Does Portland's Ping Sing? Ding!

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Time's up, pencils down, answer the question. Sort of. Cornichon really wanted to like this spot, with its funky decor, its quirky menu, its super-sakes "by the dram." Alas, it just didn't work out that way.

The menu promsed three smoked meats. The duck came a lot later because of some fowl-up (!) in the kitchen. Gee, wonder why. The smoked pork jowl tasted salty, nothing more, and was incredibly chewy. The smoked beef tongue likewise. So why's that big bowl of flavored salt crystals in the middle of the plate? Surely not for still more salt?

Cornichon knows smoked meat, adores smoked meat, has eaten smoked meat in places like Montreal, where it's practically their national food. Preserving meat with smoke is as old as cavemen, but you gotta let the smoke (or the heat) cook the damn stuff. This stuff, Ping, ain't no smoked meat; it's slices of raw flesh smoked just long enough to give it a smelly, salty flavor.

Not often that we'll simply give up on a dish, but we did with this combo; it was just plain inedible. Maybe next time we'll opt for the Spicy Mama Ramen, nothing more than store-bought noodles in pork broth. They can't screw that up, can they?

Ping, 102 NW 4th, Portland, 503-229-7464