Hamilton - Ryan Review

So onto my 301st UK Nando's which took me to Hamilton. This Nando's is located on the Hamilton Palace Towers leisure park which is spread across both sides of the road (the A73) and is host to a range of shops and eateries as well as a Vue cinema. There are hundreds of parking spaces offering up to four hours of free parking. The car parking area where Nando's is, is smaller than on the other side of the road, so be prepared to drive round a bit. Hamilton Central train station is also just under a mile walk away.

This Nando's shares its frontage with a few other shops such as JD and Next, so it really doesn't look much from the outside... but inside, it is much nicer. It is a wide and long Nando's. There are six large semi-circular booths in the middle that run up to the till area. Beyond this there are three more square booths separated by some lattice work.

On both the left and right walls is a long banquette for seating. On the left hand side there's a break from the seating for the sauce station, but it then carries on running alongside the booths at the back. The whole of the left wall has a triangular pattern grooved out and on the right wall there are a couple dozen paintings of different shapes and sizes.

The ceiling is wavy/grooved running along the whole of the restaurant. The lighting is pretty funky too - a mixture of different coloured shades and shapes, some look like a watermelon, others like a cucumber, all hanging down above the semi-circular booths. There are further red and orange lanterns above the left side seating too. Toilets are at the back, very clean and tiled in a greeny/grey which is the same colour as the marble sink.

I got here at about 4:45pm and there were only a few tables in use, which meant the food came in a quick four minutes! As with Fife a few days beforehand, I received one of the best portions of chicken I have had. Both pieces (especially the breast) were big, juicy and meaty - caked in sauce and charred perfectly. It was so well cooked it was piping throughout and the meat easily fell off the bone. The ratatouille portion was big and was hot and steaming and packed full with veg. The chips were ample and hot and crispy and the rice was also steaming hot and moist. Tasty indeed! This Nando's also had the handy wipes - which is a rare find these days... unless they're making a comeback from today :-)

Staff were friendly and chatty and two different ones even filled my glass up for me... Some of them were absolute darlings too. Samantha, Tina, Tyler... it was like the Lou Bega song.