Barcelos, Novena Square

Restaurants serving the African and Portuguese-inspired flame-grilled peri peri chicken have been sprouting up all over the island. There's Nando's, AJ's and Barcelos. We were at Novena Square and chanced upon Barcelos on the second floor of Square 2 and so, we decided to join in the peri peri chicken food fad.

The chicken here was good, even if we didn't have very high expectations due to the lack of a dinner crowd. The restaurant was only a quarter-filled when we had dinner on a weekday night. But the side dishes were disappointing, they were overcooked and poorly seasoned.

We ordered the Supa Peri Peri Half Chicken Meal ($21.90) with 2 side dishes. The chicken was unexpectedly hot, having been coated liberally with the supa peri sauce. This resulted in a slow burning peppery heat due to the usage of Africa's version of our chili padi, the piri piri. Chicken was juicy and tender, well flavoured from the purported 24-hours marinating.



The sides didn't fare as well. A heavy hand with the salt resulted in a sodium-laden Sauteed Potato & Mushrooms. Also, this should have been called "mostly potatoes and 3 mushrooms", there were only 3 puny white button mushroom slices.




The Grilled Corn on the Cob was overtly-grilled, so it ended up being dry and hard. This was awful.







Barcelos
10 Sinaran Drive
#02-65
Novena Square
Tel: 6219 9408
Open daily 10am to 9pm
Website: www.barcelos.com.sg/

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