Plaza Singapura - James RYN Review

Finally in Singapore after planning this trip for over a year, I was itching to get to my first new Nando's country since Qatar in 2019. In preparation for a lot of Nando's over the next few days, we didn't have any Nando's for two weeks before leaving London. This meant that after landing at 4pm and getting to our hotel, the first stop had to be a Nando's for dinner. We decided to walk to Plaza Singapura about 20 minutes from our hotel, and were immediately impressed with the size of the mall it is located in. The mall stretches over 8 floors, with no clear food court but restaurants dotted around. The Nando's is on the 4th floor with a seating area, and separate kitchen area a short walk away.

First impressions of the decoration were somewhat underwhelming, with the Nando's looking fairly old and not having any decoration of note. It was perfectly clean though, as everything in this country seems to be.

We were sat down after a couple of minutes, and immediately encouraged to download the local Nando's loyalty app and order with the QR code on the table. There was a till you could also order at, but I opted for the QR code option. Sadly I couldn't sign up for a loyalty account since you must have a local mobile number to activate.

I won't go through the menu in detail since you can find that on the Nando's Singapore website, but my summary is that it seemed a lot closer to South Africa in terms of food on offer, though with some South East Asian inspired rice and noodle bowl options . For this first Singaporean Nando's we opted for some staples rather than anything too exotic: a quarter chicken and chips, and an Extra-Hot wrap, with extra thigh and peri-chips.

Food came in about 10-15 minutes, and this was when we ran into some issues. The chips had no peri-spice on them, and they had forgotten to put the extra thigh in my pitta. I called over a waitress who was more than happy to help, and had to take my phone with her back to the kitchen to show them the receipt. It was slightly disconcerting handing my phone over, but it didn't phase the waitress and I obliged not wanting to be difficult. She returned after a couple of minutes with a piping hot thigh doused in Extra-Hot sauce, and a sprinkling of peri-spice on the chips. I had to stuff the thigh into the pitta myself, which then caused it to fall apart in my hands as I started eating it - not ideal. The chips also still didn't have enough peri-salt, and the restaurant had no mayonnaise (not necessarily unexpected in this part of the world). As for the sauce, the Extra Hot was incredibly spicy, more in line with South Africa levels than back home in the UK; I think I'll be opting for Hot tomorrow to save my stomach.

Overall a fairly average to disappointing first South-East Asian Nando's. Let's see what tomorrow has in store.