Is it the fact that, whether you study the Bible, Quran, Torah, or Bhagavad Gita, you can still happily eat chicken? Is it that the high chairs and bottomless frozen yogurt remind everyone of those post-swimming pool children's parties we enjoyed before booze and records got the better of us? Perhaps it is all of this. I watch an old man in a zip-up, snowflake-patterned cardigan pour mango and lime sauce over his sweet potato wedges, chatting to his I assume granddaughter as the pale orange condiment swamps the plate.
You can only imagine that, back in when South African entrepreneur Robert Brozin visited the Portuguese takeaway Chickenland and promptly bought the place for 80, Rand, this was precisely what he envisaged for the future: a family-friendly low-stress restaurant serving up just enough choice of just-familiar-enough dishes to get mass market appeal under the guise of individuality. Which is a long way from the self-conscious, meme-generating descriptions of internet fame: "it's like when you and the lads have just landed in heathrow after a week getting wankered in magaluf.
Someone probably got 'chris' tattooed on their arse cheek cos chris is an absolute fuckin ledge. You ride the bantmobile all the way back into town for a cheeky nandos before everyone goes home so their mums can wash their ladsontour shirts you all had made specially.
Fuckin top notch. But what's next for the crowing red rooster of the British high street? With celebrity endorsement by the likes of Rihanna, Kanye, and Oprah Winfrey, there also comes a certain shelf-life of cool. It is a fundamental part of the British psyche that, following a meteoric rise in popularity such as the one seen by Nando's, there will come a fall from grace. Perhaps the perfectly manicured woman behind the counter who takes my order will become embroiled in a KFC-style health and safety bathing-in-the-sink scandal or the sheer number of Nando's there are 11 restaurants in Manchester alone will reach the critical point of ubiquity and suffer a McDonald's-style loss in profit and pulling power.
Then there are the thousands of chickens bred in high-density sheds for the sake of all those chicken pitas—could this image finally puncture the image of the fun-loving red rooster? They will continue to glaze, roast, and fry chickens in their thousands. They will hold fast on an ocean of bottomless Coke Zero and Naughty Natas custard tarts. They will keep expanding the menu with foodie favourites like quinoa salads, halloumi burgers, half avocados, and chicken livers until Wholefoods and Planet Organic crumble into dust.
Only time, of course, will tell. Time I personally am choosing to spend lying under the tap of a Nando's bottomless frozen yogurt machine, in a pair of sports shorts and an adult nappy.
Illustration by Sophie Bamford. Sign In Create Account. This story is over 5 years old. But how did a mediocre fried chicken chain make such a dent on British food? As for the staff, the PR assures me that Nando's is keen to offer its workers opportunities to advance themselves, many grillers and waiters moving up the ranks to managerial status.
All too good to be true? Though it opened in the UK way back in , Nando's still feels like the new kid on the block. It has taken its time to make an impression and we're still excited by it, not bored yet. Still it's no stranger to bad press: the most serious being when one customer was shot by another, in this very Shepherd's Bush branch, in The victim subsequently died. In Shepherd's Bush, at the counter, I ask the community officers about the shooting.
One shrugs. It could have been anywhere. It's not like the guy was shot for his chicken, was he? Nando's origins lie much further afield than west London: not in Portugal, but in South Africa.
The chicken was the best they'd ever tasted, they thought, and promptly bought the joint. They renamed it Nando's, after Fernando, a Portuguese national. Despite its hoo-ha about happy staff and customer service, it's Nando's peri-peri sauce that is its basic selling point. It's a version of the piri-piri marinade used on chicken in Portuguese restaurants the world over, which was created by Portuguese settlers in Africa: they used local chillis Nando's favours chillis from Mozambique , known as pili-pili in Swahili.
