Westfield - Shepherds Bush - Ryan Review

Just a fleeting visit to Shepherd's Bush and the first stop took me to Nando's in the Westfield shopping centre. It's certainly a large complex, with a variety of restaurants/bars, shops and a Vue cinema to choose from. Getting here is easy too, with Shepherd's Bush Overground/Rail and Underground station and also Shepherd's Bush Market Underground just a few minutes walk away. There are also thousands of parking spaces within the complex, prcied at £2.80/1hr, £5.60/2hrs Mon-Sun (6am-3am) and then £6.50/2-24hrs Mon-Fri and £9.50/2-24hrs Sat-Sun.

Nando's is on the 2nd floor, so head for the Vue sign inside and you'll soon go past the big wooden Nandos in the window to your left as you go up the escalator.

I arrived here at about 7:45pm (for a very late lunch!) and it was pretty much full with only a few tables free. No queue to order either and returning to the table I found it had been given away even though my jacket was on the chair! All sorted quickly though.

It's a large Nando's, with plenty of seating including several large circular booths. There are some 85+ tables so up there will Liverpool ONE and Stratford Westfield for tables... but not so much for size! A lot of the tables are close together and mine was a two-seater circular table wedged up against one of the circular booths, so much that the kid (who was standing on the booths) fell backwards and into my head... :-)

The most impressive thing in this Nando's is the ceiling. Most of it is made from round wooden discs (albeit it is just chipboard stained dark brown), but it sweeps right from the entrance all the way round to the back/right. There are three large pillars too as the restaurant sweeps round - with each pillar having two large black funnel shades hanging down over two circular booths either side of the pillars.

There's not really much wall space as the complete side of the restaurant is half-glass panels looking out into the shopping centre - so there isn't a great deal of artwork. Round past the till and the secondary drinks/sauce station are a series of small canvasses with a large multi-coloured painting right on the very back wall.

The toilets entrance is right at the back and this is where it was really let down. I had to take a wee in standing water... which although fits in incely with London... is pretty rank. The sinks also had pools of water all over the counter top... and with no soap... this made it a little bit nasty...

The staff were fine but seemingly over stretched as quite a lot of old napkins, straw wrappers and spicyness flags were littered along the walkways... I think this would have been a solid 3, but the downright dirtiness and the tight-seating if you're not in a circular booth takes this down to a 2.

Even with it as busy as it was, the food came in a good 11 minutes. I hadn't had breakfast, so this was my first meal of the day, so opted for the fillet burger and rice and it was a very average meal. I received a very floury bun which was soft and chewy - and the chicken breast fillet inside was a below standard size with a very small amount of sauce. I did get two large slices of tomato in the bun (which was nice), but as this meant I ended up having more tomato than chicken, that wasn't so good. The rice portion was also below average, but is was piping hot and moist at least.