With three young kids ranging in age from 6 to 6 months, it can be easy to get stuck in a fast food chain rut. Now and then I’m going to encourage my kids to be food adventurers and try some place new.
Address: 3333 32 Ave NE http://www.nandos.ca/
Restaurant Type: fast casual
Food Options: Flame-grilled chicken, share platters, sandwiches, pits, wraps, salads, vegetarian options
Kid Menu: chicken skewers, quarter chicken, sliders, chicken strips or chicken wings served with one side and frozen yogurt. For kids under 10.
Seating: Tables and booths. Long tables and large circle tables are available for larger groups.
Kid friendly features: Highchairs
Kid comfort level: 8/10. This is a sit down restaurant but it’s very casual and kid friendly.
We were out doing errands and instead of running home we stopped to have an early dinner instead. Nando’s started in South Africa serving up Portuguese style flame-grilled chicken with a PERi-PERi (African Birds Eye Chili) sauce. The atmosphere is relaxed and very family friendly.
Nando’s is a sit down restaurant but ordering is done a little different. First you are seated and choose your food and heat level (sauce) from your menu. Then you go up to the counter to order and pay.
You can grab your drinks, napkins and some extra sauce for your table (I highly recommend grabbing a bottle). Your food will be brought to your table when it’s ready.
You can order individually or there are multiple kinds of share plates for family style eating. We ordered a variety share plate with Half a chicken and 2 skewers with medium sauce and 5 whole wings with hot sauce. This also came with two sides – we had the caesar salad and PERi-PERi fries.
We only had Robbie (9 months) with us on this visit – he enjoyed munching on some of the dark chicken meat and fries. Next time when we had the older kids too we would get some of the chicken with a milder sauce and would probably need a bit more food.
The chicken was amazing and I am still thinking about it days later. I really enjoyed adding a little extra sauce but it was also good on its own. The PERi-PERi spice on the fries was good – flavourful but not really spicy. The casesar salad was a little weird to share. It was good but I would probably try something else next time.