Probably two of the slowest people in the world to get round to watching two of the most anticipated movies of the year, we only completed Barbenheimer last week. Due to work and life, we couldn’t arrange the Odyssey that is the Oppenheimer > bottomless brunch > Barbie double feature (a.k.a. ‘Bombs, Brunch, Barbie’) that so many people advocated. Nevertheless, seeing them separately meant that we were able to pig out on two meals, not just one.
Barbie was the culmination of a great day out in Canary Wharf. We hit up Black Bear Burger and Baoziin at Market Halls. Both were as amazing as always. After a stroll to walk off the food coma, we went to the besofa’d Everyman at Crossrail Place. Drinking beers and eating popcorn that was served to our comfy couch, we watched Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling at their finest. The station was mere metres below us and we were home on the decent side of ten in the evening.
A great start, but for me, a history nerd, the main event was always going to be Christopher Nolan’s three-hour long biopic, especially as I had booked the BFI IMAX for it. The European was less sure but tagged along, probably because I reserved a table at the neighbouring Ping Pong for dim sum. She had been yearning to take me here for a while. Ping Pong offers a couple of weekend brunch thingies that we had booked and cancelled in quick succession as soon as The European learned that they had halved the menu and doubled the price.
Nevertheless, we were looking forward to visiting. Ping Pong has been in London for years. I even remember my manager in 2012 excited about a date there. Back then this little chain was even regarded as one of those places where a reservation was impossible. I’ve never been, more out of competition from other London eateries than anything else. There didn’t seem to be a better or more convenient option at this time.
Ping Pong sold us the reality, not the dream. Their branch at Southbank is a functionally designed cavern of rooms and nooks that cater to the voluminous foot traffic that comes with its locale, being strategically located near some of London’s most famous tourist attractions, next to Waterloo Station, and steps from the busy embankment. It was full; uncomfortably so. We were sandwiched between a miserable-looking work couple with their faces buried alternately in either work phones or dim sum baskets, and an irritating pair of loudmouthed ladies discussing the pros and cons of one-night stands.
You order by ticking boxes on a paper menu, similar to Bao and a million other places that want to make life easier for overworked servers. On that note, service was swift and friendly. Kudos to them, there only seemed to be three or four people working a room of hundreds.
We ordered a selection of dim sum and a rice dish each, all of which were cheap but unsatisfactory. The rice bowls were dry and bland. My katsu curry rice bowl came with a spoonful of sauce which was the same consistency as bad gravy and way too much rice, albeit the cushy panko chicken was well cooked and tasty. The European ordered a honey chilli chicken rice pot. When I asked her how it was, she replied, “It was OK”, which, knowing her, is code for, “I was the experience of eating this scrubbed from my memory with quicklime”.
Of the dim sum, we agreed that the pork buns were, despite being a little on the small side and definitely underfilled, the best as they had a decent amount of taste. The shanghai xiaolongbao was a watery mess and the prawn & chive dumplings had a lurid green colour and were pretty much flavourless.
Indeed, the most successful items of the meal were two 500ml bottles of Asahi and a plate of salted edamame. We could have stopped there, given how we put away the best part of three litres of full-fat coke and a vat of mixed popcorn at the IMAX only thirty minutes later.
In the spirit of me being diplomatic, and not descending into ham-fisted criticism of motion pictures, I considered Oppenheimer to be equal to Barbie. You really felt the three hours though. Nevertheless, the spectacle that the IMAX provides totally made it worth it.
As a date night, Barbie was better. We ate very well and retired at a sensible hour. Oppenheimer night was mired with sub-par food and two knackered souls rolling into bed after the stroke of twelve on a school night, the horror. Still, and on reflection, you don’t want to be overly happy and food-drunk while being educated on the horrors of nuclear war, no matter how amazing the cinema is.
Visited on 16th August 2023.
Two overly large beers, edamame, two rice plates and three baskets of dim sum came to just under £sixty.
The food thing. 
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