Ping Pong – London
3, St Katharine’s Way, St Katharine’s & Wapping, London E1W 1BA
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I know. I also try and avoid eating at chain restaurants at all costs. The food is usually not great, (they buy the majority of the products already pre-cooked, so the TLC element you get when someone who loves cooking has made a dish is just not there), the service tends to be whack (the jobs are mainly filled with temp staff that will try and get out of there as soon as they can), and that standard they-are-all-the-same soulless decoration gives me shivers (they want to make us feel we are in a cosy cool-vibes restaurant, but it’s really more fake than Doritos cheese), not to mention the quality of the food, if we can call it that.
But a few weeks ago I found myself dining at a chain food restaurant in London that wasn’t all that bad.
It’s the Ping Pong Restaurant in St Katharine Docks. Now St Katharine Docks is lovely itself, especially on a summer evening, with all the lights from the boats and noises of the water lapping at the pier. I love to go to there sometimes to escape to an oasis of calm in The City.
The restaurant was full so we had to wait at the bar, where a very nice and chatty barman made us some great cocktails, we opted for some classic Bloody Mary’s. Then we were rapidly seated at a table and offered more drinks while ordering our food. This is the drill at Ping Pong, you are given a sheet with all the dishes and you just mark the ones you want with a pencil.
The service is very quick, an that’s something I really appreciate. I hate those restaurants that keep me waiting for hours for no reason. Considering time is way more valuable than money, the waiting element can make a dinner very expensive.
The food is certainly tasty, but this is no surprise as you are flooded with all sorts of sauces that would make chicken from Tesco finger-lickin’ good.
Price wise, Ping Pong is really affordable and you can have a quick dinner with drinks for around 20 quid each, which makes it a good option to stop by if you’re visiting town and don’t want to spend to much money or to grab a bite with a friend on a school night.
