Covent Garden - Elliott Waters Review

This outlet is like many London Nando's, and is mainly below street level. I entered through a small shop front, and was greeted by a friendly Nandoca who swiftly directed me towards the RYN group. There are a few tables upstairs along with a cutlery & sauce point, with the spiral staircase leading to the lower level on the right hand side as you enter. This brings you out at the till and grill point. Behind the spiral staircase is a small secluded booth. To the right are two passageways, which take you in to a large restaurant with some very impressive woodwork making up the columns and the ceiling. There are booths all around the right and front walls as you enter this room, with the toilets located on the left hand wall, and the cutlery and sauce point being predominantly on the left as you enter/travel down the curved ramp.

After finding the RateYourNando's crew, and joining my table, I sat down, and we pondered the menu. I noticed that this menu was not the updated (and more expensive) version, but was the slightly cheaper version which still retains the chicken+1 or 2 sides for one price deal. Sadly this has been removed from the new menu, which results in a slight price increase! I did notice when pondering the menu, that this outlet was offering sweet potato wedges. Once the raffle had been drawn (which I did not win, despite having 9 raffle tickets!) I quickly made my way to the till point to place my order.

The order process seemed to take quite some time, with some confusion for fellow diners. When I arrived at the tills, only one was open, but quickly all four were open, and I was served by the manager. As a consequence, the order process kept being interrupted, as other Nandoca's needed some direction on how to put certain things through the till, along with the sweet potato mash saga which Gerry had! Eventually my order was placed, and I returned to my table.

The food took between 15 and 20 minutes to arrive, and arrived after some orders which had been placed after mine, which slightly irritated me, but often can't be helped. I ordered chicken burger mango and lime, with spicy rice and sweet potato wedges. The tomato in the burger was good, the lettuce was of the shredded variety, which often doesn't work well with a burger (it all fell out), but the chicken was nice and juicy, with lashings of Peri-Peri. Unfortunately the bun was somewhat dry and a little stale, as if it had been waiting for quite some time to be sent out. The spicy rice was reasonable, a good portion size, some bits were stuck together, but overall not bad. The sweet potato wedges were delicious. They came with a lime and yoghurt style dressing, and seeds, which were provided in a takeaway pot, rather than applied to the wedges. You got 5 wedges on the plate, mine were cooked just right, slightly caramelised at the tips, which I like. They really were delicious, and would recommend them to a fellow Nando's diner.

After food, cheesecake was ordered, and it arrived fairly quickly. Sadly my pet hate was applied here, where the creme (which I don't eat anyway....) arrived in a takeaway pot, rather than a ceramic jug. The portion size was a little small, could have done with being cut a bit bigger, certainly the smallest I've seen so far. Creme given to Gerry, I scoffed my cheesecake and it was onwards with the quiz!

After winning the quiz with a highly impressive 19.5/20, I departed Covent Garden, and made my way back to the Underground stations. This outlet is easily reached by Underground, with Covent Garden or Charing Cross/Embankment stations very close, meaning you can reach here from many of the cross-London Underground lines. There are also plenty of bus routes running along the Strand, towards either Aldwych or Trafalgar Square. Car parking isn't really possible, although there did appear to be some parking on street outside, it was quite busy and I suspect residents only, or pricey.