Milton Keynes - Kingston Centre - Steven Castellino Review

Was going to review the Farringdon Nando’s, but seems like it’s already won the previous two weekly awards so I’ll go with a different branch!

Headed up to Cheshire last weekend to see a few friends on a road trip and decided to stop off about a third of the way up in Milton Keynes to a) fill up on petrol, alcohol for later and – of course – Nando’s, and b) to get out of the traffic caused by a random April blizzard. Made it an absolute no-brainer to go to the Kingston Centre, which is about 10 minutes away from Junction 13 of the M1 (or J14 if coming from the North).

It’s kind of a mix between a retail park and a mini shopping centre, with an enormous Tesco taking up almost half of it. The car park is a oddly shaped and a bit of a maze to navigate both in car and on foot – especially when trying to cross the road by the McDonald’s drive-thru. Nando’s is on the opposite side to the Tesco, on a row of several other typical chain restaurants, and diagonally opposite from M&S. It looks fairly new – either that or they keep the glass nice and clean.

It’s a medium-sized restaurant, with the tills about halfway down the restaurant but quite a narrow aisle to get there, and the queue snakes past seats where you can wait when ordering a takeaway. Small sauce and cutlery station just beyond that, with more seating and toilets behind that. A range of different seating available, the usual Nando’s mix. It took ages to get served as only one till was open despite there being a queue (eventually a second one opened) and the branch being busy. Ordered a chicken wrap, peri chips and halloumi, and I was surprised how quickly it came, given how slow it was before.

Wrap was ok, could have had more chicken in it, but the chips were decent and the halloumi was ok. Long wait to get served and slightly crowded restaurant but not bad overall, you probably need a car if you’re getting here though, I think it’s some way out MK’s centre (but good for motorway stops).