St Pauls - One New Change - Lee Mason Review

This Nandos is in the Heart of the city and just behind St Paul's Cathedral in a swanky new looking upmarket shopping complex. It benefits from being so close to the Mansion house tube station and good bus links though I think due to its inner city location parking would be some what of an issue. The store is on the 1st floor and gets your attention from the outside, something it fails to do from the inside.

The staff are very friendly as you enter and swiftly showed us to our table, though there are language barriers being understood. The store is bland, a mix of utilitarian space age industrial meets soviet collective cafeteria. No discernible art work what so ever the Beverage area was the only bit that came close with its bright yellow space odyssey surroundings. My mate and I both agreed whilst we like orange we hated the tacky orange plastic chairs. The store was immaculately clean which is one positive point. You know a store lacks character when everyone comments the bright red Urinals are the best artistic feature.

Ordering was a chore, my mate wanted a extra pot of the peri peri salt as he likes his chips smothered, Portsmouth this isn't an issue here they flogged him a container of that chip salt which is nothing like the real thing before he realised so he had to go back and buy the peri salt he wanted.

I wanted to use a stamp card so was buying a large chips and beverage to meet the required spend, the lady serving me kept insisting on putting two regular chips on rather than the large I asked for saying it was the same thing. Its not a large is 3.95 where as two 2.15 regs come to 4.30 and you get less. She had entered it through the till and gone to cash whilst I was still holding the money in my hand so had to argue it was an over charge of 35p. I got 30p back and gave up on the final 5p as too much effort.

When the food came, the large chips wasn't as large as some I've known but was at least very well cooked. The chicken was nice large succulent portions but was charred on the outside, something neither of us wanted, especially when it renders the wings non enjoyable and means you peel the skin off rather than enjoying its spicy flavour. They did come back and were friendly in checking but after all the arguing at the tills and my mates struggle to get his peri salt fix we couldn't be bothered with prolonged discussion on charred chicken skin. Especially as like I mentioned before the chicken was massive and succulent under the skin and we both felt stuffed on our half chickens.

The toilets were very dark which I don't know if its to discourage drug use or some other reason but gave the feeling of walking into a dungeon, they were very clean and did feature the impressive urinals though.

Seems this store excels in some areas whilst failing in others so I am not sure what I overall think of the place but I would return if back in the area, Final word NANDO'S PLEASE BUY THIS POOR STORE SOME ART WORK SO THEY DON'T FEEL AS BARREN AS THE INTERIOR OF A BIG YELLOW STORAGE CENTRE.