Nandos's , DLF Cyber Hub, Gurgaon

Nando's is an international casual dining restaurant chain originating from South Africa, with a Mozambican/Portuguese theme. Founded in 1987, Nando's operates about 1,000 outlets in 30 countries.

Nando's was launched in India back in 2010. 3 more outlets were opened in 2012 in Ludhiana, Bangalore and Delhi and thereafter they haven't stopped. It did not take very long for people to fall in love with the addictive taste of the Peri Peri chicken and the Afro-Portugese inspired sides. 

We walked into the Nando's outlet at Cyber Hub for dinner on a busy Saturday. We were lucky enough to get a place to sit and quickly placed our order. The restaurant is spacious and well lit. The walls are filled with details of the restaurant, its history and its food. 

Nando's specializes in flame-grilled peri peri chicken. The chicken is served in quarters, halves and wholes. Nando's also serves burgers, pitas, salads, wings and wraps. Each of Nando's products are basted in one of four peri-peri flavours. 

Nando's signature dish is the Peri Peri Chicken that is chicken marinated in PERi-PERi sauce for at least 24 hours and then flame-grilled to order.

I noticed one change from the last time we visited Nando's- a separate menu specially designed for vegetarians! Vegetarians did not really have a large variety to choose from initially and so Nando's may have been losing customers. Instead of being bogged down by the decreasing numbers, Nandos introduced a new menu specially for Vegetarians! - an effort definitely  worth a mention. 

Since we were with a friend, we ordered the Full platter (whole chicken) with 4 reg sides(you can also choose 2 large sides instead) of grilled vegetables, garlic bread and potato wedges for ourselves and Roasted Vegetables & Grilled Paneer for me. Surprisingly, the food was served within 10 minutes. 

Full platter (whole chicken) with sides

Roasted Veg & Grilled Paneer

The food was served piping hot and as promised, was served with the garlic sauce, the mild peri peri sauce for me and the hot sauce for Ambika. 

The overall taste of each of the Peri Peri sauces remains the same essentially, only the amount of chilli in each varies. The garlic sauce however is slightly tangy and non spicy. 

The garlic bread served was perfect- soft and loaded with butter on the inside and slightly toasted on the outside. Ambika enjoyed the chicken as it was well cooked, soft and moist. The grilled vegetables (again loaded with butter and grilled perfectly) were delicious and were the perfect side dish for the chicken. 

My dish, the roasted vegetable and grilled paneer tasted average. There was something which was essentially missing from the dish - lemon . The rice itself was a little dry even though the vegetables were grilled to perfection. No matter how much garlic/peri peri sauce I added to the rice, the tangy taste of lemon was amiss. 

Nandos's may have perfected the chicken dishes but it still needs to work on the Vegetarian dishes it offers. I hope that Nando's will continue to incorporate suggestions they receive from their customers and thus continue to improve. 

For any non-vegetarian , this place is definitely worth a visit!

Rating
Ambience - 3/5 | Service - 4/5 | Variety - 2/5 | Taste - 3/5 |Price - 3/5

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