St Helens - Pompey Ranger Review

This store is close to the heart of town attached to a Cineworld cinema, Weatherspoons pub and Pizza Hut, its also near the Citadel arts centre, St Helens college and the Range shop. Parking is quite easy as there is a small car park behind the cinema for the use of the 4 conjoined businesses, but further to this is the large St Helens college car park which is free and open for use between 6pm and 3am on school days and between 10am and 3am during school holidays. There is a guard on site and cctv and with no hight restriction it felt very safe to park my minibus here.

The store looks impressive from the outside with a double height circular glass wall complete with colourful blinds and potted trees outside.

Inside it is even more impressive with a central round booth of table 1 with what resembles "paddy's wigwam" rising into its own roof void, round this are several 2 person tables and another circular wall which provides a backing for soft benching in the round and more tables. On the right is a series of private booths and at the back is the serving area with decorative pipework. There is a true abundance of artwork and colour, even the wooden parquet flooring is colourful. The beverage and sauce area was spotlessly clean and held an abundance of different sauce bottles so no having to hunt on other tables. There is a seating area on the left of the tills which I presume is for takeaway customers and awaiting tables on busy days.

The toilets were through the doorway at back with a large spacious disabled toilet on the ground floor surrounded with artwork and statues. A stair well with a barrier blocking the top led down stairs with more artwork possibly to a second floor? The stairs also led up past more electrical conduit artwork to the spacious toilets on the top floor with more artwork and a large communal sink which connected into both male and female toilets under the level of the sink so you could be washing your hands on the other side. Toilets were clean and bright. The male made use of recycled doors on the two cubicles either side and a round window between the two urinals, the 3 different areas made use of coloured different brick tiles with yellow, blue and green. These are probably the best toilets I have seen in a Nandos.

The service was friendly and the chatty and chirpy waitress not only enquired what heat I wanted my chicken but also my corn on the cob which is always music to my ears as I love lemon corn. The meal took a short while to come out but when it did the corn was cut in two as I like it and deliciously lemony; the chips were hot, well cooked and very plentiful; and the chicken despite a burnt wing tip (the one reason its not 5 out of 5) was succulent, juicy, hot and delicious. It was a top class meal fit for a king. The staff didn't forget about me either, checking if I wanted more sides and if everything was ok and enquiring about coffee and dessert when cleaning the table. They also said good bye as I left and managed to be smiley and friendly to all their customers.

If you had to take a Nando's virgin to their first experience you wouldn't go wrong to bring them to this store. I hope to return one day and perhaps get to explore the mysterious downstairs.