Ping Pong Dim Sum - 7th Street

Pretty good dim sum, Baozi and xiaolongbao. really pricey though for what you get. I’ve had all the same stuff all over China and it’s decent quality

Had an assortment of delightful dim sum, just the service was a bit on the slow slide

We had a wonderful server the last time we were here. This is probably the better of the two, but at the same time the food was very good, but not great. Nothing was terribly memorable though and left hungry, even with a large number of items ordered. The drinks are where this restaurant shines though, I would go here just for the bar. The place is usually packed and noisy, easily one of the more popular places in DC.

Staff is attentive and service is efficient. This is not your typical Dim Sum since you will see some of the traditional dishes with an upscale twist. Try any of their cocktails and you won't be disappointed. My only complaint is that the AC was not working and it was hot when we visited.

The brunch was amazing. We ordered way too much food and had to bring home a lot. Secret: To reheat dim sum place in a microwave safe glass bowl, add 1 tbsp of water, add dim sum, place a plastic lid lightly over it, and microwave for 45 secs. Make sure it is heated to your liking!!!

We ate at Ping Pong at 2:45 pm for a late lunch (after arriving late to the city), so the restaurant was pretty empty. This meant good service. The dishes we selected were all delicious, but the portions seemed rather small (even for dim sum), especially given the price ($7-16 each dish). For example, we got a shrimp dish that was $14 and only had 6 shrimp

The 'signature dishes', such as the chicken and beef dishes, should really come with rice. Also, the chicken wasn't cut up very well, it's hard to eat what's essentially a chicken finger with chopsticks. Great food, but the service leaves something to be desired. Decent atmosphere!

A Dim Sum place with a twist. Not your traditional dim sum. They tried to make dim sum gourmet, but it kinda didn't work out that well. The food taste good, but gourmet part failed me.

Service was mediocre. I was waited on by 4 different people. They did not communicate well with me or each other. Food was good, but nothing special. There are other places in Chinatown to eat dumplings of the same quality for less money.

Strangely Disappointed - This really saddens me to have to write this review. I have been a long time devoted customer of Ping Pongs since they opened; I have also personally recommended this place to close friends and family that have in turn become loyal customers themselves. Recently there have been some serious personnel changes at the Chinatown location that are impacting service and the flavor of their amazing drinks. I believe the drink problems started with Berto and then Shera's departure from behind the bar. I'm assuming that the service issues are because all the best people migrated over to the DuPont location. I took two large groups over to the Restaurant in early February. On the first trip the waiter got the orders all mixed up and was basically nonexistent during our two hour stay. Because of his lack of table presence Ping Pong probably lost $100 in additional drink orders. On my second trip the pudgy waitress in the bar area actually got sassy (verbal/non-verbal) with us when we asked what was taking so long with our order...what's with that?!?!?! In closing, the food is still very good, the ambiance is exceptional, and it's in a great location...but the service is crashing. I can't see spending this much money for poor service. Stay tuned for my report on the DuPont location, I'm crossing my fingers...I miss my favorite DC restaurant! - Cozmo

This place is going down hill and maybe on its way out. We love dim sum and have been eating it for about 40 years now all over the world. Ping Pong was a reasonably good dim sum place in DC but I guess the formula has not worked in DC as the DuPont branch has closed. The food in the Chinatown branch was awful last week. The sticky rice was overcooked while the dumplings were thick and undercooked. The lunch choice was very limited. If you are in that neighborhood and feel an urge for dim sum do go. Bit If you want real and good dim sum I would not anymore. Sad.

I enjoy ping pong. The service is always good and it has a great atmosphere. As far as dim sum, it's pretty standard. Their steamed dumplings are good, but nothing on the menu really screams out for high recommendations. I just note, however, that their drinks are great. They have some pretty interesting cocktails that go well with all of their dishes.

I dine alone a lot so I like to sit at the bar so at least there is someone there to converse with. Today the restaurant is mostly empty and no one at the bar. The hostess had to go find the bartender who had about as much personality and interest in me as her bar towel. Don't get me wrong, she did recommend a cocktail when I asked and did check on me twice but that's about it. As I sit here right now, I'm still waiting for her to make an appearance so that I can get my check. Despite the obvious service issues, the food was delicious. I can specifI call for the Char Sui steamed buns but they were out. I got the veggie ones instead along with some dumplings and I am happy. Next time I'll get a table.

