Monday, October 09, 2006

Nando's, Mid Valley, Kuala Lumpur

I visited this place in one of the lonely and rare instances I had to eat alone. Yeah, laugh. I don't know how much of the fluff of this place is made up or if any of it is true, but on a Monday night, this place was packed to the brim with people ordering loads of roasted spicy chicken which this place seems to specialize in.

According to some painted description on the wall, Nando's came about when the Portuguese forefathers (of whom?!) discovered the African Bird's Eye Chilli known as Peri Peri to the locals. With these fiery little chillies combined with special(hah!) herbs, lemon and a touch of garlic, the original Peri Peri sauce was born. *snigger* Kudos to them some for making an effort to dress up the history of the restaurant on the walls.

Unique to Nando's was a wooden rack on each table containing four different types of their branded sauces for their food. The was the Peri Peri, Spicy Peri Peri, Garlic Peri Peri and the plain old ketchup. Reminding me of Kenny Rogers, I wasn't too sure what could really be interesting so I took some promotion they had of a set meal consisting of roasted chicken, Mediterranean rice (yeah...) with raisins along with a dessert known as vanilla ria and some fruity soda with bits of aloe vera (I think). Topping it up, I went with something in the appetizers section of Liver with Port Roll. Both the liver and the chicken were available with 4 levels of spiciness so I picked the spiciest for the liver and number 2 for the chicken.

Credit where it's due, the chicken was quite tasty in spite of the quantity being churned out from the kitchen constantly. It was a little thin on the meat and was as the whole quite good with the number 2 spiciness. The Mediterranean rice was as I had suspected, butter rice with token bits of corn, green peas, diced carrots and raisins. Nevertheless, it was also quite tasty. Butter usually scores with me.

Here's the Liver with Port Roll. Basically a bowl of roasted chicken liver drenched in their number one spicy sauce which was actually quite spicy. The beef I had with this is that it actually came after I was almost done with my chicken - by which I had wanted to cancel on the order. It nonetheless arrived, portions are larger than what I had anticipated. The port roll is a thick skinned bun which came warm. Would have been great with more butter.

This was the Vanilla Ria. The texture was that of bean curd (tao huay) and the brown powder on the top was apparently not cocoa, but perhaps Milo. Was boring and I never finished it.

2 comments:

  1. nando's was once in Singapore at Marina Square in the mid to late 90s.

    I personally found their food a refreshing change. Sadly, they are now gone.

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  2. I ate at Nandos in Leicester, UK many times. Especially enjoyed the "Extra Hot" peri peri sauce, the ambience and the bottomless mug! :)

    Nandos in Singapore will definitely bring a much needed change and variation to the fast food scene.

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