Bounce

Ping pong and pizza, familiar concept now right? After our experience at Ping (here) I had high hopes. The first noticeable difference is the size of Bounce. The place is enormous, yet it's somewhere I walk past all the time and have never noticed before. Granted its only been open around 6 weeks...and is underground

Head downstairs and you will be greeted by a mass of after dinner drinkers and pongers. There must be 20 tables, including one that was used in the Olympics this year. We had reserved a table, but you can walk in and pay £10 for an hour if you are prepared to wait.

We arrived around an hour prior to our booking to have some fuel for our competitivity. We sat on a lovely long table. The restaurant area is reminiscent of Pizza East; part of the Soho House chain, all wood and lots of decorative / rustic glassware. The 'group menu' (there were 15 of us) only has three pizzas on, tomato buffalo and mozzarella, salami or vegetable. When they arrived they were wafer thin, and light on topping. With the buffalo mozzarella and tomato I was expecting big torn hunks of mozzarella on top and lists of fresh tomato, unfortunately this wasn't the case.

Bounce Group Menu

Bounce Menu - for normal people!

Cocktail list, beware of the tipping point

We decided the pizza was best described as functional and moved on to more important matters. The drink list has some pretty inventive cocktails on and they are all wicked strong...be warmed. Illusions of ping pong greatness will become apparent after a couple of cocktails. One is actually limited to two per person. They also serve 50ml measures as standard on spirits.

Lackluster Pizza

A few drinks in we got down to business. After everyone had a warm up we decided for 'winner stays on' alphabetically. Being C it wasn't long til I was out...however after D had managed to whip the rest of the alphabet we went on to doubles. I am not very good at hand eye coordination and be warned you WILL be hit with flying balls.

It's crowded and buzzy. Great fun to watch guys in suits with ties flung over their shoulders lunging for balls. Especially in November when half of them are rocking dodgy moustaches!

Bounce pings Ping out of the park. The pizza is no where near as good but if you're more into playing and getting dangerously drunk Bounce is your bag.