It’s definitely in Kambah, but the karaoke and Thai massage scream ‘Bangkok’ to me! Photo: Lucy Ridge.
You’d think a Thai restaurant with a karaoke stage and adjoining Thai massage studio would be a little more Bangkok than Kambah, yet Ping Ping’s is firmly in the Southern suburbs, just behind Kambah shops. Decked out with fairy lights, this family-run restaurant features a colourful mural and a jungle of indoor plants.
The menu features Thai dishes you’d expect to see on a Canberra menu, along with some other less-well-known flavours. There’s a range of Thai-made beers and other non-alcoholic drinks. I opted for a Thai iced tea, which came brewed strongly, but the addition of condensed milk balanced out the tannins with creamy sweetness.
Thai bites – aka Meang Khum – are a tasty betel leaf mouthful. Photo: Lucy Ridge.
Entrees include classics like spring rolls, money bags and satay chicken skewers. But there are also options for North Thailand grilled sausages, Thai beef jerky, and Thai bites, aka Meang Khum (betel-leaf parcels filled with prawn and coconut). Optional lime, peanut, and chilli are on the side to add to your taste, with a lemongrass sauce to drizzle on top. Wrap up the filling and enjoy it as a hole-in-one. Delicious.
We shared a couple of classics for our main meal – Thai green curry with duck and beef larb – served with coconut rice and garlic rice.
The green curry hits all the right notes: it’s not showy, but it’s so good. The flavours are balanced – sweet, sour, spicy and salty are particularly important in Thai cuisine – with a creamy richness balancing out the fairly mild heat profile. I enjoy the abundance of bamboo shoots in the curry and it pairs particularly well with the garlic rice.
The larb at Ping Ping is very good indeed. Photo: Lucy Ridge.
The larb is so good: punchy sour citrus and salty fish sauce make each mouthful of thinly sliced beef zippy and refreshing. Fresh herbs add fragrance, and the coconut rice is an excellent match with this dish.
I’m keen to return for a Kao Soi soup (often called Thai Laksa for its mix of spices and coconut cream) and a beef massaman curry, or, with a larger group, for one of the banquet menus (which seem like outrageously good value at $29 to $49 per person).
We finished things off with dessert: sticky rice with mango, and sticky rice with Thai custard. The black and white sticky rice has a lovely texture, and coconut syrup adds just the right amount of sweetness to the dish. The Thai custard has an interesting texture and is entirely unlike anything I’d eaten before, but it’s very delicious. The seasonal mango is fruity and sour, cutting through the sticky rice and enticing us back for bite after bite.
The mango sticky rice dessert is worth ordering when mangos are in season. Photo: Lucy Ridge.
The background music featured soft piano covers of pop songs (we wondered if these gentle plinky tunes were also being piped across to relax the Thai massage customers). Our casual early-weeknight meal didn’t feel like the right time for karaoke, so my chance to belt out ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ will have to wait for another day.
Ping Ping Thai is located at 6 Kett St, Kambah. They are open from 5 pm to 9.30 pm seven days a week. Follow Ping Ping Thai on Facebook.
Original Article published by Lucy Ridge on Region Canberra.