Had dinner here Friday before a concert. Waitress barely stopped by, did not ask how things were at any point during the meal, rang in wrong item. Out of deviled eggs. Staff brought wrong item (which I am allergic to...), refused to believe we did not order that, waitress was annoyed we asked for correct plate. She also neglected to remove the wrong item from the bill before presenting, despite blaming the kitchen for her wrong ring in. There were fruit flies (at least 4-5) landing on our meal throughout. That said, the pork buns and pork sliders are delicious. So, there's that!

Great food and drink. Piss poor service. I went on a Tuesday night when I suppose it was expected to be quiet but in actual fact there were about 10 tables occupied including 2 large groups...but only two waiters + one server on duty! Clearly they were understaffed the night I was here and it showed in the slow and error-prone service. The few staff on duty spent most of the night running around like headless chickens, they tried their best but really the blame must lie with management in under-staffing the joint. In my case, the main problem was around a side of sticky white rice I had originally ordered to come with my first course of dim sum. It actually showed up at about 10 minutes after I had finished the dim sum. I was intending to order more dim sum so I asked the waiter if he could take it back and just keep it warm until my next course came, he actually offered to just give me a fresh one during the next course which was appreciated. Unfortunately the rice never came back, I got the rest of my 2nd course as ordered but the rice never materialized. In the end, I didn't even have to tell the waiter to take it off the bill, he did it virtually automatically so again I do not blame him for the overall bad service, he was clearly under a lot of pressure. Also I heard the table next to me which was a large group of girls complaining as well so clearly I was not the only one having issues that night. This place really needs to get their act together. Ping Pong is a widely recognized chain now and is considered fairly upscale so the service needs to match the amazing food (and cocktails!) on offer here.

I was very disappointed. The food was bland.The service was generally prompt but there was a slight tone of condescension I normally adore Dim Sum but I only ate these because I was hungry. I can't recall all the dumplings I ordered but it was part of a special and many were supposed to be favorites. One that was especially bad was supposed to be chive flavored it looked green but didn't taste like much more than butter and water. All the dishes were bland except a scallop that had mild heat but no depth. The texture was limp and watery. I was so excited to try this place but I'm never returning.

If you like good Dim Sum don't go here...I would describe the food as clumsy. Doughs were too thick and portion sizes were confusingly inconsitent. Also, way too much of the food is fried, especially on the happy hour menu. Service was also slow even though they were not that busy.

Really pricey and decent dim sum style dishes at best. Their dumplings aren't all that great for the price, not to mention that the flavors are more of a fusion of a couple of cuisines that don't really belong together. Great cocktails though.

Food was tasty (soup filled dumplings were delicious) but service was terrible! Long wait for drinks, food came out incorrectly, staff mispronounced many of the items on the menu making it very confusing. The manager was the worst part of our experience - he was rude to our group from the start and rude to his staff in front of guests. This place has a terrible atmosphere, will never come back.

The swanky interior doesn't make up for the unfortunate combination of small portions and high prices. Water glasses on the table were already dirty. Hot tea was served in large glasses that were nearly unusable until the tea had all but cooled to room temperature. A third of the dumplings on the menu were unavailable and the spicy vegetable ones were flavorless, while the chicken and green tea ones were over-steamed. Char sui buns were too salty and mostly bread. I felt bad for the wait staff who appeared to be stretched thin by scheduling. As a small consolation, our server removed the teas from our bill without us asking. Skip the "twist" on dim sum and go somewhere else in Chinatown.

The restaurant was almost completely empty when I arrived. And despite the nice presentation of the dishes, by far my favorite item on the table was the garlic chili paste - and that might be the only thing they didn't make themselves. The garlic chili paste was essential to make any of their dishes even remotely palatable. Their soup dumplings were all broken by the time they made it to our table and the remainder of the dumplings were either over cooked or undercooked. Extremely disappointing food and absurdly over priced.

