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The idea was for me to pick up tickets for the slides at the Tate before work. We’d all knock off at lunchtime, head back there, don the necessary elbow and knee pads, and spend the afternoon zizzing up and down from the fifth floor to the pit at the bottom of the turbine hall.

Except unless you’re all there you can’t pick up tickets at all. Perfectly understandable, really, as the slides are very steep, and accompanied by all sorts of rules and warnings about height, weight and sobriety. So, instead we went out for a long late lunch at Ping Pong and will do the slides another day. Probably first thing one morning, as anyone turning up after noon is warned to expect disappointment.

The food (dim sum) was fantastic, made all the better for the fact that Ping Pong is the reincarnation of one of our semi-regular pubs, the indescribably grotty, smelly and sticky-carpeted Cambridge. You wouldn’t believe it was the same place. Where is that famous carpet? Where are the tar-stained walls? Where is the smell of cheap disinfectant from the toilets? Instead we found ourselves in a tidy, modern and spotlessly clean restaurant, with Chinese writing on the ceiling, and smooth black wooden benches arranged around wide wooden tables, kitted out with Lazy Susans to help us share our food.

(Actually, I’m blaming Suzan for me eating three chicken dumplings. I should have noticed that mushroom isn’t usually that colour or texture.)

The most impressive part of the whole meal, though, had to be Ruth’s jasmine tea. When it arrives it’s just a tall empty glass, into which they drop what looks like a tightly-packed ball of twine. They pour on boiling water from a wide copper kettle and leave it to soak. Nothing happens for about five minutes until - suddenly - the water has soaked in far enough and a pale jasmine flower blossoms in the bottom of the glass, a long string of petals floating up to the surface. It has to be the most beautiful drink in London, and even if the food wasn’t so good would be reason enough for eating there.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 3rd, 2006 at 5:43 pm and is filed under London. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.