Restaurant experiment: Ping’s Restaurant

Ping’s Restaurant

22 Mott Street between Chatham Square and Mosco Street

New York, NY 10013

212-602-9988

Many months ago, I asked AmyC for dim sum places that she would recommend, and Ping’s was at the tip of her tongue.  I stored that important bit of knowledge in the back of my brain and waited for the appropriate time to whip that out.

The time came, as I insisted the parentals have dim sum with myself.  It was around 11:30 and already Ping’s was filling up.  By noon, there was nary a seat in the smallish house.  What I wasn’t too fond of was sharing a nine-seater circular table with complete strangers.  Awkward.

Pressing on, the dim sum was perfectly tasty so that compensated.  Since space is a premium, the servers at Ping’s mostly carry around the small plates on trays.  What was handy is the hardcover menu which has glorious pictures of dim sum foods along with the names in English and in Chinese.  Wish I could have swiped a copy since I am terrible with the names.  So you can get the big names from the trays or request the lesser wanted things from your waiter or waitress.  Nice!  This was how I got steamed pork buns.  They were smaller than I was used to and a little sweet almost.  Oh well.  And this was how I obtained my favorite slippery rice noodle with shrimp.  I didn’t get how you had to order this since every since party at our shared table ordered this.

As for the food that came out, shrimp shumai and veggie shumai were great.  Greens with garlic, yum.   That was the bulk of the food.  And then to exit, we had to do battle with the masses waiting to be seated, usually a reassuring sign.