Catford - Ryan Review

I met up the next day with the people I was working with and they asked "where did you go last night?" "Bromley", I said - "oh right, some nice parts of Bromley", they replied - "Oh, and Catford" I added. At this point their faces dropped. It says it all really - and it genuinely does sum up Catford... Anyway, it was a fleeting visit to tick off another Nando's.

I got to Catford around 9pm and saw there were two multi-storey car parks nearby (Holbeach Road and Thomas Lane) on Parkopedia, but the roadsigns for parking is non-existent, so I'd recommend tapping them into your sat nav. Sadly though, although Parkopedia advertised both of these car parks as being open and free to park after 7pm, neither were open so not sure what happened there. The normal charging hours are supposed to be Mon-Sat 7:00-19:00 priced at £1.40/1hr, £2.80/2hrs, £4.20/3hrs, £5.60/4hrs and £8.40/6hrs with a max stay of 6hrs. I did find some street parking on Medusa Road (which is free after 6pm), but most of the streets around here are permit parking only.

Catford/Catford Bridge train stations are just a 10 minute walk away and The Broadway Theatre just a couple hundred yards from Nando's.

There's currently some building work going on to the Nando's building, so it is currently surrounded by scaffolding, so never an exciting prospect... There was only one person when I walked in seemingly doing everything and as there was a queue of four groups at the till, it was 11 minutes before I just decided to join the queue and pick my own table. It was 9:15pm at this point so maybe everybody was winding down...

Shanley was very pleasant and gave some good bants... especially as most of my order couldn't be filled! I asked for butterfly chicken but advised there was only one left and it was "two halves separately" - but I thought what the hell, let's live dangerously... Being my second Nando's I went for some veg, but there wasn't any ratatouille so settled on some olives... and then after paying, I was advised there wasn't any Sagres or Savannah either, so I was refunded for this part... Shanley did give me a 20% discount off the whole meal to make up for it. Once I'd sat down I realised the swipe of my loyalty card hadn't registered even though it did on the till, but Shanley told me I'd have to phone a number to get it credited...

Anyway, four minutes later the food came and I wish I hadn't had the two halves! Both halves were very thin, very dry and burned. I suspect they had been cooking for quite some time. I couldn't save it with the sauce either... The chips were an average size portion and cooked nicely. Shanley did come over just as I picked an olive stone out of my mouth and said "I know it probably isn't but is everything alright?" Good bants.

The restaurant is pretty small - only 20 tables in total, four of which are booths underneath some sort of canopy - but all very dark. There were some proper lights above the tables in the window, but otherwise "mood" lighting everywhere else. Not much decor to speak of either - the front windows did have some chillies etched onto them, but a lot of these had been scratched away. Hopefully the scaffolding is actually for the Nando's to revamp it... The toilets were clean though with some cobbled effects on the wall.

Anyways, as I left Shanley saw me again and said "I just want to say sorry for all the things". Bantasaurus Rex.