Pecking order

Nando’s, c. 1987, is a restaurant in the Great North Leisure Park, Finchley, N12, off the North Circular, which is my favourite orbital, solely from familiarity. The Great North Leisure Park includes a cinema, a bowling alley, a Pizza Hut, something called Chimichanga, and Nando’s. But the real draw of the Great North Leisure Park is the car park. If you live in north London, free parking is a destination in itself. Put it next to a nuclear reactor, and they’d come bearing toddlers.

I fell into Nando’s due to sloth. I was with children, and people who can’t vote shouldn’t have destination restaurants, but they do, based on their firmly held conviction that Blu Tack coated in sugar is an ideal food, plus speed of delivery. I have been to Nando’s before, perhaps ten years ago, on the recommendation of my shaman, and I ate an adequate meal in the O2 Centre on the Finchley Road, which is like the Great North Leisure Park, Finchley, except it has a branch of Habitat instead of a bowling alley. It is as if Nando’s cannot exist without the life support of an enormous car park. So I gave in: sure, tiny people who can’t vote, let’s go to Nando’s. How bad can it be?

Nando’s is called a phenomenon because it brought African-style food to the masses, as if being ripped off by a chicken shack is an authentic act of anti-racism. Perhaps in these wild days it is, and a bad restaurant can be confused with a polling booth. But I have been eating for a better world for 30 years, and nothing has happened, except I have got fat. Even so, left-wing newspapers have published homages to Nando’s semi-politicised chicken, which is cooked in Peri Peri sauce, which was -invented by Portuguese immigrants living in Mozambique and is now sold in, among other places, Morrisons.