Nando's Cork - Mahon Point — Restaurant in Cork

Dreadful experience today. I'm not prompted to leave reviews unless I've had an excellent or a terrible experience. We come here regularly enough and it's usually meh, hence the first time review. Placed our order as normal today at 12:47pm, nothing special, chicken thighs, Great imitator wrap, chips, rice. We were waiting over 20 mins and people who came in after us were already munching away on their food. Asked the server and said he'd check and see what he could do. A lady who was managing the till then came over (found out later her name was Aky we think), and said "your food is on the grill it will be a minute or two". Person at the table next to us got additional food they had ordered long after we did so I asked another server to please check on our order that it had been around 25 minutes and he said he was sorry and he'd see what could be done for us. Came back and said the wrap had been sent to another table but another order was on the way. Food was fine, chicken was rubbery and grissly.

Server asked was it ok, I said no and explained why. He said he'd say it to "her" and see what he could do for us. Waited 15 minutes and he didn't come back to say anything, cleared the table next to us without so much as a word.

We went up to the til and I explained that we were really unhappy with our experience. I said we waited 25 minutes for food and Aky said "23 minutes".I said the chicken was rubbery and Aky interrupted saying "your chicken was fresh out of the oven". We said one of our orders was sent to the wrong table and she said "no it wasn't/I wasn't aware of that/we were waiting on the thighs not the wrap". We asked why a server would say that then and again, more excuses "these things happen when you're dealing with new people/who said it to you/I'll talk to the staff" etc. Literally nothing but excuses instead of owning it, apologising and offering a resolution. She said she'd give a refund and said "you might give us a chance again", to which I said, we might but we travelled 45 minutes to get here.

I wish I was joking at this point but she said "you can go to Academy Street and see how they do things there, or you can go to Limerick". I lost my patience at that point and asked was she for real. She said she didn't mean offence but come on, telling customers to travel elsewhere when they've had a poor experience is absolutely terrible customer service. Won't be in any hurry to return or reccomend.

Edit: The copied and pasted response below is just what I expected. Seeing as they responded at 5am I fail to see how they've "picked it up with the team". They couldn't care less about their customers...

I’ll put the conclusion first to save some people time and do a breakdown in-depth for others.

Conclusion Would not recommend to anyone, go have food elsewhere trust me.

Service Non-existent, it was relatively quiet when we came in and staff all looked annoyed and angry that customers were arriving. They refused to do the slightest thing to help customers even not bothering to give out the glasses needed for the drinks purchased. When asked where cutlery was they grunted in the direction of where it was. Observed this attitude being given to other customers as wondered if did something to insult them but it’s same for everyone.

Not sure if their job is to be as unhelpful as possible and rude to customers but that’s what they assume the job to be. Honestly, You get friendlier service from the computer kiosks in McDonalds at least they say welcome.

Food We got 5 wings, butterfly chicken and a wrap with various sides. I’ll not touch on the spice level too much as that’s an individual thing. The wings were grand, nothing to write home about but you won’t complain about them. The lettuce in the wrap was soggy and starting to turn so that was not good at all. The butterfly chicken was a bad joke. It was rubbery and was supposed to be two chicken breasts but really was one tiny breast cut in half. The chicken it came from definitely had breast reduction surgery before they got it, it was so small.

Overall state of the place Infairness it was clean and well kept, about the only positive about the place. If your in a wheelchair you can use the front but getting to the back would be a trial as it’s rather tight in places.

So to sum it up, food wasn’t great and service was terrible, but at least it was clean. Honestly if I want chicken in future I’ll go upstairs to hillbillies or go into Milanos next door for a superior...

A disappointing visit to a well known food chain restaurant.

An online ordering system that has so many problems it's not worth the hassle, the WiFi and the phone service in the restaurant isn't sufficient enough to handle such a system, spent 15 minutes trying untill eventually we asked staff for another option but unfortunately the staff were less than helpful also and were like please show us that its not working, have you tried this? Tried that? Etc untill I eventually asked if someone can just take our order please, even that wasn't easy enough for them, they proceeded to tell us,yes we can but our managers have to see that we tried to help you use online first, and when I again remarked the problems this staff member said ok,let me find someone who isn't a manager, are the staff scared of their managers or something?

Eventually after a combined length of half an hour trying to order, we eventually had to go to the counter to order(they couldn't even take it at the table). If I was going on service alone this would be a 1 star review, however the food that followed had brought it up to 3. It was above average but not great food. The chicken burgers were nice, and had a good mixture of taste and spice, and the sides were tasty but nothing out of this world and we have definitely tasted nicer chicken burgers in Cork.

Overall a poor experience with poor organisation, unhelpful staff but food that just about allows them to get away with it.

Won't be...