Swiss Cottage - O2 Centre - Blaynos Review

I'll do a double review in this - both one of the restaurant and one of using the Nando's app to order food. I've been to this Nando's before but not reviewed it; and it's one of the more curiously named branches. It's located in The O2 centre on the A41 Finchley Road (which pre-dates the O2 dome in North Greenwich), just as you enter on the right hand side. There's a few shops in the centre, a Sainsbury's supermarket at the back of it and a Vue cinema upstairs. It's a stone's throw away from Finchley Road tube station (Jubilee/Met; turn left from station exit) and less than a 5min walk from Finchley Road & Frognal on the Overground (turn right from station exit). Swiss Cottage station is about a 5-10 minute walk further down from Finchley Road station. There's a decent sized car park at the back of the centre, next to the Sainsbury's.

I really like this branch, it has a nice high ceiling and a range of seating options, including a nice booth at the back and a long table in the middle. Some of the tables seem rather closely packed in the front half of the restaurant and the Christmas tree looked very sorry for itself next to the tills - which I consider a pretty major downpoint at this time of year! Good sized sauce station across from the tills can be a tad awkward to get to with the long table and I noticed they didn't have XXhot sauce when I went.

So anyway, part 2 of this double review regards the app, which I used to order my food during the lunch rush. I'd almost used it a few months ago but was put off by having to sign in and give my card details (time-consuming) - rather than do it like a normal phone order and pay in the branch (but I understand why it's like this, so that's not a complaint). Everything went well, ordered my chicken burger without mayo with peri chips and halloumi and headed over to collect it.

Upon arrival, there wasn't a Nandoca at the entrance to greet me, neither was there anyone en route to the till area - and it was quite difficult to grab anyone's attention. I'd ordered it for a 1.30 collection (about 45mins in advance) and arrived a couple of minutes after that - but I still had to wait a few minutes for my chips. The chicken was cooked well, the chips were very good and well salted but the halloumi could've been a bit bigger (clearly I was spoiled by my recent Covent Garden visit!)