The hidden Asian restaurant inside a Sheffield casino you should definitely try

This Asian restaurant which specialises in Chinese food opened as a hidden restaurant in Genting Casino earlier this year, bringing more diversity to Sheffield’s food scene.

Open from 5pm-1am, the venue must primarily cater to an audience of late night gamblers who stop by to fuel up rather than dine, and for this purpose the restaurant will do a fine job. But, if you’re looking for a quality Asian dining experience, I fear Gangnam falls short.

Myself and my friend arrived at 6pm, so predictably the restaurant was fairly quiet, with only a couple of other diners seated. Despite this, I did not feel smothered by the waiters, rather they did a fine job, getting us seated and leaving us time to peruse the menus.

The drinks list was pretty standard, there not much in the way of craft beer but it certainly had more variety than most of Sheffield’s Asian restaurants, and there were some authentic Asian drinks too including Korean rice punch, and sour plum.

The food menu looked amazing, there was a great variety of small plates and dim sum, which were slightly smaller small plates designed to give little bursts of flavour.

I ordered chicken satay from the small plates menu to split with my friend, pork ribs in black bean sauce dim sum, and king prawn teriyaki noodles, along with a pint of Corona.

My friend ordered siu mai dumplings dim sum and chicken katsu curry, to drink he had a pint of Magners cider.

The satay skewers were lovely, perhaps setting expectations too high for our main meals. The satay sauce was lightly spiced and surrounded the skewers, rather than coating them and overpowering other flavours.

Our mains came next – they looked lovely and the portion sizes were good too, especially as we had a small plate and dim sum, but unfortunately my king prawn teriyaki tasted rather bland.

Most of the teriyaki sauce was over the shells of the prawns rather over the noodles, and so when they were deshelled, they really just tasted like plain prawns. The most dominant flavour, and I assume this was not intended, was the onion in the noodles. The dish wasn’t bad by any stretch, I ate it all and found it to be a fine noodle dish, I just wasn’t getting teriyaki.

The dim sum came next, which was fortuitous because it meant that we ended the meal on a high. The pork ribs were chewy but not excessively so, and like the satay, the black bean sauce was balanced and did not smother the meat, it enhanced it. I had a try of the siu mai dumplings my friend ordered, they were gorgeous bites of flavoursome and juicy pork which rivaled the taste of my pork ribs.

The meal for both of us came to £46.40 including drinks, which wasn’t bad value, bit given the underwhelming main courses wasn’t great either. I’m in no great rush to visit Gangnam again, but if I’m ever in Genting for an evening’s gambling session, I may stop by and order several plates of dim sum to keep me going.