Why hasn't Nandos taken off here?

Tabnabs

Nando's are coming to Dun Laoghaire. The Harbour Bar on Marine Road closed to be turned into the latest fast food offering...

Rasmus

Tabnabs wrote: »

Nando's are coming to Dun Laoghaire. The Harbour Bar on Marine Road closed to be turned into the latest fast food offering...

Good. DL needs more 'family' places other than MCDs or Burger King.

Mike Litoris

I think the bigger question is why it is so big elsewhere. You could kinda forgive the food if it was a cheap fast food joint but portions and prices are laughable considering the garbage served.

BhoscaCapall

Stopped reading this thread when posts started claiming people only ate there "cos it's cool".

Dear lord.

RandolphEsq

Crackbird trumps Nandos any day. What a place!

yosser hughes

BhoscaCapall wrote: »

Stopped reading this thread when posts started claiming people only ate there "cos it's cool".

Dear lord.

Yet you're still here:rolleyes:

Why do you care if a chain of restaurants is popular or not?
My impressions of it is that it's way overpriced for what it is; in this country at least.Then again, most things are, in dear old Ireland.

theteal

Tabnabs wrote: »

Nando's are coming to Dun Laoghaire. The Harbour Bar on Marine Road closed to be turned into the latest fast food offering...

[OT] that's a shame, is it closed long? I worked in DL for ~3 years. I used to enjoy my lunch in there on a Saturday while watching the 2nd half of the early kick off epl match. Properly good food and excellent staff (although, I didn't really like the manager, can't explain why though) [/OT]

Toto Wolfcastle

I like the wings. It is too expensive for what you get but my husband likes it so we go there for him. Funnily enough though one opened up near us in the last few months and we've only been a couple of times. We used to go more often.

ceegee

For what you get I'd rather head to mcd's and get a chicken legend meal, half the price and as tasty imo. Its fast food dressed up as something better to justify the rip off prices

It's just not that nice. Especially for the price. The chips are awful frozen things. The burgers are nice enough, but way too expensive for what they are. I have no idea why it's so popular in the UK, especially London, where there are countless better, cheaper places to eat. I really only eat in Nandos at Euston or other places where I'm on my way to get a train and looking for something hot and quick.

yabadabado

BhoscaCapall wrote: »

This is Galway's most popular kebab/chipper
http://www.thecharcoalgrill.ie/images/dine_in_menu.pdf

€11 doner, €12.50 shish

icludes chips

ballsymchugh

Livia Scarce Oncology wrote: »

It's just not that nice. Especially for the price. The chips are awful frozen things. The burgers are nice enough, but way too expensive for what they are. I have no idea why it's so popular in the UK, especially London, where there are countless better, cheaper places to eat. I really only eat in Nandos at Euston or other places where I'm on my way to get a train and looking for something hot and quick.

i'm in a run of the mill county town in the UK and i don't get it either. it always seems to be jammers over the weekends. get the feeling a lot of young ones use it as a 'cheap but not that cheap that she'll be disgusted with me' option for first dates!
the street that it's on is full of generic restaurants that you'd get in any other town in the UK, or more than likely, in some cinema/bowling/shopping centre thing built on the edge of town.
there are a few ethnic restaurants around that would be so much better than them if people walked around the corner.

give me an itica chipper over nandos any day.

nc6000

I tried Nandos once in Swords. We weren't impressed with the food at all and it was pretty expensive for what we got. I wouldn't bother going back.

BhoscaCapall

yosser hughes wrote: »

Yet you're still here:rolleyes:

What's that got to do with it? I said I'd stopped reading, not stopped posting

Why do you care if a chain of restaurants is popular or not?
My impressions of it is that it's way overpriced for what it is; in this country at least.Then again, most things are, in dear old Ireland.

I don't particularly care, I was just wondering since they're really popular in England. As you and many other people have said they find the Irish ones overpriced which is a perfectly good answer to my query. If they're overpriced then I've no interest in going there since one of the main draws was reasonably good food for reasonably cheap prices.

Bateman

BhoscaCapall wrote: »

Stopped reading this thread when posts started claiming people only ate there "cos it's cool".

Dear lord.

At least 3 or 4 Premier League footballers that I am aware of, with millions of twitter followers between them, have been known to tweet about eating in Nando's - make of that what you will, but if you are honestly denying that this would make demographics such as 1. impressionable teenagers and 2. 18-30 yo lads eat in the place (a high proportion of the customers whenenver I've been in) then you're simply wrong.

vard

Feck Nandos. I want to see a Pret a Manger open up here.

reprazant

Another overpriced, bland sandwich shop?

Oh yeah, can't wait for that.

