Ely - Ryan Review

Stopped into this new Nando's late afternoon. It's located on the new Ely Leisure village just off the A10 - about 1.5 miles walk from Ely train station. Nando's is next door to Cineworld and there are other eateries on the leisure park. There is currently free parking without any restrictions (although understand this is subject to change).

There are some outside tables and I was tempted to sit outside as the car park was very quiet and it was a beautiful day... but inside I went. The entrance is a bit of wasted space. There's an opaque screen between the entrance and the open-plan restaurant, so unless there is a host specifically on the door, nobody can see you come in.

There's a very good mix of seating and it's well equipped for groups, with six large circular booths and then banquette seating running along the sides. In the window seats the lighting is made up of bright colourful orbs. Above the circular booths is a big red tissue-paper sculpture of sorts which blocks out most of the light bulbs inside - not sure what it's meant to represent... The back wall by the sauce station is largely bare-brick but with a few canvas paintings on. The toilets were sparkling clean and tiled in dark/lime green tiles. Nothing spectacular about this new Nando's, but clean throughout.

There were just a couple of tables in use and the food came very quickly - in under five minutes. The manager was very pleasant and open to a bit of a chat. I was also given a very large portion of one side of chips. The chips were roasting hot - had to actually wait a few minutes for them to cool, but all of them were hot and crispy. I had a sunset burger as well - and the thigh fillets were a tad on the small side, but they were very juicy and saucy.