SIDES By UK YouTubers Sidemen Is Opening In Bugis—Here’s Our Honest Review

SIDES Singapore will open at Bugis+ with Nashville fried chicken

I don’t know about you, but I tend to be sceptical of celebrity-owned food businesses. At their worst, they are absolute cash grabs, created to extract as much profit from their fans as possible. So naturally, I had my doubts about SIDES, the upcoming eatery in Bugis+ by famous UK YouTube group the Sidemen.

Image credit: @sidemen

The Sidemen consist of Internet personalities KSI, Miniminter, Vikkstar123 and more, whose collective YouTube channel has a staggering subscriber count exceeding 22 million. You may know them for their challenge videos and gaming content. SIDES, their food venture, has five outlets in the UK serving up double-dipped, double-coated fried chicken.

Though this Singapore outpost officially opens on 5 June 2025, I got a sneak preview of what they’ll be serving. Given my scepticism, I will be ignoring all the marketing and hype surrounding the eatery to bring you an honest take on the food itself.

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Food at SIDES

We got into the thick of it with the Chicken Burgers (from $12.90), and managed to try two varieties. First up was the Classic Burger, which comes packed with a large chicken patty, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and a sauce of your choice—we went with the Chipotle sauce.

While the chicken looked the part, it did not deliver in taste and texture. Just look at the insides of the patty above—it was so dry that one wonders if the poor chicken ever got enough to drink. Unfortunately, it was overcooked, and the batter wasn’t even crispy enough to make up for that fact.

Admittedly, the seasoning was serviceable, with sweet and savoury notes that blended decently with the smoky chipotle sauce and buttermilk marinade. The tomato slices also added some much-needed moisture to each bite.

The second burger I tried, the Ultimate Nashville Burger, has four spice levels. Since my colleague was a little under the weather, we got the second level, the Nashville Mild, to spare her the heat. “Mild” was an exaggeration, however, as the seasoning and sauces did not even register as spicy to me.

Again, the patty here was unforgivably dry, with a sad slice of cheese and pickles crowning the meat. And while Nashville chicken, with its intense seasoning and cayenne-tinged paste, tends to pack loads of flavour, here it was muted and lacked zing.

Both burgers were disappointing, but could the sides salvage the experience? Not really. The best of these was the Nashville Chicken Wings (from $10.50), which offered the only juicy chicken in the entire meal. That allowed the slightly piquant and savoury seasoning here to shine through.

The Nashville Tenders ($10.50) were also seasoned nicely, though it was again plagued by an absence of moisture. Still, it was nicely crispy, and was perhaps the dish that went best with the myriad of sauces available here—but more on that later.

I don’t know how they messed up the Waffle Fries (from $5.50), but they did. Each fry had a hard, almost floury exterior that was difficult to chew through, without the reward of fluffy insides.

Okay, now on to the sauces. SIDES has seven different sauces to go with their dishes, with each supposedly representing one of the seven Sidemen members. I appreciated the thought, but these sauces were undeniably underwhelming.

Take the Chocolate BBQ Sauce, for instance. The sweet and smoky barbecue flavour clashes with the bitter and earthy chocolate notes, leading to a genuinely baffling sauce that I did not sample more than twice.

Though the XIX Buffalo Sauce wasn’t peculiar, it was quite bland for a hot sauce, and could’ve used more of the piquant and tangy traits one hopes for with buffalo sauce.

Some sauces were pretty decent, namely the Chipotle, Louisiana, and Nashville Cheese sauces.

Unfortunately, the following milkshakes were way too sweet: the Chocolate Brownie ($9.90) and Salted Caramel ($9.90). I really don’t have much to say about these aside from the fact that they are painfully sugary.

Ambience at SIDES

SIDES looks more like a music video set than an eatery, and that’s a perfectly valid aesthetic choice. It’s not the most comfortable place to dine, but it does get the job done as a fast food-type establishment. Fans of the Sidemen will like the fact that the eatery also sells merch, such as Sidemen T-shirts and caps.

The eatery is a five-minute walk from Bugis MRT Station.

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SIDES is still in its opening phases, so perhaps they have yet to iron out some kinks. But as it is, the food is definitely lacking. So, unless you’re a huge fan of the Sidemen, approach this one with some caution.

For a hawker stall with actually good burgers, read our BlackGoat review. For a look at a popular local burger joint that reopened in Bugis, read our Burgs review.

Address: 201 Victoria Street, #03-25/26, Bugis+, Singapore 188067
Opening hours: TBD
Website
SIDES is not a halal-certified eatery but uses no pork or lard.

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Photos taken by Paula Formantes.
This was a media tasting at SIDES.