Nandos, Five Ways Leisure Centre, Bishopsgate Street, Birmingham, B15 1DA
3/10

Wagamama, Waters Edge, Brindleyplace, Birmingham, B1 2DL
6/10

They tried to make me go to Nando’s, but I said no, no, no.

Then I finally said yes. And I will have to live with that decision.

Like the late, great and wasted Amy Winehouse, and I suspect a lot of other people, I have an aversion to doing what I am told, especially if I am told it will be good for me – worse still, that I will enjoy it.

According to the song, it was rehab for Ms Winehouse. For me, it is fast-food chicken. My dread of grilled/fried/minced poultry stems from a touching disposition: I like jolly cluckers. Chickens have a comedy gait, display idiosyncratic behaviour and are inexpensive to maintain, much like myself. What’s more, they lay eggs and the egg (with the exception of tinned luncheon meat) is God’s greatest gift to human sustenance.

Chickens also taste good. I don’t mind eating them because I don’t have a Disneyesque view of chooks as being feathered people with human feelings. But I do object to them, or indeed any animal bred for consumption, not having a good life. Some people call this ethical, others soppy. Whatever the case, I don’t think chickens should be cooped up in industrialised hell holes only to be brought to such a level of distress that they peck themselves sick.

The mass production of chickens just doesn’t sit happily with my heart, soul or digestive tract. So I tend to give it a miss without certain guarantees.

The restaurant chain Nando’s says on its informative website that all its chicken is fresh, not frozen, and is Red Tractor assured, “complying with high standards of food safety, animal welfare and environmental protection. This means our chicken is not only tasty, but also happy and healthy.” Although that should probably read “was” happy and healthy, as I don’t expect there are too many smiling dejointed birds on the flame grill.

Being Red Tractor assured is, well, reassuring. But I’m not quite sure what it means, practically. I went on the Red Tractor website because I wanted to find out, quickly, whether its assured birds have access to daylight and fresh air, how much space they have, whether they can peck and grub about in the open, that sort of chickeny stuff. But I gave up. Maybe someone will write in and tell me. Or perhaps Red Tractor will make this clearer on its website, otherwise what’s the point?

I had never wanted to eat at Nando’s because I had a gut feeling I’d hate it. Everyone always looks so miserable when I’ve walked past its restaurants, especially that one in Paradise Circus in Birmingham city centre. Those poor, blighted souls. Surely eating Nando’s in “Paradise” is a contradiction in terms. I am always tempted to liberate its diners, not join them.

There is, however, a place for branded restaurants and some of them, in my experience, do a decent job. I have a soft spot for Yo! Sushi, for example, which broke the mould for dullard conformity on the British High Street. I was thus inspired to pit two mass market chain restaurants against each other: Nando’s versus Wagamama.

Nando’s is home of “ legendary, Portuguese flame-grilled Peri-Peri chicken” and is something of a phenomena. A while ago, a national newspaper carried the sort of feature spread it usually only reserves for unknown pop stars, celebrities’ children or pandemics. The writer used words like “cultural significance” and possibly “iconoclastic” and reeled off a list of A-listers who have famously been caught licking their fingers at Nando’s. Nando’s was bigger than chicken.

Well, I saw neither Jay-Z, Kim Kardashian or David Beckham – not even a TOWIE cast member – when I went to Nando’s at the enticingly named Five Ways shopping centre at the top of Broad Street.

(Question: why doesn’t a city chef do a dish “five ways” in honour of this concrete monolith with a hole in the middle? There are dishes “three ways” everywhere at the moment – lamb three ways, veal three ways, pork three ways. What about a faggot five-ways? I’d pay to eat that.)

Then it crossed my mind. Maybe I’d got it wrong. What if Nando’s was brilliant?

(I know it’s poor form to do the “big reveal” too early, but, faithful reader, I wasn’t wrong. Nando’s wasn’t brilliant, or half brilliant. So you can stop reading now if you’ve had enough.)

There was a queue inside the restaurant, customers politely waiting for a trough. They had that unmistakable look, that “liberate me from Paradise Circus” look. The greeter asked, because she asked everyone, if I had been before. When I said “no” I can swear her eyes nearly fell out of her head. Blimey, a Nando’s virgin.

Now, I don’t mind queueing, for a bit, because queueing, like cooking “three ways,” is food-forward. Not taking reservations is the new taking reservations. And waiting for 20 minutes, listening to Carmen Miranda “Chica Chica Boom Chic”-style music, gave us plenty of time to decide how hot we wanted our “legendary, Portuguese flame-grilled Peri-Peri chicken”. Because there are burgers and salads and peas on the menu but when you come to the home of “legendary, Portuguese flame-grilled Peri-Peri chicken” you’d be a fool not to have “legendary, Portuguese flame-grilled Peri-Peri chicken”.

