Nando's

Rating: 2

We ate dinner here in July 2023.

Halloumi burger
Chicken tenders
Peri Peri chips
Cheesy pita bites

Whoa Nelly, was it smoky in Nando’s. We opened the door and walked into a room full of lung clogging smoke and it did not let up the whole time we were there. Later on in the piece the staff opened the door, but that wasn’t nearly enough. This was Courtney place Nando’s which is quite large, smoking it out was actually a rather impressive feat.

Despite the kitchen being on fire, the dining experience was unfortunately not on fire. They encourage you to order with your phone and a QR code at your table. And while that’s not a problem in and of itself, the menu on the table doesn’t quite marry up with the order of the phone menu, and a few things were just straight up missing. It was clearly just their standard takeaway menu, but rather than saying pickup or delivery you say I’m at table eleven. We don’t think it would have taken a lot to switch up the table menus to match the app, or the app to match the tables. And would it have killed them to edit things a little so that dine in customers didn’t still have to give their full name, phone number and email. What is that information for? You know where I am, table eleven! Plus, where was the cutlery. We think most people eating sauce covered grilled chicken would take a fork if offered, which we weren’t. We did see other tables using cutlery, but we don’t know where they got it from. It’s also worth noting that some people ordered at the counter while we were there, but the menu instructions specifically tell you to order using the QR code, so that’s apparently how they want things to run.

Into the food. The cheesy pita was the best of it, hot and soft with a good amount of garlic. The cheese could have been more flavourful and it was a little oily, but still very enjoyable.

The chips were dry as hell. We don’t mean they needed a sauce, we mean the actual potato in the chips itself was dry. Thank god for the peri peri sprinkle otherwise those chips would’ve been just plain bad.

Speaking of dry, the tenders were next. They hadn’t reached the chips level of dryness, but the chicken was unfortunately overdone. The peri peri sauce slathered all over them was okay, we got mild but aren’t going to be going out if our way to purchase a bottle

The burger was a disappointment. Anytime a halloumi burger is on offer you have our attention. But they’d screwed it up by badly undercooking the halloumi. Instead of being juicy and gooey it was just a couple of rubbery bricks. And the bun (we went with the Portuguese roll option, which is very similar or the same as a ciabatta) was also dry. The chicken, with BBQ sauce this time, was okay as was the rest of the burger.

This was business Andy’s first time at Nando’s. Based off tonight, he won’t be pushing to go back.