Edinburgh - Straiton Park - Ryan Review

Second Nando's of the day and onto Edinburgh's Straiton Park. It's located south of the city, just off the City Bypass. Straiton Retail Park is mainly a large retail park with large stores like IKEA, Dunelm, Argos, Halfords etc and is also home to a large Asda and Sainsbury's, with other eateries such as Frankie and Benny's and Subway. There's no train station nearby, so is one to get to by car or bus. There are thousands of free parking spaces across the park.

Arrived here at about 8:30pm - and despite it still being an incredible 16 degrees outside, as the mahoosive car park was nearly empty, I decided to head inside. The outside of Nando's is nicely decorated - with a large tiled/patterned heart to the left of the entrance and wooden slats dangling down over the windows. There are about a dozen tables outside too surrounded by planters.

Inside, as you enter the tills are right ahead of you. To the left of the entrance are a dozen or so table/chair sets, with large orange metal shades for the lighting and 10 or so large colourful canvas paintings on the walls. To the right of the entrance, the restaurant really opens up and a long banquette runs down the middle - with bright lime/green/pink upholstery - and 12 or so turquoise chairs making up table/chair sets. In the windows are another 6 or so circular tables, all big enough for 3 or 4 people. Above these tables are some funky light shades made of reclaimed wood - and also running along above the banquette is some red scaffold-type poles, connected to different angled corrugated metal with spot lights set within it. At the very back/right are four large square booths, each with bright red/white coverings, each with 40+ spotlights hanging down for lighting and each with a large colourful canvas on the walls.

The toilets are accessed from the back/right and are very clean and fresh with a blue/pale green theme and some corrugated metal clad onto the walls. There's also a bright orange corrugated metal sink. A very nicely decorated restaurant.

At this time of night, with the car park being so empty I didn't expect it to be that busy... and other than one table in use (who were already eating), I was the only person in there, so the staff did outnumber the customers - and was generally the same for the whole time I was in there. But... despite it being so quiet, the food took just under 30 minutes to come. I went for the half chicken, chips, rice and chargrilled veg. Sadly the chicken must have been under the heatlamps for nearly the whole 30 minutes as it was very, very dry and very chewy with quite a lot of burnt bits on the outside (the wing was completely cindered and couldn't be eaten). The rice and veg were both piping hot and moist - but my whole plate was brought over with both the rice and veg in their little dishes on the plate, so it meant only 11 chips were squeezed onto my plate. I did ask if I could cheekily have a few more chips... but nothing ever came. Disappointing bit of chicken for sure.

Staff were friendly, but just doing as expected.