Manchester - Parrs Wood - Ryan Review

Popped into this one on my way back from Old Trafford - and was very pleased I did!

It's located on the Parrs Wood complex, which is on the A34 just North of Cheadle/South of Didsbury. There's a bowling alley, cinema, laser tag (didn't realise they were still going!), a huge Virgin Active - and the usual restaurants on these sites (Frankie & Benny's, Pizza Hut, Chiquitos etc). There is a huge free car park right outside. The signs say "free for up to 4 hours", but I didn't see any machines to pay if you were going over that...

The restaurants are all in a strip and the outside is mostly blue panelling for all the restaurants, so the Nando's red writing is just attached onto this. There's also some outside seating for Nando's that is sectioned off by 4 foot high granite plant beds to try and make it relatively nice to sit outside... but not for me - just seems like you'd be staring at the traffic on the A34.

Inside it's much nicer. It's not particularly wide, but is quite long - with high ceilings. The front half is mostly 2-4 seater tables and chairs and then the back half (past the soft drink machine) is the bench and booth style seating, with further larger tables and chair round the corner from these. Nice layout as you can easily separate the groups from the couples etc.

With the ceilings being quite high, this leaves a lot of wall space to fill - and here they've done it well. On the first wall to your left are three very large, bright red paintings that are nice. The next wall has two enormous resin-type paintings (probably 10 x 10 foot each if not bigger) - and then into the back half there's an interesting piece of some beach huts that have been stuck on to create a 3D-type effect. Lots of tall pots with long stems/sticks coming out of these, plenty more sculptures and brass carvings on the very back wall and some nice light shades suspended on very long brackets from the wood panelled ceilings... The only very minor thing I would say, is that not all the tables seem to get the light inside and so a handful of them do actually seem quite dark (a few bulbs weren't working too) - but, nonetheless, very nice decor indeed!

All the staff were very friendly - from the host, to the cashier, to the girl who brought out food - all very polite. There was a new member being trained on the till too and all handled very professionally.

There were two of us who arrived at around 3:30pm and it was very quiet inside, maybe only 5 tables being used, so we were seated straight away, no wait at the till and the food for both of us came in 4 minutes!

It was really good too. A fresh batch of chips, piping hot succulent chicken and a full range of sauces available. A minor criticism is the rice tasted a little bland, but some Extra Extra Hot sauce changed that.

The toilets were nice and clean as well. A very good Nando's! :-)