Silverlink - Ryan Review

After a long drive up to Newcastle, what better way to unwind than with a nice chicken dinner?

This Nando's is located on the Silverlink retail park which is well sign-posted by road. One thing that made me laugh was the wording actually on the road at a roundabout - "S'link Only" ha ha. There are thousands of free parking spaces too. The retail park is home to many large shops (I.e. M&S) and an Odeon and other eateries.

The decor and layout is nice. Very open plan. You enter through a little glass tunnel and then the left and right side are kind of mirror opposites of each other. Good layout of seats, with plenty of booths and tables/chairs. Some seating outside as well, but even up here they weren't sat outside on this night! Lots of multi-coloured wicker style orbs for the lighting, with the walls largely made up of the tops of used oil drums. Plenty of small canvas and mosaics scattered on the very end walls too. Toilets brightly decorated and spotless too.

The restaurant was only half full when arriving around 8:30pm, so was shown to a table straight away. The staff were very chatty and friendly too - as they explained the loyalty card system was offline, so they could still offer free chicken but it would stay on the card to use again. Result! They were also apologetic and offered two free sides for when the wait for the food to come rose to 25 minutes. Some of them were well lush too ;-)

That was all very nice - but sadly it took 45 minutes for the food to come. When it did come, parts of it had been sat under the heatlamps for a while so it was never going to be great, and it turned out to be quite average. The chicken portion was average in size, cooked nicely but lacking in sauce. The chips were a bit cold and soggy, but the rice was nice and hot. Very average food on this occasion.