Was going to a conference in DC and usually when I go to cities I look forward to trying their Dim Sum, since it is not common where I live. My colleagues and I were excited to go to this Dim Sum place right outside of the conference and China town. We looked on open table to see if they had any reservations available and every time slot possible was open so we decided to go walk down. We get there and the restaurant was ~10% full, and we are told they cannot seat us since we do not have a reservation. We said there were reservations available on open table and decided to sign up for the next time slot. Although the place was empty ,we were force to now wait 15 minutes to get seated since we arrived a litter after 7, and our now open table reservation was at 7:15. We were seated off in the back corner where there seemed to be no waiter assigned to us. After 30 minutes, a waiter comes to our table and takes our drink orders and dim sum order. Again, there were about 8 other tables and 5 waiters on staff, plus a full kitchen crew. He proceeds to tell us they should've told us when we came in that all of their dim sum options are not available because they ran out (this place has dim sum in their name). We pick a few items like edamame and the few buns/spring rolls they did have. Our waiter has to come back and tell us they are out of some of the few items we ordered so we had to make further changes. We get our food very late, got the wrong order, the smallest amount of edamame that seemed old, and still no drinks. We did not even bother correcting the wrong order because 1 our waiter was inattentive, 2 most items were out, 3 we just wanted to leave this very uncomfortable dining experience. Our drinks finally came after we ate our food in disgustingly dirty glasses. At this point we are all upset. We get our over priced bill and decided to call over the manager. Neither I or my colleagues have ever had to speak to a manager before. He comes over and we proceed to tell him about our entire experience and he was unapologetic. He first suggests he takes off my drink from the bill, then says he'll take 10% off instead. I said my drink was $11 and 10% is only $8. He then says he will take off all of our drinks ($33). The bill comes back and he decided, without speaking to us first to only take off 20%, which was $15 not $33. He also criticized me for not telling them we got the wrong order. Usually, I would understand this however, our waiter never came to us, for the most part we dealt with other rude waiters, and most of their menu items were out, so it all seemed pointless. I could go on but overall by far the absolute worst dining experience I have ever had. I was looking forward to having dim sum but this was a disappointing attempt to eat some dim sum.

It was the first time ever that i had dim sum at the restraunt. I was pretty excited for it but when the server said all of best sellers were out of stock and i ordered some of it to try out. But let me say this clearly. The best menu that I had was cooked jasmine rice. I could never be suprised to cook dumpling like this sticky and the server was arrogant and ignorant. He was very rude to us. I will never recomend this to anyone. And I will never come back. O

Horrible, horrible, horrible. We were visiting DC for a work conference and had been looking into a good dim sum place for a god amount of time leading up our DC visit. Ping Pong was right across the street from our hotel. After a long day of workshops and training seminars, we decided to eat at Ping Pong. Before we got the the restaurant, we tried to make a reservation online and noticed that all the tables were free -- at that point, we figured that we would be able to get a table without a reservation, no problem. Our party of 3 arrives at Ping Pong and had to wait by the hostess's booth for about 10 minutes before we were able to ask for a table. The hostess then proceeds to tell us that they were only taking reservations and if we did not have a reservation, they would not serve us; granted, the restaurant empty and online there were several tables we could reserve. Frustrated, I actually went on my phone and made an online reservation for a party of 3 in front of the hostess. After about another 15 minutes of standing around waiting to get the hostess's attention, we told her that we have a reservation. She proceeds to seat us immediately and at a table in the back corner of an empty restaurant. It took about 30 minutes for our waiter to get to our table. Once we finally get to place our orders, he then tells us that they ran out of nearly 90% of the food items on the menu and that we can only order a few items, and even some of the drink items were unavailable. Reluctantly, we ordered what we could, waited another 30 minutes for our food and drink. Time pasted and we finally received our first food item, before our drinks. At this point my party was ready to leave but we decided to wait it out. Our food order finally came and we noticed that some of the items were incorrect, however, we could not flag down our waiter to correct the incorrect item. Luckily the wrong item was something that we enjoyed so we ate it. After a very long wait, we finally get our drinks and notice that the glasses were filthy. Hard water marks and other nasty food items were stuck to the glasses. Needless to say, our appetites were gone and so were our good moods. We asked for and received the check, which was expensive, considering the poor service and poor food. We called over the manager to complain about the dirty glasses and poor service. At first he was very apologetic but quickly began to tell us how we should have handled the situation, saying that we should have called over the waiter sooner to correct the dirty glasses and incorrect food items (but like I said, we could not find our waiter, we were being served food by other staff members). The manager did offer to take off 10% of the bill in order to compensate for the dirty glassware, but we told him that 10% would not cover the price the the drink. He tells us that he could take off 15%, then 20% and then eventually telling us that he would cover the price of the drinks. We settled for this, expecting that our drinks would now be free. When we receive the new bill, he only took off 15%, instead of taking away the drinks entirely. At this point we just wanted to leave; we paid the bill and left. The staff was very careless and absent. The manager was rude and condescending (telling us that our complaining style was wrong -- we tired to be as polite as possible). And the food quality was completely was lackluster as well. Never again will I go back to Ping Pong.

