Nandos Review

Overall Rating

Some friendly staff.

A lot. Please read my critique.

I was attracted to Nando's being a bit of a foody and excited by this potential authentic Portuguese eating experience. The exterior of the restaurant looked appealing; the Portuguese cockerel, the logo for Nando's insinuated an awareness of traditional Portugal, so in I went.

We were seated by a friendly waitress, the drink spillage on the table seeming to evade her vision. We were given the Nando's debriefing of 'have you been to Nando's before?' where we had explained to us that we must collect our own cutlery and sauces and order our food at the bar area, where once cooked the food would be delivered to us. This self service seemed rather more a way of the staff cutting back on work rather than a quaint little feature. I ordered a double chicken fillet burger, hot (there was the option to choose the heat level of the spice), my companion a piece of piri piri chicken and a green salad, described seemingly deceptively as fresh and encaptivating, or words to those effect. The menu could talk the talk. The salad infact appeared to be full of wilted outer leaves, day old red pepper and rotten radish. When asked to replace the salad, the waitress (different this time) apparently grumpily hurried the salad away, replacing it in near an instant with an identical salad. It was surprising when asked for a refund the unquestioning willingness of the staff member to refund the salad. The chicken burger I received looked reasonably presentable. On taste, the heat rating I had chosen [hot] lived up to it's description. Although it was far too hot for my pallette, the sauce was actually quite nice, lime being the predominant flavour. The chicken fillet itself was dry and run of the mill, not what I'd have expected from a restaurant with such traditional implications where, In my opinion, the quality of chicken would be of highest priority.

I feel this restaurant is a bit of an Insult to Portugese food, the niche for this type of dining filled by such, in my opinion, a shoddy restaurant. The restaurant I visited was in the centre of Guildford. A lovely, friendly town so I'm finding it hard to put this terrible eating experience down to a bad branch of Nando's. The food was edible for me, in my opinion one of the restaurants biggest faults is disguising itself as a much better place than it is.