Discreetly situated next to a Boots shop on Holborn circus, Bounce is a hidden getaway for the suits crowd searching for some after-hours fun outside of the standard pub session. Descending the staircase into the cavernous space below, one feels that one is entering a gentleman's sports club/smoking den, only updated to the hipsterdom of 21st-century London and decidedly unisex. Anointed by a blue plaque declaring the unlikely space the site where the game was invented and patented, Bounce is a veritable temple to that most frivolous of frivolities, ping pong.
On a recent visit for our team's Christmas dinner, we were told to arrive at 17:00 sharp for the pong session, which we were only able to book for a half hour at the start of the evening. Bounce is run like a Chinese ping pong camp, with players designated half-hour slots strictly adhered to by the iPad-wielding staff who hone in on a team within seconds of the session expiration. Bounce subscribes to the Benthamian principle 'the greatest pong action for the greatest number', which is admirable if frustrating for a server at match point suddenly tapped on the shoulder by the red-clad staff. It is understandable, though, why they must be so strict in managing a pong-crazy crowd engaging in post-work therapy landing smashes and getting smashed. Everyone wants a turn, and on our visit, the place was rammed.
Bounce does one thing and it does it well, offering well over a dozen tables with buckets of balls and 5-6 racquets per table. It has a freewheeling, loose atmosphere, with staff sweeping the floors between tables with pool nets for scattered balls, resembling Dick Van Dyke chimney sweeps grooving to the well-selected tunes. Everyone seemed in good spirits, even those situated at booths in between courts, who were sitting ducks for errant strikes, gamely plucking the balls from their hair and tossing them back to the players. Generous space between tables also allowed for some butterfly floating and bee stinging, with smashes liberally sought and rarely landed by a boozy crowd.
After our time at pong camp ended, we shuffled off to the side and ordered a drink while we waited for our dinner table. Bounce has a decent selection of lagers at to-be-expected prices. Unfortunately we did not sample their cocktails, but the fraternal atmosphere encouraged beer drinking anyhow.
Thankfully Bounce's restaurant area is set above the chaos, which offered a nice respite from the gym-and-gin atmosphere below. Still, I would not recommend coming to Bounce for a nice dinner. The menu is comprised of unexciting Italian fare, catering to the Strada and Pizza Express crowd. Although we had to choose from a set Christmas menu, most if not all of the dishes appear on the standard menu. The dinner started well enough, with tasty starters accompanied by a glass of prosecco. The mains, however, were a bit of a mixed bag, and were served with subpar bottles of wine. The biggest disappointment proved to be the Eton mess, which was all mess, no Eton, having been served with no merengue at all.
Still, at £44.50 a head, the dinner served its purpose on a work-sponsored event, where a modicum of meat is mandatory for avoiding a drunken meltdown before the boss. The main qualm we had was with Bounce's service, which was wobblier than our own service game by the end of the night. The servers were downright confused by the size and complexity of our group, even with the set menu. They had mixed up the number of each dish requested, but instead of tackling each diner's request on an ad hoc basis, unleashed their harried servers on our group, circumnavigating the table multiple times trying to find a place to set down the misordered items, despite our protestations. It appears there may have been a mix-up with the ordering by email, but even so, the waitress should have redressed the issue by quickly taking stock of each order and sending out new tickets, rather than supplicating us to take the dishes at hand. Unfortunately the poor service extended to the ping pong camp counsellors as well, who short-changed us twice on the pong table bookings (shaving off 5 minutes each time) and rebuffed our entreaties with the gruffness of a gulag guard.
On the whole, then, Bounce is a quirky venue suitable for large groups looking for a mid-week diversion outside of the Weatherspoons crawl. At £13 for a half-hour table's booking at peak time, I would not recommend it as an outing for the cash-strapped, which perhaps explains its shrewd City location. For a casual game with a few friends, I would recommend any number of good bars across the city with free ping pong tables, including the Book Club in Shoreditch and Doodle Bar in Battersea. Still, we all had an enjoyable evening and would happily be scooped up by Bounce's floor-sweeping staff to go back in the bucket for another round -- provided the company continues to pay for the privilege. read more