Demolishing Nando's: The Bird Had it Coming

I'd done this 29 times before in the last 18 months, and I think it was finally time to share my strategy for demolishing a Nando's meal. My 30th Nando's in the UK, at Balham in south London, the day before I headed to India.

For those of you that don't yet know, when I arrived in the UK I was invited by a couple of good mates, Sammy Devine and Brett Peachey, to join their Nando's challenge. Their challenge, already underway, was to see how many Nando's restaurants they could go to in the UK. The rule was that you had to eat chicken. Anyway, when I joined them they were already on 21 and 22 each.

Nando's is different here to Australia. It's more like a restaurant, where a Maitre'd greets you at the door and asks whether you're eating in, shows you to a table, and asks you to order at the till when ready. You get all-you-can-drink coke, and they have a basin for you to wash your hands after the meal.

I'm pretty sure the reason for this classiness is related to planning laws in the UK. Restaurants are treated differently (and much more leniently) than take-aways. It's fair to say that most Nando's in Australia would fall on the borderline between the two (there's a drive-thru one in Tuart Hill). Here in the UK they have to be one or the other. So for clarity's sake they've gone with the more lenient (and less objectionable) restaurant. They also differentiate themselves from Burger King, KFC, and the even dodgier imitations of KFC in doing so.

Anyway, back to the chicken. My order is almost always the same: half-chicken combo, with all-you-can-drink soft drink. The chicken is extra hot. With the combo you get two side dishes. I go for chips and spicy rice. The reasons for these choices are many. Firstly, chips rock. They are great at soaking up excess sauce or, as is often the case, any booze still in my belly from the night before.

Secondly, the rice is similarly good for soaking up sauce and is nice and greasy also so it goes down well after a big night.

Thirdly, and most importantly, the rice comes in a little bowl of its own. As soon as I get the meal I pour the rice over the main plate, emptying the bowl. The reasons for this will become clear.

Before sitting down I fill my drink (usually diet coke), get my cutlery (and many napkins, as I'm a messy bugger), and my sauce to put over the chips. I started out going for extra hot, but on the advice of Sammy and Peach I sometimes now go for medium now. Not as hot obviously, but a bit more creamy which is interesting.

So I sit down and wait - usually about ten minutes - for my meal. Usually I'm by myself (to hide my shame), and have a paper with me to read. When they seat me I usually ask for somewhere I can spread out and read a paper ( i.e. a table for four), unless there's not one available.

Then the food comes. I pour on the extra sauce over the chips. Usually liberally. As mentioned, I put the rice onto the main plate, leaving the little bowl empty. And I start by eating most of the rice - that is, eating the rice that's easy to pick up, but leaving maybe 10% or so behind. This isn't laziness (in any internal battle between sloth and gluttony, gluttony wins hands down every time), as you'll see later.

So with most of the rice gone, I step it up a notch and head for the chips. They're in trouble. I scoff them down, again maybe leaving one or two behind, usually the chips left under the chicken itself.

You'll notice, incidentally, that my strategy for eating the meal goes from eating the food I least like first to the food I most like last. It's a habit I've had for ages. It means I always finish my meals!

And so to the chicken. With a half chicken there's white meat and grey meat. I start by pulling as much as I can off the bones and cutting it up (both white and grey meat). It'll sit there for a while though, soaking in it's own sauce as well as the additional sauce left over from the chips. I might have a couple of cheeky bits of meat while cutting it up but most of it will not be eaten at this stage. The only meat I won't take off the bone will be the drumstick and wing.

It can get a little messy, even though I do all this with a knife and fork. Goodness me, I'm not a grot!

Then I usually head for the drumstick. And by now I'm using my hands. Obvious really for a drumstick, especially if you're going to suck every last morsel of meat from it. Which I am.

Now the genius of the spicy rice really comes into its own. The empty bowl is used as a receptacle for bones I've finished with. I think the more comprehensively you go through a chicken carcass, the more important it is to separate the bones from the food still to be eaten.

When you want to get every last morsel of meat, you often get down to individual rib bones. You don't want them hanging around with your still-to-be-eaten chicken, you need it to be separate.

Once you move to using your hands for Nando's, there's no going back. You can't pretend you're dainty after getting stuck in like some sort of barbarian; it's like unscrambling an egg. So I dive in - almost literally. Next stop in the meal are the other bones (except the wing), which will still have some meat on them. Like the drumstick, I use my fingers, although this does get quite messy because these bones are not as easy to strip. But luckily I'm patient (see above comment about contests between sloth and gluttony).

When those bones are picked clean - which can take some time - I move on to the meat I've left on my plate, cut away from the bone. Now soaked in the sauces (rather than just basted with them), I scoff them down. First the grey meat, then the white. Bloody fantastic.

At the end of this all that's left is the wing. Super crispy, heaps of sauce basted on it. I go for the end bit first, the crispiest but the least meat. Then I snaffle the other end, which has more meat on it but is juicy rather than crispy. Finally - my favourite part of the whole bird - the middle piece of the wing.

Once I'm done there the rice and chips become relevant. What's left on the plate is a mix o of sauce, rice, the odd chip, and morsels of chicken (usually thrown off the bone by the violence of my attack on the carcass). The chicken alone would be too difficult to scoop up, but with a bit of rice and a chip or two, I can get every last bit of the chicken off my plate!

That's it! Thirty Nando's, mostly done just like that! You didn't realise there was so much to it did you?