their tagline and that's right. Everything was ultra-tasty, well presented and well-cooked and the amounts were just right for us all to have slight trouble standing up at the end fo the night but no 'curry house bloated' feeling at all.

And the jasmine tea with the flowering seed... worth the visit alone!