Bristol - Cribbs Causeway - Ryan Review

After the disappointment of my Nando's earlier in the day, I was really hoping to get my peri-peri fix - and so visited this Cribbs Causeway branch and overall, was very pleased.

This particular branch was closing at 6pm on the Bank Holiday, so made sure I was sat down by 5pm. It's located in The Mall on the Cribbs Causeway Retail Park... which is gigantic. The Mall itself is very big, but the Retail Park as a whole is enormous: Supermarkets, Vue Cinema, a bowling alley, B&Q, Sport Direct etc make for a massive complex outside of The Mall. There's also 7,000+ free parking spaces, which is a bonus. Simply head for the signs that say "Parking 2,000 spaces - M&S / John Lewis" as this is where The Mall and Food Court is.

The Food Court itself houses plenty of choice for eating: Pizza Hut, Carluccios, Yo Sushi, Cafe Rouge and others, so Nando's has to be on top of its game here. Nando's is actually on the very top tier, so offers good views out to the Bristol countryside and into/down onto the rest of the restaurants/some of The Mall - making it also very bright inside.

As with the one earlier in the day, there were quite a few empty, clean tables - but we were advised there was a 10 minute wait. There's a long balcony just outside the restaurant which actually has a dozen Nando's tables here, with about 4 occupied, so not sure why the rest of these were not being filled. Anyway, gave me chance to check out the decor.

As with a lot of shopping centre restaurants, you lose an entire wall because the seating just looks straight out over the centre... so the remaining space needs to decorated nicely... which it was. A nice mixture of large canvas paintings and smaller ones dotted about the place, with plenty of pots/plants and other sculptures positioned throughout the restaurant. Nice lighting too - and generally dust free! :-)

There was no wait to order - and the food came in just over three minutes and this time, two half chickens, rice and chips... all cooked very nicely indeed. The Fino chips and Fino Rice were also massive portions, a sharp contrast to the Nantgarw sizes. The chicken was also very hot, smothered in sauce - the chips were hot and crispy and the rice was flavoursome and moist. There was no Extra Extra Hot table sauce, but I asked the waitress who brought the food over and she came straight back with a little tub of it. Good stuff. Toilets were very clean too, with a fully stocked soap dispenser! :-)

The only downside was when we left, there were five Nando's staff gathered by the till/entrance that we had to walk through... and not one of them said thanks or goodbye!