We got called to our table, walked there, sat down, then got up again and went to the till, which is what you have to do, to order.

Couldn’t we have ordered at the till, while we were waiting, and then we wouldn’t have had to keep going backwards and forwards, like chickens? Apparently not. Maybe that’s the point, though. This is method eating. You are what you eat. To get the full Nando’s experience, you become a chicken.

We had a starter of olives, a red pepper dip and houmous with a now thoroughly legendary Peri-Peri “drizzle” and “warm,” rather than iceblock-cold, pitta bread. This selection is called “Altogether Now,” which I couldn’t bring myself to say. So when I ordered, speaking fluent Chicken, I said: “Olives and all the rest of it, please.” It was fine, like posh cinema food. Which basically is what Nando’s is.

You can have legs, wings or breasts of chicken done in Peri-Blah or whole chickens, of which we had two, one medium (“tolerable heat”) and one hot (“eye-wateringly fiery”). There is a very mild “lemon & herb” or “mango & lime” style rub and, at the other end of the scale, an “extra hot” (“bum-burner,” sorry “throat-scorcher”).

None of the marinade had permeated the chicken flesh. This is effectively marinated chicken skin. Nando’s says all its chicken is marinated for 24 hours but this doesn’t count for much if the flavour doesn’t get into the meat.

In fact, one is tempted to conclude all the chicken is bunged in the same basic, anaemic, mild marinade and is merely brushed with a stronger mix (depending on the customer’s preference) prior to and during cooking. But that would be a bit rubbish, wouldn’t it? So Nando’s can’t possibly do this.

The chips were ruddy awful, virtually cold, not crisp, no salt, as under Nando’s nutritional guidelines this would kill you. The ratatouille was okay, the coleslaw catering-pack friendly.

I truly loathed the chicken. But bewildered people were still queueing as we left, not a hip-hop star among them. What am I not getting?

There are six Nando’s outlets in Birmingham, including four in the relatively small area made up of Broad Street, the Mailbox, Paradise Circus and the Bullring, which is also known as the peri-peri axis of evil.

The bill for three was £50. I’d rather have spent the money on good fish and chips.

Wagamama, a five-minute chicken strut down Broad Street at Brindleyplace, is a different proposition. The group’s latest opening is a canalside venue that used to be home to a teppanyaki restaurant. Where Nando’s is noise, festoons and clutter, Wagamama is clean lines, calm and minimalistic. The Japanese inspired restaurant is upstairs and offers an escape from the revelry of Brindleyplace. Bag a table by the window looking over to the ICC and you get a waterfront perch offering views of the canal. Go on a hot day, like we did, and you can watch diners getting frazzled in canal-boat restaurants.

The great thing about Wagamama’s style of cooking is the informality and the speed. Dishes arrive when the kitchen is ready and everyone, on our table at least, piles in together.

We chose several side dishes, which served as starters – pork ribs in barbecue sauce, a very good chilli squid (for only £5.55) and duck gyoza. Unfortunately, I got my steamed and deep-fried gyoza mixed up. I much prefer the steamed, which are more nourishing and flavourful.

From the reassuring small specials list (two sides, two mains), we had the firecracker prawns, which had plenty of heat and fresh veg (peppers, onions) but could have done with more shellfish.

It was too warm for noodles in soup, so we reluctantly skipped ramen and had a salad, teriyaki chicken donburi, served with sticky rice. It stayed on the table for about two minutes, it was so tasty and light. My two daughters, who accompanied me, would have cried if we hadn’t had noodles, so we had the mildly curried yaki udon, which was the probably the blandest of the dishes.

For service, ambiance, the quality of food and the consistency of a non-irritating brand, Wagamama gives Nando’s a finger lickin’ kickin’. It’s a no contest.

But a comparison is slightly unfair, isn’t it? Aren’t these two restaurants at different price points? Isn’t Wagamama, for want of a better description, posher?

You’d think so, which means the biggest surprise was that the two restaurants, virtually pound of pound, worked out the same for three diners – about £50, including soft drinks. What’s more, our clothing wasn’t impregnated with charred chicken, also known as eau du Nando’s, after eating at Wagamama. That’s a plus in my books.

My only gripe is that Wagamama now has a sushi menu but only at three restaurants, all of them in London. Why not in Birmingham? This is no longer a food backwater, try as some chains might to give the opposite impression.