One happy online user described the marinades thus: "Turns ordinary, boring, everyday chicken into a Festival of Chicken, complete with chicken-skin streamers and party giblets". They work in documentary photography and have been to Nando's in Africa. What's the difference? Bryan thinks that the London Nando's are "a little louder, bigger and more open. And a little more uppity [upmarket]. You can count on it being consistently good.
Differences do exist. In South Africa, Nando's is seen as more of a takeaway; it wasn't until Nando's in the UK began to emphasise its restaurants over its take-outs that the brand really took off here. Also, in South Africa, as in Australia, another huge Nando's market, Nando's is marketed as a jokey brand. It does a lot of TV advertising, and its ads are often reprimanded as being in poor taste: a campaign featuring a Spitting Image -style puppet of Julius Malema, president of the ANC youth league, was removed at the behest of Malema's lawyers.
Actually, to my eyes, the ads are dodgy, with black Africans often represented as being stupid or naive. In contrast, in the UK, Nando's has almost no advertising presence at all. I ask Malcolm Pinkerton, a retail analyst at Datamonitor Group, why it hasn't bothered. What's unique about Nando's in the UK, however, is its status with the city youth. They would be, even if they weren't successful. They are typical Nando's customers, with parents or grandparents born outside the UK who have brought up their offspring to have a spicier palate.
Social and confident, happy to hang out with mates, these kids are easy with eating out and expect to be treated well when they do. Nando's ticks all their boxes. Now, its chicken is the urban youth food of choice and, as if to prove it, I have two quite intense phone conversations about Nando's, with Chipmunk and then Tulisa from N-Dubz.
Chipmunk, born in Edmonton, north London and named best hip-hop artist at last year's Mobo awards, tells me he often eats at his local branch of Nando's in Finsbury Park. He favours the wings, medium spicy: "It's the closest thing you can get to jerk chicken, and if chicken isn't Caribbean or Nando's, I can't mess with it. It's not too booji [bourgeois]. Even though you do get posh people in Nando's, it doesn't outlaw any social class.
While researching this piece, I'd heard stories about a Nando's "gold card", awarded to a very small number of extra-special customers and entitling them to free meals. This mythical piece of plastic is so valued, so sought after that, initially, Nando's PR would not confirm its actual existence. It turned out they've been having problems with people faking the cards, or passing the cards between each other.
Chipmunk, though, along with Tinchy Stryder, is one of the privileged few. Tulisa Contostavlos, 21, Camden Town-born actress and singer with double-platinum hip-hop influenced pop group N-Dubz, however, does not have a card.
Which seems ridiculous, given just how often she eats there. I interview her in the middle of the N-Dubz national tour and she appears to spend most of her off-stage time in Nando's. I like the texture of the chicken, it's not too crispy, not too soggy.
Anyway, I put some peri-peri sauce in there and I might pop in a few chips. And then, when dinner time comes, I have a quarter lemon and herb chicken with spicy rice. And chips — normal, not spicy.
You have to get ketchup — one teaspoon per chip. I drink Sprite with it. Even when we're not on tour I eat there at least once a week. For non-drinkers, or those who wish their children to unleash merry hell on the rest of the diners, there are free refills on the soft drinks.
A bit like at Pizza Hut. A hot half-chicken fresh, tick; British, tick; not free range, big-fat-red-mark-fury-anger-what-the-hell-are-they-thinking? Though not actively bad there is little to recommend it. Peri-Peri chips are a disaster. The spiced salt, instead of being mixed through the BK-standard fries, has been dumped on top and just sort of clings to the grease, so the few chips I eat are cloaked in spice and salt and really quite unpleasant.
A couscous salad with chicken is bad picnic food — anaemic pieces of protein on a too-sweet and too-dry lunchbox salad. I defy you to find a worse outside of a school canteen. My friend Tobie says it's like the mashed potato he makes. Corn on the cob lacks sweetness and is a touch overcooked but is OK.
Mediterranean salad comes without smoked paprika dressing and without cucumber, whose watery coolness would have been welcome among the continuing battery of spice and salt.
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