Nando's, Shrewsbury

One of my favourite Twitter exchanges of the past year was between two well-known Shropshire bakers.

We'll save their blushes and call them Baker One and Baker Two. Nah, let's not disguise them, they won't mind.

Baker Rob was working long hours, as ever, and tweeted something like this: "I really fancy a Maccy Ds."

Baker Pete sneered and tweeted words to the effect: "McDonald's, that's worse than licking gravel from a road outside a chemical factory."

Baker Rob stood his ground: "Look, I know we all like real food, but don't you ever get the urge once in a while?"

And therein lies the rub.

Do we ever get the urge, once in a while, to forsake local, seasonal, fresh food for something filthy, disgusting and downright dirty? Do we want to turn off Breaking Bad to watch Jeremy Kyle? Fade out The Jam and play Miley Cyrus? Flick the switch on BBC Radio 4 and listen to a commercial station? Sorry, commercial radioland, but it's true.

I have a curious relationship with McDonald's. I last ate at Maccy Ds in the UK in 2006. I bought it from a drive-through in Bilston after a Sunday morning visit to B&Q. It was one of the worst things I'd ever eaten. My senses were in overdrive and they picked up on every little thing that was wrong about it. The sponge bun, which had as much in common with bread as wisdom does with adolescence, was risible. It seemed to have been made from the same stuff as the Styrofoam box.

The beef patty tasted like unseasoned cardboard. The salad tasted of water, the ketchup of sugar and the gherkin looked like a slug that had been passed through a mandolin. The fries were like pieces of paper that had been fried until crisp, then soaked in water to make them soggy again. It scared me. Well, almost.

And yet, whenever I go abroad, I do two things. Firstly, I find great, cheap, tasty, unhygienic authentic street food – the stuff that only the locals eat. Proper kebabs in Istanbul, animal parts in China, blue sticky rice in Malaysia, bush meat in Africa, deep-fried anything in India, maggot-infested cheese in Sardinia. I kid you not, the cheese – casu marzu – is one of my most treasured food memories. But invariably, I also end up buying a rubbish burger from some fast food joint or other. A Big Mac or Bacon Double, a Rancher or Zinger – all bring instant gratification. They're like banging your last buck into a slot machine and rolling three cherries.

The letter-writers of Ludlow will by now be sharpening their pens and damning me for my dalliance with the dark side. I know the arguments about provenance, real food, farm-to-fork and buying local and I am firmly on message. But when I'm away, I give my McShilling to the corporate machine. Ker-ching.

Fast food is my infrequent guilty pleasure. And whenever I give in, I'm always let down. It's never as good as I think it will be. As afflictions go, it's hardly on the register of things that might worry the in-laws. Hell, we all do things we don't normally do when we're overseas. When in Rome and all that.

This time, the itch struck unexpectedly. "Please, please, please, Mrs Weekend Editor, may I review Nando's?"

She laughed. She consulted with the Weekend team. The reply was a swift as it was short.

"No."

The urge persisted.

"No. What part of that word don't you understand?"

And then I made the breakthrough. I phoned when they were eating a takeaway lunch. It had been collected from Nando's.

She acquiesced. "Go ahead." I smiled, darkly.

The Daily Telegraph wrote about Nando's at the end of last year. It observed, drily: "It is not, perhaps, what you or I might describe as aspirational, still less celebratory dining."

But it was where Nicola Adams celebrated her Olympic gold medal and it inspires devotion among A-listers like RiRi, Britney Spears and Lewis Hamilton. Dizzee Rascal, Andy Murray, Beyonce, Prince Harry and Ed Sheeran are also reportedly fans.

It is the favourite restaurant of British teens, it's secretly popular among the nation's middle class. And its public image is pretty good: it gives the emergency services a 20 per cent discount. When Britain rioted in 2011, a Nando's Defence League sprang up, telling the looters to leave the chain alone. There is even a website called Rate Your Nando's.

What is it about Nando's?

The chain launched in the UK in 1992. By 2010/11 it had racketed up sales of £419.5 million. It serves fresh – not frozen – chicken from Red Tractor Assurance British farms and it spends zip on advertising. It doesn't need to. It's got a cult following. That hasn't stopped unsavoury exposés from appearing in the press. Nando's had been embroiled in controversy regarding its methods and the intensity of its rearing programme; though it's robustly defended its operation, providing assurances about chicken welfare standards.

I hit the Shrewsbury branch for finger-lickin', tongue-teasin', synapse-shudderin' chicken. Hell yeah.

My friend and I chowed down on chicken. Every flavour, every heat, every style came under our gaze.

A restaurant is about more than just the chicken, of course, and it's impossible to get worked up about the personality-less, corporate-schmorporate, clinical style that is an inevitable consequence of Nando's multinational domination. Nor are the serve-yourself aspects much fun. Eating out is supposed to include an element of service, that's half of the deal. In terms of service, eating at Nando's is only one step away from eating at Asda or Ikea. It's not much fun.

But the chicken was good. God dang it. The chicken rocked.

We had lemon and herb wings, a boneless chicken breast with Peri Peri sauce and a veggie burger with fries on the side.

The fries were better than those at Maccy Ds and KFC, but worse than those that you'd buy a half-decent pub. They weren't particularly crisp, they were a little fluffy on the inside but, come on, they didn't sing like a choir about the delights of the Maris Piper. They were fast food joint fries. Period. Nothing more, nothing less.

The veggie burger wasn't bad. Robust, flavoursome and with a decent texture, it was fine. The chicken was better than average. It had been well cooked. Nando's well-publicised chargrilling methods had helped to retain its moisture and the marinades had filled the humble rooster with flavour.

But in the final analysis, I was mildly underwhelmed. Dinner didn't persuade me I should add Nando's to my list of regular restaurants.

It was decent, pretty good and unoffensive. Price-wise, it also stacked up favourably against other restaurants, though I couldn't escape the thought that I was eating cheap-as-chips chicken and it had no right to be anything else.

I'm with Baker Rob on this one. I'm not with the haters, who turn their noses up at fast food. Though, for my money, I'd rather eat out at a decent local pub that makes its own burgers and cuts its own chips.

There is a place for Nando's – and restaurants like it. It's a guilty pleasure, rather than a destination that I'll add to my list. And I'll bet I could find 50 places in Shropshire that I'd rather eat in and that do a better job.

ADDRESS:

• Nando’s, Market Street, Shrewsbury SY1 1LE

• Tel: 01743 363 048

• Web: http://www.nandos.co.uk/restaurant/shrewsbury