Ping (restaurant)
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| Ping | |
|---|---|
 2016 photograph of the Old Town Chinatown building which housed Ping from 2009 to 2012 | |
 | |
| Restaurant information | |
| Owner | Kurt Huffman |
| Previous owner | Andy Ricker |
| Chef |
|
| Food type | Asian |
| Location | 2131 Southeast 11th Avenue, Portland, Oregon, United States |
| Coordinates | 45°30′27″N 122°39′18″W / 45.50745°N 122.65495°W |
| Website | http://pingpdx.com/[usurped] (2009–2012) https://pingportland.com/ (2020–2021) |
Ping was an Asian restaurant in Portland, Oregon. Chef Andy Ricker and restaurateur Kurt Huffman opened the original restaurant in Old Town Chinatown in 2009. In 2010, Ping was a semifinalist in the Best New Restaurant category at the James Beard Foundation Awards. It was also named a best new restaurant by GQ[1] and earned a Rising Star award from The Oregonian.
Despite garnering a positive reception, the restaurant closed temporarily in 2012 and permanently in 2013. Huffman reopened Ping in southeast Portland's Hosford-Abernethy neighborhood in late 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, with Mike Kessler as chef. The take-out operation closed in 2021.
Menu
Ping originally operated in Portland's Old Town Chinatown neighborhood. The interior had "floor-to-ceiling windows, revealing vibrant Asian pop art-lined tables and white paper scrolls hanging from the ceiling over the open kitchen".[2] Ping served Thai and Vietnamese street food.[3] Eat Ink described Ping as "a pub-like space with an Asian fusion menu";[4] other outlets called Ping a "Thai izakaya".[5][6] The New York Times called Ping a "pan-Asian skewer house".[7]
In 2009, Portland Monthly's Martha Calhood said the "Pan-Asian [pub's] aesthetic seems right at home on this gritty corner in Chinatown" and wrote, "even as happy hour fades with the spring twilight, an assortment of diners—Pearl District businessmen, pipe-cleaner-skinny fashionistas, couples, families, perfectly unkempt twentysomethings—steadily stream in, talking and pushing tables together near the restaurant's large front windows".[8]
The menu has also been described as "Asian-style pub food", and has included Laksa (chicken breast, fishcake, clams, prawns and boiled egg with rice noodles in a mild curry coconut milk base and sambal),[9] friend pork knuckles, stewed duck leg, skewers, and quail eggs wrapped in bacon.[2][10] Ping's "signature" drink was the Sapporo lager with sugar and yuzu.[11]
When Ping relaunched in 2020, the menu included salads, meats, noodles, skewers, and vegetables. According to Eater Portland's Brooke Jackson-Glidden, "The skewers [ranged] from soy-and-yuzu-marinated pork belly to the Thai pork dish mu ping, as well as its popular Japanese chicken thigh yakitori. The noodles, on the other hand, generally [stuck] to Southeast Asia, with Singaporean laksa nonya and Hokkien mee, to Thai suki haeng, a stir-fried glass noodle dish with vegetables".[12]
