Ping Pong

I love leftovers but I didn’t even take my pad thai because it was so disgusting. And the service was so slow. And I know it doesn’t matter that much, but the décor also throws me off. Don’t go…

Drinks are great. However, the service is HORRIBLE! The wait time for our food was ridiculous. The food was over rated and over priced.
Only reason they got one star is because of the drink and I am not able to give it a 0.

Ok Chinese food with exorbitant prices. You can get the same thing at other places for half the cost. Nice atmosphere and delicious pear martinis though.

I really liked this place! Came on a Friday night around 10pm and was told it would be a 20 min wait. Grabbed a drink at the bar and then we were seated right away less than 5 min later. The cucumber sake-​rita was great and all of the food we got was delicious. Décor is super cute and I really liked the open-​ness of the sa. I would definitely come back!

Service was good, ambience is nice but the food was not great. Probably one of the most disappointing asian foods I have ever had. Their menu is relatively large & a bit pricey compared to other spots.
I ordered the shanghai lo mein, the noodles were thin like spaghetti noodles & was a bit salty. The beef I had was a bit tough to chew as well.
My friend had the spicy seafood ramen, the noodles for that was bland.
Second friend had the pad thai which was extra sweet.
The complementary chocolate & sprinkle covered fortune cookie was a bit unique but the taste was just average.
If it was not opened until midnight, we would have probably not gone.

I came here with my boyfriend and we had a very nice meal accompanied with good wine! The atmosphere at night was perfect and romantic for our first time out. I loved every minute of it. Thank you for the wonderful experience!

My friend and I were in tonight and although the food was good, the service was horrible. We had to ask several time for the server as whoever was assigned to us was inattentive. I know the owner so will have to address this with Henry when I see him. Other tables across from us were experiencing the same thing. I have waited tables before and this was way out of line. Unsure if we will be back again or recommend. Get it together people!

They offer plenty of dishes and food was good. Staff are super friendly and attentive. I enjoyed it very much.

Great ambiance, it feels like 19^th century Saigon with cool furniture, decorations and always fun music. We enjoy drinking the Lychee Martini because it is simply delicious and the best drink on the menu. You must try this. Every dish on the menu we got was scrumptious; pan fried dumplings, ping pong roll, green shrimp curry. The Chinese broccoli was just ok, nothing earth shattering. Every time we go here, the crowd is bubbly and friendly. The servers are always nice and attentive to your needs. So, that’s all for, until next time.

Ping pong has extremely vibrant colored food and their sweet and sour chicken was bright orange, had tomatoes and flowers (yes actual edible flowers) in it — I’ve never had this kind of sweet and sour chicken before. Their crab Rangoon had a plum sauce, and it was the color of a plum like bright purple. The chicken lo mein was decent and the ping pong sushi was good and came with a cute little travel soy sauce bottle. Overall, I’d like to dine-​into this restaurant since it was delivery.

Fantastic staff. Delicious food. Quaint atmosphere. The only thing that would improve my rating is if they took reservations.
Detailed food notes: the crab rangoon sauce was amazing. The entrees may be large enough to share — my friend and I both had a lot of leftovers — wish we had known ahead of time!

Good… but not great! This is the first time that we had the pleasure to enjoy a meal at Ping Pong on Broadway in the Lakeview area. I love hot and sour soup and I hold Chinese/​Japanese restaurants to a high standard based their hot and sour soup. I would say they passed my test. Would it be something that I would get it again and again in subsequent visit? That still remains to be seen, as it could be better.
I had the Mongolian Steak dish, which was good, but again, not great. There was a yellow type vegetable in the dish which was not to my liking, but I ate around it. I have had Mongolian Steak/​Beef at other establishments, and as I recognize there is a variation to recipes, from restaurant to restaurant, this is something that I found not to my liking, but it did not kill the dish itself.
My partner had the Beef Pad See Ew, and it was OK. He said that he has had better at other establishments (i.e. Joy’s Noodles down the road from Ping Pong). Nothing special here.
The service is good, and they are very inviting. The décor is very green all over, and the lighting is very dark. At the tables, they do put out real candles, but given how small most of the tables are, it is asking for trouble. A delicate wine glass or two at a small four top, surrounding a lit candle spells disaster, that if there is an accident, can get out of hand real fast. Not recommended…
As a nice touch, they do provide diners with a postcard to send to family and friends, which you can fill out and they will send to the recipient of your choice, already stamped.
Great service, so-​so food, with a hint of blazing adventure… be careful of the candles!!!