If this was my first experience, there'd be no chance I'd ever come back. They were out of most wines and several beers as well as many menu items. Some items, the waiter was aware they were out, other items he came back to tell us they couldn't make what we ordered. What we did eat was still delicious, but we didn't get what we had wanted. To finish the evening off, they said they don't validate parking anymore even though the garage still has signs stating that Ping Pong validates for 3 hours. We've had several great visits to Ping Pong in the past and were greatly disappointed this time. We're not going to be in a rush to try it again.

We walked in and we're stared at by at least three different employees and never greeted. Then someone gave us a hand signal that it would be a minute. We stood there for about ten more minutes and nothing. Then the hostess came over to us and didn't say a word, just bent over and tied her shoe, then checked something on the computer and then said she had to set up a table for us and then came back and seated us. At that point it took another five minutes for a server. Our appetizer came out with our meal. My husbands food was piping hot and mine was cold. Never got a refill on our water. Just bad all around. For rated #1 on Yelp it makes me wonder what their standards are.

I can honestly say that this is the worst food that I have had from a restaurant. They really aim for small portions and big flavors. They hit both of these notes, in a negative manner. The sauces did not pair well with the selections at all and the selections themselves were honestly terrible as well. The favorite thing that went into my mouth while I was at the restaurant was my glass of water (that constantly needed to be refilled to combat heat and bad flavors from my food) Also, they brought out fried peanuts & wasabi nuts to our table. However, we did not know that they were even wasabi, as the waiter did not tell us. Our mouths were on fire. Cool environment, but extremely overpriced and terrible tapa style Asian restaurant. I can't state how much I love food of all styles but in turn how deeply unsatisfied I was with this restaurant. Will never return or recommend to anyone. I have never done a google review, but this experience was that bad for me. Absolute 0 star rating if I could give it this score.

Wait staff was rude and condescending. Food is extremely over priced. I'm not kidding that you will pay $15 for 6 shrimp that are fried and nothing special. $7 for 3 dumplings. Also the place was empty but they sat us within arms reach of another party. Just a place to avoid.

I have been to other locations outside of dc and they were amazing, but this was such a disappointment. We kept getting the wrong tables food and did not end up getting all of our dishes. They were also out of 25% of their brunch menu items. The food here was bland and the staff seemed very flustered and scattered in a restaurant that was not even halfway full. Definitely not worth it.

Very poor quality dim sum. Far away from traditional fare! They try hard to present modern concoctions but fail miserably with a tasteless offering - the filling is crumbly with no taste of the ingredients; the steamed casing is clammy and sticky! The only item on the dim sum menu that passed the mark was char sui buns that resembled traditional style. Save your time and money!

Avoid this place! We waited about 20 minutes for some one to come by our table as they were "short staffed." We decided what we wanted to order by the time the bartender came by and told us he was "helping us out" (seriously, he told us he was doing us a favor by taking our order at a high top in the bar). When we gave him our order, he told us that we could only order from the brunch menu, which had very few items that we wanted to order...all this despite the fact they gave us a brunch menu and a regular menu. At this point, I was just pissed and we walked out. DO NOT SUPPORT THIS PLACE! PLEASE TAKE YOUR BUSINESS ELSEWHERE! We ended up walking over to Reren Lamen & Bar and had great service and wonderful food at lower prices!

Absolutely terrible. We walk inside, no hostess, no nothing. There's a massive cluster of people in front of us that haven't even had their names taken yet, we wait about 10-15 minutes before someone even takes our name down. We wait to be seated for about another 20 minutes later, which is fine, I expected that. However when we're seated and no one comes around for ANOTHER 20 minutes, no drink orders, no nothing. Finally our waitress appears to take our orders, only for us to find out that nearly half the menu is unavailable. We make do and put in our orders. Another 20 minutes pass and our drinks finally appear, and another 30 minutes after that some of our dishes appear. It's good to note that this restaurant was not busy, and more than half empty. Our waitress checked on us ONCE in the hour and a half we were here. And to add insult to injury, all of the meat dishes were mostly breading, I understand it was dumplings but I should at least taste SOME meat! The food was poor, the staff was rude, and the wait was extremely long. Do not waste your time and money at this place.

We went to Ping Pong looking forward to the Dim Sum after hearing good things. However I personally couldn't recommend this place. The dim sum is ok at best -I wouldn't go out of my way for it. We also ordered the salt and pepper shrimp, which is apparently a signature dish. If that's the case I wouldn't hold my breath for non signature dishes. However I found the service the worst part and really poor. We where attended to quickly but then it took half an hour for our drinks to arrive, which point all our food we initially ordered had come and gone! We ordered some more food but not all of it turned up. Also the staff member who brought the food from the open kitchen, when asked what was in one of the sliders, replied duck with green stuff. Good job. I couldn't recommend this place.

