Wood Green - BaronSamedi1980 Review

I travelled to RYN22inN22 from Sandy by train, getting the Great Northern train service from Sandy to Finsbury Park and then the Piccadilly line tube service from Finsbury Park to Wood Green which is only 3 stops away. Wood Green Nandos is located just across the street from the tube station and is very easy to find. The restaurant is in the same building as a Vue cinema with its entrance between a McDonald's restaurant and a Sainsbury’s local store. It is also worth noting that this is a Halal restaurant.

I arrived pretty much bang on time at 7:30pm, most of the other diners had already arrived and were seated upstairs in the balcony area together on one long table which overlooked the downstairs section of the restaurant. The first thing I noticed about where we were sitting was the glass blown orb shaped light fittings which I described as upside-down wine glasses - very nice and distinctive. Anyway after saying hello to my fellow Nandos reviewers I took my seat at the far end of the table and initially sat next to Pompey Ranger who I had not met before. After a little conversation he revealed (as his name suggests) he had travelled up all the way from Portsmouth to North London just to attend this Nandos dinner - clearly a very dedicated man!

We had the traditional raffle however I had completely forgotten about the raffle (it was only my second RYN dinner so I'm claiming I'm still new to it!) and had not brought any cash with me - a mistake that meant I was unable to purchase any additional tickets so quiet unsurprisingly I didn't win any of the raffle prizes. A mental note was made not to make this mistake again!

After the raffle we all trekked downstairs to order, the restaurant was fairly quiet and the was no queue at the tills before our group arrived. Initially the was only one till in operation but with 14 dinners from our table descending at the same time to place our various orders the staff rapidly opened up a further two tills so that our orders could be efficiently taken – impressive and very responsive to demand.

I placed my order of:
A soft drink.
Butterfly chicken (medium) with peri-peri chips and garlic bread.
A side order of halloumi.

Once again we were given a 20% discount on our meals which was very kind of the Wood Green staff and our food was prepared and brought to the table quickly in around 10 minutes (I forgot to time them as I normally do so this is an estimate) which was very impressive. Unfortunately the upstairs balcony area where we were sat did not have its own drinks dispenser and so a few of us had to go back downstairs again to fill our glasses with our beverages of choice.

Now while this was the first time I have ever ordered the halloumi it has been a menu item that I had been intending to try for a long time and this reviewer’s dinner, where it is a long standing favourite of many Nandos reviewers, seemed like the perfect opportunity to try it. In fact this revelation that I had not ordered the halloumi before seemed to shock a number of my fellow diners, as did my decision to bring some tomato ketchup to the table to dip my chips in which I all found quite amusing.

Anyway back to the halloumi which I found a very enjoyable and pleasantly addition to my normal Nandos food order. I particularly enjoyed placing the halloumi on top of my garlic bread which I found gave an interesting mix of flavour with the goats cheese nicely complementing the warm garlic butter. I'll defiantly be ordering the halloumi again!

My butterfly chicken was also very enjoyable, it seemed to be larger than normal and had been cooked well with plenty of medium sauce and all those wonderful flavours it brings were very evident. Similarly the chips were plentiful, well cooked and very tasty with their peri-peri seasoning. I particularly enjoyed dipping these in dollops of tomato ketchup *insert evil laugh here*.

After we had all cleared our plates the staff quickly cleared our table while we set the teams for the post dinner quiz. Now I wanted to say a word about the staff here at Wood Green Nandos who were very friendly, kind, helpful and attentive with their customer service throughout my visit. They were happy to take a couple of photos of our group, answer any questions we had about this Nandos and took the time to checked in on us a couple of times to make sure everything was ok and that we had everything we needed during our stay. A very good job all round and a big thank you from me to the Nandos Wood Green team and in particular to Henrique for whom this was his first day working for Nandos.

The quiz was very enjoyable and featured many topical news stories from recent days and although my team did quite well on this section we came 3rd overall after struggling to identify the pictured Nandos locations.

Most of the dinners left following the quiz however I had an hour to kill before my train home so I opted to stay with Gerry and Jackie and enjoy a desert. Those of you who read a few of my Nandos reviews will not be surprised to hear that I once again choose the white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake which is a long standing favourite of mine. Even though most of the dinners had already left I was still given a 20% discount on my desert order which I had not expected but very much appreciated. The Cheesecake was very quickly brought up to the table and was a little soft with a very intense (more so than normal) raspberry flavour which somewhat overwhelmed the creaminess.

Before leaving the restaurant I visited the Gents toilets which are also upstairs and found them to be clean and well maintained.

So would I visit Wood Green Nandos again? Absolutely. I could not fault the restaurant which is incredibly easy to get to being directly across the road from the Wood Green tube station. As previously mentioned the staff were friendly and helpful throughout my visit and coped very well with our large group of dinners while the food was also top notch. My only suggestion for possible improvement would be to locate a second drinks dispenser upstairs but this is very much a minor point. Well done Wood Green Nandos, I'll defiantly be seeing you again.