I decided to try this place again and I’ve gotta drop it to 1. The food was similar to last time, slightly below average and too expensive.
However, their service totally blew it. I ordered delivery and they gave me the wrong order. Their response to this was no credit or refund, but they would send the correct food but only if I returned the other food. So either they were going to send that food to someone else which is gross, they like wasting food, or they are just extremely petty.
Avoid this place.

Waiting for my dining partners to arrive, I was not expecting much. The hostess was very curt, and looking down at her wait list to see myself described as «big heavy guy» was not the way I wanted to start dinner.
My experience markedly improved when we sat down. All dishes were tasty — I particularly liked the crab rangoon, chicken skewers, and the Singapore Noodles. The pan-​Asian menu was fun to order from, and while I only had one drink it was extremely well made.

I ordered orange chicken, Panang soup and crab rangoons. The orange chicken was okay but the crab rangoons were undercooked and served with a cranberry sauce as opposed to sweet and sour. They weren’t very good. The Panang soup was mostly broth and hardly any vegetables or noodles.
WORST of all, I found a hair in my orange chicken after I had been close to finishing all of it.

One of our favorite places in Chicago. The chip starters are perfectly crispy, salty and free! Great wine selection! The hot and sour soup is one of the best I’ve ever had! And the appetizers are all amazing and numerous! My favorite is the Thai basil chicken! My partner likes the spicy seafood fare. And it is well priced, large portions and extremely friendly staff! You must visit this spot!

Overall: Some of the best Asian food I’ve had in a while, and definitely the best in the area. Will definitely be returning!
The good: Fantastic, authentic, delicious food. The shumai was amazing, and the entrees were great. The drinks looked fantastic as well. The décor and environment is very cool and romantic in a way. The service is very friendly and the music was fitting. Tons and tons of menu options.
The bad: At times the service was slow to respond, and the food took quite a while to come out. Also, at times, it was a little TOO dark.
Atmosphere: ¹⁰⁄₁₀
Service: ⁹⁄₁₀
Food: ¹⁰⁄₁₀

One word: bugs. I ordered steamed veggie dumplings and lo mein for delivery, and there were dead little bugs on the dumplings. I was so disgusted that I couldn’t eat the food. I called the restaurant and they wouldn’t refund me for the whole meal, just for the cost of the dumplings.
Also, as someone who loves dumplings, I have to say these didn’t look to be anything special to warrant the $ 9 cost. These were your average $ 4 – 5 dumplings.
I will have nightmares about this. See the photo I uploaded to have your own nightmares (can’t miss it — it’s the dumplings with the dead bugs on it).

I usually think of ping pong as a game that is played in a basement rec room, complete with bright fluorescent lights and a lot of noise. And me being humiliated by those who grew up with said ping pong table: the haves paddling the have nots.
On the first point, Ping Pong is the exact opposite of a rec room. Enter the door from a rag tag stretch of Broadway into a sultry, pleasure den with candles lighting a spacious layout of tables with cloth napkins and non-​disposable chopsticks. Four of us shared a table for six, wide enough to seat a mom at one end and a pop at the other, without their place settings encroaching on the others.
For drinks, we whet our whistles with both ginger and lychee martinis, each consumed with pleasure. The price point was high, though the pour was commensurate. We then added solid food for our palates, starting with tuna tartare, a thick layer of tuna on a thick layer of avocado: we rated it four tongues up. I like to think of this combination as being classy and tasteful, like a Fred and Ginger dance of flavor. Actually, make that Fred and Audrey, with Ginger and Wasabi on the side. We also had the sweet potato maki, an excellent rendition at that.
For entrees, we shared ginger chicken, coconut curry with shrimp, and Singapore noodles. Each dish was good, but the curry really shined. Three of us had brown rice, and one had quinoa, that came in a surprisingly small portion. While we passed on dessert, chocolate-​covered fortune cookies were welcomed, though the fortunes were quite lame. (Mine said, and I paraphrase, «You will go to a social occasion.» Really? I think it’s happening right now!)
One miss for the restaurant: it’s too loud. It was hard for us to hear each other (granted the table was wider than those in most restaurants), primarily because it is such a «live» room, with wooden floors and a tin (?) ceiling and nothing to dampen the ping pong of noise throughout the place. Candlelight and loud mouths don’t mix. But the taste of the food made up for it; no bad dishes humiliated our mouths.

You have to order their hot and sour soup! This is my 5^th time in ping pong and I recommend this soup to all my friends I took here. They all loved it. It just taste better than other hot n sour soups I had.
I tried the spicy scallops this time and it was okay. I would go with the sesame scallops if you level of tolerance for hot food is not too high :)
It’s wine byob but does charge $ 8 fee for it.
The restroom is pretty interesting haha. And always, very chic ambience in there.