Barcelos

It’s such a coincidence that just about a week after I tried Nando’s, I got a taste of Barcelos! The two are pretty similar, specializing in flamed grilled peri-peri chicken. I never heard of Barcelos before actually! I always thought Nando’s was the popular one. But after trying Barcelos, I felt that it was better than Nando’s! (: I’ll definitely recommend it over Nando’s. possibly it was because I tried the wrong dish at Nando’s, but oh well, based on my experience, I found Barcelos nicer (:

the chicken pasta meal ($12.95) consists of the original 1/4 peri peri chicken, served with linguini and homemade pasta sauce. the chicken was beautifully succulent and infused with the wonderful aroma of the sauce.

as with Nando's, there are extra sauces on the side for you to add on to your dish. this is absolutely awesome (since they're not very generous with their sauces haha). the tangy lemon sauce is delicious!!!! the sourness adds a wonderful kick to every dish! my friends and i poured copious amounts of it onto all our dishes - whether it was rice, chicken, fries, etc. niceeee! the other sauce which we loved was the very peri sauce. unlike the mild peri, which was not outstanding, and the supa peri was more...bitter (for the lack of a better word) than anything. the very peri sauce, on the other hand, was spicy, just right, such that we could taste the flavour of the sauce beautifully. (:

this was the grilled chicken wrap ($10.50) if im not wrong! didn't try it, but looks pretty good (:

the 1/4 chicken meal comes with two sides ($13.90) and this is something else i must talk about! the SIDES! they have quite a range for you to chose from and quite a number of them are notable! (: the fries and potato wedges were a sinful delight! crispy and crackly on the outside (tastily seasoned for the potato wedges) and soft on the inside, they were soooo yummy! and i liked the sauteed mushrooms and potatoes. they were seasonsed with a number of herbs, pretty interesting!

as for me, i ordered a side ($2.95) on its own! my amount was HUGE in my opinion - the spicy rice you see here is slightly less than half of the original portion! :O isn't that a lot?! it had quite an interesting taste. it was not really the chili-spicy type since my friend who totally can't take chili tucked into it happily, but rather the spice-spicy type. one of my friends commented that it kind of tastes like nasi briyani? not really in my opinion, but close enough i guess!

sooooooo, i highly recommend Barcelos over Nando's. only one gripe would be that while the food is awesomely tasty, it is also pretty salty >.< but it's good to eat once in awhile! xD

Barcelos

Vivocity #02-91

Tel.: +65 6376 9534

Daily 10am-10pm

Nando's

I’ve heard of Nando’s for a long time now! It’s specialty is in Portuguese flame-grilled chicken with its interesting Peri-Peri sauce. The bugis outlet is one of the most established ones in Singapore, and it’s found in various countries like Malaysia! The singapore outlets are supposedly the most expensive, for some unknown reason -.- I always felt that bugis was slightly troublesome to go to though, so I was really glad when an outlet opened in Plaza Singapura not too long ago! :D

Went there for dinner with my foodie buddies (: (:

I really really wanted to try the awesome-sounding grilled pumpkin and sweet chili salad ($12.50 with chicken) but it was sold out ): how disappointing. It sounded sooooo delicious! ): instead, I ordered the grilled chicken breast burger ($9.90). it consisted of a large grilled chicken burger in a portuguese roll. The chicken breast was pretty good, succulent and tender (: and I chose the mild peri-peri sauce to go with it. slightly spicy, with a tangy flavor, it was good, except I wish they were more generous with the sauce! ): the amount was rather pathetic. No matter though, because there were extra bottles of sauce on the side! (:

I added the garlic peri-peri to my chicken which was really delicious! Basically it’s the peri-peri sauce plus the additional flavor of GARLIC xD whee! Other sauces available are the hot and extra-hot peri-peri sauces! Anyway, back to my burger. The chicken was good, but I felt the bread was really tough! It was super difficult to cut with the knife :/

The Peri-Peri platter ($43.60) consists of 1 full chicken and 4 sidelines (serves 4 people). Haha I didn’t try this so no comment.

And in the spur of the moment, I tried my friend’s extra-hot peri-peri sauce chicken…and it turns out it wasn’t that spicy -.- LOL!!!! Seriously!!  I think the garlic peri-peri seemed spicier! Or maybe it was cos I slathered on the garlic sauce while I only dared to take a miniscule bit of the extra-hot one. But it really didn’t seem that spicy (and this was the same reaction from my friend who finished the entire chicken with it). it seemed more sour, rather than spicy. But it was pretty good anyway! (:

i must say the service was pretty good cos even though i could not make any reservation, the staff managed to quickly put together a long table for my party of 20 people! (: efficient!

Nando's

Plaza Singapura Level 4

Tel.: +65 6338 6555 (no reservations)

Other outlets at Bugis & Tanglin