Holborn - Adam Nicol Review

Me and my girlfriend went to this branch on a Friday night about 9pm, It was really busy, but that’s to be expected of a central London branch, It was really hard to find thanks to the new Nando’s app that sent us in completely the wrong direction, we ended up walking in a huge circle before discovering It’s practically over the road from Holborn tube station, Bad Nando’s app, bad. So by the time we got there we were hungry and excited.

Speed of Service – Though it was really busy we got seated immediately, though the tables for two were very close together. There was a small queue to order when we went up, and I nearly got pushed in front of, but we got served quickly and went to sit back down, but there was no extra-extra hot sauce, so we asked a waiter and he said he’d bring some over… We never saw him again.
The food arrived in less than 10 minutes, but because we were sharing it came on a huge plate and since there were no plates on the thing, so we had to ask a staff member, again and eventually he brought some over and we finally got to eat, the food was nearly cold by then. There seemed to be only one staff member, who was a trainee, actually doing work, the poor guy, me and my girlfriend felt sorry for him. 2/5 for Speed of Service, because of the problems.

Food – The food was nothing special; we got a free whole chicken with chips and garlic bread, and as I said it was nearly cold by the time we got some plates and we were really angry because of the long wait for plates, but the chicken was ok, pretty average, we had lots of chips with plenty of Peri-salt on but the chicken was really greasy and it went all over the chips leaving them soggy and inedible, not very pleasant so we didn’t end up having that big a portion, the garlic bread was good though, cooked just how I like it, 2/5 for food because of the ruined chips.

Friendliness of Staff – As I said there only seemed to be one poor trainee doing all the work in the branch, he was the only person who bothered to bring us over plates and he looked really stressed, I’d like to give this guy a 5/5 but unfortunately the rest of the staff were awful, the greeter went to greet us, then told another staff member that he was about to leave, but he still showed us to our seats, and there was the waiter who we asked for Extra-extra hot sauce and never saw again, this made us angry. So I’ll have to give the staff a 2/5 for friendliness, it would be a 1/5 if it wasn’t for the poor trainee.

Décor, it was a pretty cool branch, I liked the layout a big rectangular shape with lots and lots of booths with comfy chairs, but unfortunately we were on a cramped table for two. There wasn’t much decoration in there with a lot of wasted wall space, but it looked really new and refurbished, it gave off a general atmosphere of being clean and modern, I was a bit too angry to really take in the décor though, so 4/5 for it.

Overall this was quite a disappointing visit from a branch that gave off a good first impression, I may return here in future though; I think it has good potential to be a high scoring branch.