Quite often, at one of the places I work, we go to Nando’s for lunch – which I am a big fan of. You may think it strange for a vegetarian to enjoy going to a speciality chicken restaurant, but then the same could be said for my enjoyment of visiting burger joints. The reason for this is my great appreciation for the Nando’s Veggie burger, one of three vegetarian options on the menu. For this visit though (mainly for the sake of this blog) I decided to break the habit of a lifetime and try the Beanie burger.

Nando’s used to have a neat little slogan on the veggie section of their menu that read ‘We love vegetarians – all of our chickens were vegetarian!’. Meant facetiously at best, this was a bit of an insensitive dig at the veggie section of the population, especially as their chickens never see the outside and are dead within six weeks – clearly not a lot of love shown there.

Anyway, I digress. The burger – as is often the case with vegetarian fast food – was last to come out of all the food in our party. I ordered it with Peri-Peri chips, and both the burger and chips were separately brought to me, and taken back and different times. The patty looked very artificially formed and resembled a cheap burger-shaped veggie glamorgan sausage that you would get with a fry-up at a greasy spoon. It is probably one of the worst bean burgers I’ve ever had.

The extra cheese I ordered hadn’t melted and the lettuce and tomato looked like it was from the bottom of the bag. Even the portuguese bun that I normally love somehow seemed unsatisfactory. On top of all that, the peri-peri fries gave me heartburn (although that could have also been the three glasses of coke that I had with it…).

I do like Nando’s, honest. It’s just that this time it wasn’t very enjoyable. Moral of the story: When it comes to places like this, stick to what you know and love, and you won’t be disappointed.

VEGGIE BURGER RATING: 2/10

OVERALL RATING: 3/10