CityLife

Ocean Treasure

Ocean Treasure (Manchester 235)

Ocean Treasure
(Manchester 235)
City centre
January 2010

Chinese
Average three-course cost: £25

Overall: 3/5
Decor: 3/5, Service: 4/5, Food: 3/5

GAMBLING has come a long way in the past couple of decades. The arrival of the National Lottery in the Nineties made it acceptable for the vast majority of people to spend money on games of chance and the Noughties boom in online gambling brought it into everyone’s living room.

Maybe the Tens will bring true Las Vegas-style gaming to our shores with huge complexes devoted to the art of losing money.

And over those last 20 years, casinos have had to move with the times and fight harder to attract customers by making themselves a little more like the glamorous, but mythical, James Bond-style palaces of sensual delights that people who have never stood in front of a roulette wheel still imagine them to be.

Because, when the chips are down, there is a lot more competition nowadays for the gambler’s spend.

I remember my first trip to a casino, in Bolton 21 years ago, brought a delicious feeling of illicitness – along with some distinctly undelicious cuisine.

All that was on offer food-wise were sandwiches with bread as hard as the croupier’s stare.

The philosophy obviously was that nothing should distract the men (for it was then a very male preserve) from playing the
tables.

That has all changed for the better if you regard gambling as just another form of entertainment, rather than a vice.

The best casinos have restaurants that can rival any without the click and whirr of slot machines in the background, and bars you can slouch on all night without seeing a single pack of cards.

Tongue-in-cheek

This is especially so now, after the relaxation of laws a few years ago swept away tired beaurocracy and the need to wait 24 hours before you can gamble.

Since the middle of last year, you don’t even need to be a member to visit city centre casino Manchester 235 – you can just walk in off the street. And 235 is a good example of the way casinos have changed, with its swish interior and superior restaurant Linen overlooking the action.

There is a recently-opened restaurant downstairs, too, where you can eat without even entering the casino. It used to be Numero, a relaxed Italian place that had a reputation for decent pizzas.

Now it is Ocean Treasure (or Ocean Tr235ure as their marketing people insist on calling it); a Cantonese restaurant with a few dishes from the wider region thrown in. And with the propensity of the Chinese, who like a flutter, it is possibly a good bet.

The first thing that strikes you from the outside is the tongue-in-cheek cartoon window design for the restaurant, which is followed through to the menu.

It is a kind of Chinese take on Ocean’s 11, the rat pack caper which was remade in 2001 with George Clooney in the title role and sparked sequels Ocean’s 12 and 13.

It is a little bit odd that a casino should glorify a movie that was about, well, ripping off casinos for large amounts of cash.

But I suppose they want some of the film’s cool glamour to rub off on the place.

Some of the dark-suited cartoon gentlemen in the frieze are a little sinister though. One grim-faced fellow is even carrying some nunchucks – think twice about sending something back to the kitchen here.

Thankfully, we didn’t need to, because though we weren’t totally bowled over, most dishes proved a winner, simply presented and well cooked.

Decent kick

I started with salt and pepper soft shell crab (£9.50), lightly battered, deep fried as they should be, with legs and claws all crispy on the outside, crunching into sweet, velvety meat, and with a hint of heat too.

Laddie Luck opposite went for the standard quarter crispy duck opener (£9.50). The meat was pretty succulent throughout and without those horrid hard bits you sometimes end up with.

It came with the usual slivers of cucumber and spring onion, hoi sin sauce and pancakes and was expertly shredded at the table by our waitress.

In fact, overall service was pretty good: attentive, efficient and (sometimes sadly lacking in staff at Chinese restaurants) friendly, witty even.

To drink we had an unconvincing bottle of Casa Rivas Sauvignon Blanc, from Chile, at a hefty three times mark-up.

My friend accepted OT’s invitation to shuffle the pack and ‘create your own dish’ with meat matched with a sauce for his main.

His was a slightly uninspiring chicken in chilli and ginger (£9) but with a decent kick in the sauce. My main was Vietnamese fillet steak cubes (£13.80). I can’t believe fillet steak is traditional in Vietnam and it was slightly one-dimensional but the stir fried chunks of good meat had a great, exotic flavour locked into them, despite being very light on sauce.

There were no desserts on offer when we visited. The waitress, rather unconvincingly, said a selection would be available in a few weeks’ time.

However, we did get some free fruit (no, not three cherries). But what the menu does have is a good selection of veggie dishes (they also do halal) and Ocean Treasure would be a good place for post-pub or club dim sum as it is open until 4am.

All in all, a safe bet.

Ocean Treasure, Manchester 235, Great Northern, 2 Watson Street, Manchester M3 4LP (0161 828 0300, manchester235.com).