Day 65

The girls are loving the apartments we’re staying in. Fully equipped. They even come with a chef. Don’t be shocked. You know who that is, of course. Me!!! Remember how I said I was looking forward to a weekend of not cooking, cleaning etc. but I’d somehow manage? Well, I didn’t have to worry about the cooking or cleaning because away I was yesterday evening down to the local M&S to stock up on food for our apartment as Dear Cousin nominated me to make breakfast for them all this morning! So there I was, as usual, on a Saturday, making breakfast. Porridge, scrambled eggs (a la Rachel-style which is the only way to make them), sausages, croissants, tea and toast. But the real focus of today’s post is our dinner from yesterday evening which had to happen very soon after landing in Liverpool as we were all starving! Plus, it has been the one time that I have left Ireland in complete warm sunshine to land in a country where it was absolutely bucketing the rain! Who says only Ireland has wet weather???!

Nandos it was then. Never heard of it before but that’s where we ate. The girls told me that Nandos was a ‘chicken restaurant’ (!) but, according to them also, they did good vegetarian options too. This was the first taste of home for me because at one point I came up to the table and set cutlery down and said with a smile “Hello, my name is Lynda and I’ll be your server for the evening!”. You see, Nandos is a self-service restaurant and, by that I mean everything is self-service. We did get our menus but, from that point in, it was every girl for themselves or, in reality, it was actually me getting for them! As a serial list-maker, I switch between lists on brightly coloured post-its to electronic lists on my Blackberry so I typed in the girls’ orders to my Blackberry, collected the money, went down to the counter, placed the order whereby the host started supplying me with glasses…and glasses…and more glasses but eventually summoned one of his colleagues to bring the glasses up to the table. Why he did that, I have no idea as he then pointed me in the direction of the two drinks machines which meant I had to traipse up to the table at the back of the restaurant, lift the glasses and bring them back down to the drinks machine. He did have the sense however to send the wine up for the girls. So, once I paid, I was running from the front to the back of the restaurant getting drinks, cutlery, napkins, ice, water…em, someone wanted medium peri-peri sauce but, wait someone else wanted the hot peri-peri sauce and then someone wanted the extra-hot peri-peri sauce. What am I? A maid? Apparently so. I think I bring it on myself though. I’m the eldest of four girls and my role has always been to look after them and no matter that we’re all adults now, I still do that and that includes cousins and friends. I am, what I call, the in loco parentis mammy.

So anyway, getting back to the food, here’s a round-up of some of the dishes…

·         Veggie burger with a side of macho peas
The burger was delicious – make of soy and tomato and the side of peas consisted of garden peas with mint and chilli – absolutely delicious. I didn’t have a side of chips as I’m not big into chips so just had a few of Dear Sister No.1’s and they were very nice – frozen but very nice. The bap on my burger was really nice – tasted as if they had made the bread themselves. I really loved the burger and peas – probably 8 marks out of 10 which is exceptional for me to give a restaurant chain.
·         Chicken wraps with chips x 2
·         Veggie burger and chips
·         Chicken pitta with a side of chilli jam and yoghurt
·         Chicken strips
·         Chicken pitta with chips x 3

I asked the host to do all the chicken as medium as in medium hot and the girls said that although most of them like hot chicken, the medium was hot enough. Nandos does the chicken as plain, medium or hot apparently. They loved the chilli jam and yoghurt too.

Definitely a very good dining experience which was helped no doubt by the fact that we were all so hungry. I’ll definitely be back to Nandos again though as will all the girls. For some, it was a repeat experience so that says a lot. I Googled Nandos later and saw that they have over 255 restaurants in the UK and there’s only one I think in Ireland - in Dundrum Town Centre. The restaurant originates in South African which was a real surprise for me as I thought maybe South American but the food is actually based on a Portuguese-Mozambique theme.

So tonight, it’s an Italian restaurant which I’m really looking forward which also means that I’ll be writing up my verdict tomorrow on how it goes so stay tuned…