Rude, rushed and regrettable.
I used to love this place and have fond memories of special occasions at this restaurant too. Unfortunately, my recent visit was just awful.
Despite clearly having many vacant tables, the haughty staff made us wait only to be seated near what could only be described as a glorified alleyway of tight tables and chairs. Despite the many vacant tables, they seated us near other diners in an already tight space rendering any chat challenging due to proximity.
The food options were limited and extortionately priced compared to what I could previously remember. The cost of living crisis has pushed things up certainly, but this was not a reasonable hike. Nevertheless, we continued (having already waited and holding on to the memories of good times and good food from visits before).
We waited 10 minutes for someone to take our order (there was only two of us) and there were 3 waiting staff who were repeatedly marching up and down our corridor space; they seemed to be deliberately ignoring us. In the end, we managed to catch the eye of who seemed to be the head waiter, and, just as he approached, one of the ‘marchers’ then decided to acknowledge our existence and bizarrely seemed to launch himself onto our table to quickly take our order before the head waiter (undoubtedly wishing to avoid a ‘telling-off’ I imagine).
The food was miserly (a definite case of shrinkflation) and unimpressive (there used to be such theatre before). It took us less than 5 minutes to eat the entire lunch time meal that cost us almost £50 (and we weren’t rushing). Almost as soon as the last morsel had passed my lips, one of the waiters - who previously would not be drawn to our table to take our order- immediately took our plates away. Less than two minutes after that, he started sweeping around our table.
The final insult was when we received the bill: they had already included a service tip of 10% as part of the bill with no way to separate this from the food and drinks alone. Genuinely disgusted, we quickly paid the bill and left.
We visited the Ping Pong in the Southbank on 20/12/23. It was a very unhappy and expensive Christmas lunch.