My colleague and I were in town attending a conference and were in need for a quick lunch as we both had meetings to attend. We should have known to turn around when the Manager was openly chastising a waiter in front of guests waiting to be seated. Our second clue should have been the sour smell that comes from unclean bar carpets - oddly enough, your establishment has hard wood floors. The final straw was the service ...horrendous, unprofessional and downright disgraceful doesn't even begin to cover it. The bartender was rude and made it very clear that she felt put upon by our mere presence. I don't get that much eye rolling from my 7 year old niece. We asked for forks and she looked at us like we were crazy and then complained because you "don't have a lot of forks" ...mind you - my colleague has received her food and I am still waiting for mine - by now it's been 30 minutes. At this point, she becomes annoyed with me because I'm annoyed with her. When my lunch FINALLY arrives after waiting 45 minutes the excuse was that the kitchen dropped them and they were making me a new order (I'm calling bull on that one). So now on to the food - it was cold, undercooked and had the texture of an oversized phlegm ball. I actually gagged when I put it in my mouth – and the bartender just stared at me. I’d also like to point out that she gave the gentleman next to me copious amounts of attitude because he wanted the all you could eat brunch. The entire experience was simply disgusting

decent food, good waiters, but very rude manager. I was given wrong information about their brunch special, and they tried to charge me all individual dishes even after they admitted giving the wrong information. Female manager continued to argue with me. The waiter who was serving me was still respectful and nice. I was able to hear the manager ranting about me and talking all nasty while i was still sitting in the restaurant. good place. good workers. bad management.

I may be a bit spoiled by Philly but this place shouldn't call itself dim sum at all. The dumplings are way too sticky and have virtually no soup in the pockets. All the food is overly salty and the drinks are way too sweet. If you've ever had REAL dim sum you will be disappointed. The food is all really pretty but the traditional dim sum experience is lost amongst the "trendy" "upscale" DC elite trying to keep up with the joneses atmosphere they're trying to portray. My advice is keep it simple and find a hole in the wall dim sum spot in the city which is super hard to come by in the DC area apparently. To add more context, I ordered the sampler platter, all the pieces were dried out and sticking to the paper and were poorly put together so they all were falling apart which made it hard to share with company which is supposed to be part of the whole experience. Pretty much a let down all around. I wish it wasn't though, because the atmosphere and service was pretty awesome unfortunately the food didn't match.

As others have commented, the food quality is good but the service is beyond abysmal. When we arrived we had to wait in line for 15 minutes to be seated since there was no one manning the front desk. Finally we were seated. But we had to wait 35 minutes to order! We had to ask questions about the menu which took time to do as well. Food came out in a reasonable time, but we were missing one item which never came. We asked for an extra menu to order more food, but that never came. Disgusted we asked for the check, put money on the table and left.

Giving them one star for the efforts of the few staff available. Otherwise it would be zero. Service was slow and inattentive. Place has declined substantially from my first visit 4 or 5 years ago. I don't think I'll be back. Food was ok... You can't find this kind of food anywhere. Managers is really slacking off here. Great place just poorly run. There is one slow and lazy host that won't help the one waitress running all over the floor by herself. One other waiting staff to bring food out and clear tables. It's a shame.

Was one of the worst dinning experiences I️ have ever had. We arrived to a mostly empty restaurant and were told we would need a reservation. We waited as we made one online for fifteen minutes later and then were seated. We waited 30 minutes to have anyone come to our table and then we’re told they were out of most items on the menu. Waited forever for food and even longer for drinks that came in dirty glasses. Ended up talking to the manager about the glass and he was defensive and offered us to 1) take the drink off our bill then took that back to 2) offer us 10% off which was less than the drink. Then 3) offered to take the 3 drinks off, after which he chastised the waiter (who was very nice) in front of us and told us , in a condescending way, we should always point out something wrong right away. After he left the waiter came back and told us he would be taking 20% off rather than the drinks. Overall shocked by the experience and never going back. Avoid this place if you can.

First time trying dim sum, ended up with food poisoning. The pricing also seems good at first glance, but that's because the portions are ant-sized and you need to keep reordering to actually fill up, so the cost eventually adds up. Spent more than $40 on lunch for two. I won't be back here again.