When I am in India, the only food I’m really very interested in eating is Indian food—including Indian Chinese. The primary reason for this is obvious: Indian food in India is far, far superior to that available anywhere in the US, with many regional cuisines and categories not even available there at all. The secondary reason is that, contrariwise, far superior versions of most non-Indian cuisines available in India exist in the US. And so I don’t really see much point in wasting my eating out slots on short trips home on Italian or (non-Indian) Chinese or Japanese or Vietnamese or Korean or Mexican food etc. etc. in India. This doesn’t always mesh well, however, with the preferences of my friends and family here. While they do go out to eat at Indian restaurants as well, they’re often more excited to visit non-Indian restaurants. This is how we ended up at Gung in January 2023, for example. And this is also how I ended up on this trip at Ping’s Bia Hoi, a nominally Vietnamese but really pan-Asian restaurant at the swanky One Horizon Center in Gurgaon. Here’s how it went.
The restaurant is owned by Pass Code Hospitality, which operates a number of upscale brands in Delhi and a number of other cities in India. Among these brands are Jamun, which offers pan-regional Indian cuisine and where we’ve eaten two meals in the past (here and here). They also have a brand named Ping’s Cafe Orient, which serves up a pan-Asian menu. Ping’s Bia Hoi is an offshoot of that brand. I’m told that when it opened it’s menu skewed more Vietnamese, as you might expect from the name: bia hoi’s are casual restaurants in Vietnam that offer cheap, low-alcohol beers and casual food. However, unsurprisingly, this has now morphed into an all-out pan-Asian menu and it’s not clear what the point of the separate branding is anymore. Indeed, on our visit, they didn’t even have any of the draft beer said to be brewed only for them available: the only beer option was Budweiser.
The restaurant is, broadly speaking, an attractive space. There are a number of outdoor tables and a large dining room. The dining room is done up in a kitschy manner. Some of this is appealing enough. Unfortunately, one entire wall is taken up by a pink neon sign that spells out the hashtag, “#loveyoulongtime”. Possibly, this seemed like an edgy or clever thing to do to whoever designed the restaurant (and it appears this embarrassment may be featured at the other Ping’s locations as well). They either didn’t do a quick Google search to discover the racist-sexist connotations of the phrase (indeed there are no other connotations), or disregarded the results if they did. Thankfully, I didn’t have to look at it from our table at the other side of the dining room.
Embarrassing decor aside, how was the food? We started out with some soups. Two people split the tom yum soup with chicken, and two people split the tom yum soup with shrimp. I can never resist chicken corn soup in India and got a bowl of that to myself. These were all pretty good. We followed with some dumplings. Apparently Philadelphia cream cheese dumplings are all the rage in Delhi now and we got some of those (I did not try them but the person who was most interested in them was pleased enough). I did try the chicken siumai (which was okay—the chicken filling was too dense) and the spicy chicken dumpling (much better). The larger dishes included the following: crispy konjee lamb (I was confused to discover that this was not in fact a bowl of congee with crispy lamb but strips of lamb fried to a crisp and tossed in a slightly spicy sticky sauce); pad thai (we got it vegetarian); Hainanese chicken rice; black pepper chicken; and chicken in a coriander-black bean sauce. Of these the chicken rice was mid but everything else was tasty enough—though the two Indian-Chinese chicken dishes were not so very distinct from each other.
For a look at the restaurant, the menu and everything we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down for thoughts on service, the experience as a whole, and to see what’s coming next.
Service was fine: there wasn’t as much hovering as there usually is in restaurants in Delhi. I was not allowed to touch the bill so can’t tell you what the total was—but you can work it out by looking at the menu. The meal, as a whole, was better than I’d feared it would be. Indeed, I could see coming back with the family when we’re next here all together, to try some more of the food. Alas, even if I didn’t find it offensive, the missus would not be happy to be eating in a restaurant that sports that sign on its walls.
Okay, what’s next from this Delhi trip? I’ll have an account of an excellent Naga meal that I ate in Humayunpur a few days ago. That’ll go up in the middle of next week.