Bing Bing Dim Sum is a hipster Chinese-fusion restaurant in South Philadelphia with a limited small plate menu that does not really rise to the title of Dim Sum. The menu includes a handful of vegan items and they are willing to veganize some of the other items. The Dan Dan Noodles was great veganized, with shiitake mushroom pieces filling in for the traditional pork, and perfect al dente springy chewy noodles. The eggplant mapo tofu was solidly tasty, but not worth the $16 they charge for it. Overall the prices at Bing Bing seemed high for what they served.

The Dumplings: The Scarlet Dumplings, which are filled with Swiss shard, tofu and crispy garlic, were way over cooked. The filling was a wad of overcooked greens with a slightly bitter cabbage flavor. However, the pork soup dumpling were among the best I have had in a long time. They were cooked perfectly, which you rarely see in the U.S., so the wrappers maintained their integrity and kept the soup contained. They packed a lot of unctuous soup into these dumplings and the pork filling was delicious, savory and slightly sweet. The dipping sauce was also really good, usually I find the traditional black vinegar based sauce to be sharp and acrid, but at Bing Bing the vinegar sauce is smoothed and mellowed. I almost, almost, forgive them for charging $10 for only four of these dumplings. I also tried the Caterpillar Bread which was essentially an open ended baked BBQ pork bun. It appears that they make a long baked loaf of fluffy Chinese style bread stuffed with BBQ pork, and then cut slices off the loaf for each serving. Instead of cut pieces of pork that fill a traditional Chinese BBQ pork bun, the Caterpillar Bread filling was a Southern U.S. style finely shredded or pulled pork, cooked in a Chinese style BBQ sauce. The bun bread and the stuffing were delicious.

The lighting at the bar at Bing Bing was not great and so my pictures did not come out well. Below are some embedded urls to pictures in the Infatuation’s article on Bing Bing.

Location: Bing Bing Dim Sum is on E Passyunk Avenue in South Philly, on a triangular plot at the intersection of 12th street and Morris Street.