nandos - c or d

Yeah, Nandos is like next to the cinema when you're going for a quick bite to eat and the cinema. We don't all live in London where you have 8 zillion eateries within spitting distance of wherever you want to have your fun.

(I have been to Nandos precisely twice - once because it's near my work and we wanted somewhere cheap that we could get in and out of in an hour, and once because it was near the cinema. It was OK both times. Nothing great, but it fulfilled its requirement in both cases)

people go to nandos cos they are everywhere, they are pretty tasty and it isn't very expensive really jeez.

I've always thought it was just a little too expensive for what you get on the plate/tray but I suppose it could be worse - we live in a world where there is Subway.

yeah i agree. would rather hear suggestions for amazing chicken places that are better than nandos than this boring snobbery plz

I've been repping hugely for Safadi in Holborn, which looks like branch one of a future chain, and they do great Lebanese shawarma wraps or felafel, plus quite amazing skinny chips for £5.

I'm not a massive Nando's fan tbh and I'm not anti-fast food at all. The food seems pretty one note and snoresome.

^this. i'll eat any old shit but have visited a nandos twice and come away saying 'never again' both times. i know its a middle class cliche, but as far as 'family friendly' chain restaurants go, give me pizza express any old time (tho man are they fucking expensive these days)

pizza express make some nice pizzas yeah, and Ask seems to have gone to shit, at least round here

tbrr i haven't been to a nandos since

it's the principle of the thing tho

+ ppl i knew repped for it

since 2002

wtf It is WAY too expensive for what you get! 3 feeble chicken wings for £3, 1/2 chicken for over £6, £5 for the most basic burger they do, £3 for a tiny, tiny stubbie of crap beer. For bog standard fast food it's an absolute fucking rip off.
Such and awful feeding-trough get-em-in-get-em-out set-up they've got going on. Horrendous atmosphere in there always. What a shit house.

wd take KFC over these any day altho both of them are shit at doing chips and KFC need to start selling buckets of just skin

"KFC need to start selling buckets of just skin"

yes - if i could get nandos chicken (which now is virtually tasteless) with kfc skin on top it would be great

i might start making this myself actually

RIP nandos of the late 90s

starting to hate nandos for how they keep manufacturing desire in me for their chicken

Would smash.

lot of fake nandos around east london now

wow, nando's has been going since late 90s. think glasgow got it about 2 or 3 years ago. been once. the hot sauce was dece, sweet potato mash in a restaurant that is effectively equivalent to frankie and benny's or whatever was also appreciated.

used to be standard that the chips would have nandos chilli powder on them but not any longer - theyre slipping

rice is still decent however

waiting for nandos to take a few cues from pret and start doing retro chicken

"retro chicken"

lol

what's that? an egg?

the idea that anyone would willingly eat at a nando's after they had left Luton is incomprehensible

Now, its chicken is the urban youth food of choice and, as if to prove it, I have two quite intense phone conversations about Nando's

Ha ha that Guardian piece. I'm not sure anyone should be having "intense phone conversations" related to chicken restaurants unless this is a code for something.

Nando's would get fucking slaughtered in Montreal though. It's a shame because I admire the ability and efficiency of Portuguese restaurants that are run as businesses over those Portuguese restaurants that are run as Portuguese restaurants. Just once I would like to eat Portuguese-style chicken without unnecessary wait times, obligatory devotional rituals to Benfica FC, domestic violence, or rudimentary home-based wine production.

i just reopened this thinking it was 'nachos: c or d', is there a nachos thread somewhere i can read instead

starting to hate nandos for how they keep manufacturing desire in me for their chicken

― titchy (titchyschneiderMk2), Monday, August 8, 2011 8:03 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

there is literally a whole 'seinfeld' episode w/ this as its plot

I have both rational & irrational reasons for hating on Nandos, of which, more later, but I do derive some comfort from the fact that when it came on the scene here in the UK it was the topic of a heated argument between me and a Spanish colleague, which was one of those brilliant arguments when you're in fact BOTH right but neither backs down. Eventually we threw in the towel and consulted Google for resolution. I *knew* Nandos was S. African, while, at the same time, she *knew* it was Portuguse. Turns out that the people who founded the chain were indeed South African and it was founded in SA but one founder was of Mozambique Portuguse origin and the chicken is cooked in a Portuguese style. Thus was five or so years before I went to Portugal and learnt about the batshit-insane legend of the Rooster of Barcelos which gives the chain its logo.

Thanks for making me crave a Nando’s :D

Anyway, the rational reason I don't like Nandos is that I don't think it's very good. Both the decor and what they serve...a really unimaginative menu of (iirc) three levels of hotness of chicken and salads and that's about it, together with the suspicion that the hotness is simply there to conceal the poor quality of the chicken beneath.

That said, my views may be out of date...I only went once, to the first one in Oxford that opened, in a converted pub in Cowley Road around the time the argument I mentioned above occurred (indeed, the convo may have been prompted by that). It was a work lunchtime do, and we only chose Nandos coz the chicken's halal and one of my colleagues was Muslim.

As for the irrational reasons for me hating it...its ubiquity (rather like Subway, do they really need that many in a single town?), the fact they often take over old pubs, and the fact that when a scurrilous hospital employee "borrowed" my mum's card from the ward safe and went on a spending spree with it, before putting it back there, that was where they spent half of the money!

I think the peri peri sauce is just not that special, in fact none of their sauces are anything below C-tier

anything *above* C-tier!

I definitely don’t think it’s god-tier food and I wish there was something half as good as my rose-tinted memories of peri-peri chicken I can recall from one childhood holiday in Portugal… but as a twice yearly hangover helper it hits the spot for me - but then again I’ll enjoy almost any barbecued chicken and it is remarkably consistent.

The sauces are very blunt and broad, but that isn’t going to stop my chucking loads of it on my plate :D