Mike Litoris

vard wrote: »

Feck Nandos. I want to see a Pret a Manger open up here.

Feck that. We need Applebees over here!!

Tabnabs

theteal wrote: »

[OT] that's a shame, is it closed long? I worked in DL for ~3 years. I used to enjoy my lunch in there on a Saturday while watching the 2nd half of the early kick off epl match. Properly good food and excellent staff (although, I didn't really like the manager, can't explain why though) [/OT]

Closed before Christmas. It was dead in there most weekdays.

BhoscaCapall

Bateman wrote: »

At least 3 or 4 Premier League footballers that I am aware of, with millions of twitter followers between them, have been known to tweet about eating in Nando's - make of that what you will, but if you are honestly denying that this would make demographics such as 1. impressionable teenagers and 2. 18-30 yo lads eat in the place (a high proportion of the customers whenenver I've been in) then you're simply wrong.

It is probably part of the reason it's become extremely popular, but Nandos was already very popular in the UK long before Twitter so it is an irrelevant point really.

vard wrote: »

Feck Nandos. I want to see a Pret a Manger open up here.

lol we have a whole thread here saying Nandos is too expensive. Can't see Pret doing too well!

vard

reprazant wrote: »

Another overpriced, bland sandwich shop?

Oh yeah, can't wait for that.

99P filter coffee beats any of the overpriced muck you get in starbucks! Although food does cost a fair whack unfortunately

Bateman

BhoscaCapall wrote: »

It is probably part of the reason it's become extremely popular, but Nandos was already very popular in the UK long before Twitter so it is an irrelevant point really.

So it's part of the reason why it's become extremely popular, but it's irrelevant, OK carry on :rolleyes:

Blisterman

I live beside a Nandos in London.

It's about £7-8 for a meal compared to £4-5 in KFC or McDonalds, and generally appeals to a casual market. Somewhere you can get a quick bite to eat that's a little bit nicer than a fast food place without being a restaurant. Much like Eddie Rockets.

From what I can gather, it's two things:
The first is that they've positioned it a fair bit more expensive in Ireland, and you can get better meals for the price.
The second is that English people, particularly Londoners generally have more of taste for spicy food than Irish people. Hence the amount of Indian restaurants, compared to Ireland, even in places with no West Asian population.

whippet

Nandos is just KFC for people who can use cutlery

Tragedy

Blisterman wrote: »

The second is that English people, particularly Londoners generally have more of taste for spicy food than Irish people. Hence the amount of Indian restaurants, compared to Ireland, even in places with no West Asian population.

Huh? There is a large amount of indian takeaways and restaurants everywhere in Ireland and has been for some time.

Korvanica

I enjoy Nandos. Its better food than McDs/Burger King or KFC, but yes its expensive, so I wouldn't go there too often.

As a lot of people say its just expensive fast food but this irks me somewhat.

And from what i've gathered from this thread basically everything is expensive fast food to some people.

There's fast food, and there's gourmet fast food which is more expensive, for a reason.

Compare the cost of a meal in gourmet burger/counter/rockets with the cost of a Big Mac Meal. About twice the price.
Compare the quality ?
And don't forget that after a gourmet burger you wont need to eat for ages, while after a Big Mac you'll be hungry again in 2 hours. (I still eat McDonalds though )

Blisterman

Tragedy wrote: »

Huh? There is a large amount of indian takeaways and restaurants everywhere in Ireland and has been for some time.

Not nearly as many as England, though. There's barely a street here which doesn't have one.

9,400 in total according to this.
http://www.fedrest.com/marketresearch.htm

Tragedy

Blisterman wrote: »

Not nearly as many as England, though. There's barely a street here which doesn't have one.

9,400 in total according to this.
http://www.fedrest.com/marketresearch.htm

So there needs to be ~670 Indians in the republic for it to be the same on a per capita basis?

Wouldn't say we're far off that tbh.

Lelantos

Bateman wrote: »

At least 3 or 4 Premier League footballers that I am aware of, with millions of twitter followers between them, have been known to tweet about eating in Nando's - make of that what you will, but if you are honestly denying that this would make demographics such as 1. impressionable teenagers and 2. 18-30 yo lads eat in the place (a high proportion of the customers whenenver I've been in) then you're simply wrong.

I remember about 12 months ago a few Leinster rugby players would tweet about Nando's regularly enough, just been, just going, wonderful food etc. There was talk of perhaps sponsorship deals, not sure about that as it was only rumoured. But I do know once Heaslip opened up his Bear eaterie I don't recall seeing anymore tweets from them about Nando's

Blisterman

Nandos give out cards to celebrities which offers them free meals for life. I imagine they were hoping to blag one!