Visit with an Old Friend

Tonight was a big night for Keith. We had dinner at his favorite London restaurant. He's a happy man.
We discovered Nando's on Jan. 1, 2001. It was a cold, rainy night and after stopping for a cup of tea at a pub on Bayswater Road, we walked and walked around the Notting Hill area. We ended up walking for hours. We were hungry and we spied a place called Nando's. They served peri-peri chicken. We didn't know what that was, but we figured it smelled good and the place looked fun and funky. We decided to try it.
We've never seen it mentioned in any London guidebook and we've read just about every one out there. Nando's is like nothing else. It smells like chicken you just took off the backyard grill. Before they cook the chicken, they marinate it for 24 hours in peri-peri sauce, which is a Portugese spicy sauce.
On that visit to London, we ate at Nando's twice - and we were three days from leaving when we found it.
Since then, we've been back to the UK three times and we've eaten at three other Nando's in London and two in Manchester. It's a chain, but only in the UK.
One thing interesting about Nando's: it is the ONLY London restaurant I have ever seen that gives you free refills on soft drinks. That is truly unheard of here.
Tonight we went to our neighborhood Nando's, which is on the Islington High Street. Oh my gosh, it was soooo good.
Keith got a quarter chicken with medium sauce added. The menu describes medium as "tolerable. A warmer shade of cool." He also got spicy rice and coleslaw.
I got a grilled chicken breast on toasted "pitta" and chips, which are French fries. My sandwich was wonderful. It was nicely marinated but not spicy - which was truly a blessing because I've had a little tummy trouble since my arrival.
Nando's is very affordable, very filling. We'll definitely recommend it to the students when they arrive on Thursday. We also saw an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet in the N1 Center (a shopping center in Islington) that was 5 pounds 50 p for lunch. Sounds like student food to me.

Random thoughts for Monday:
** Hard to find at the market: Canned tomato products. I wanted to make spaghetti sauce. I looked for tomato paste and tomato sauce at several stores. American grocery stores are full of canned food. Not so in London markets. About the only "tinned" food you see are canned spaghetti (made by Heinz), a small selection of soups and baked beans (also by Heinz). Finally found a box of chopped tomatoes and a tube of tomato paste.
** We're mastering the bus system. Our bus is the 43. It stops a block or so from the flat. It has turned a bit chilly and having a handy bus is a nice thing.
** A big news story over here since we arrived is the story of a family in Shropshire whose million-pound mansion burned down early Tuesday morning. The fire was horrific and slowly but surely they're finding bodies in the rubble. It looks like the father shot the family, then burned down the house. It's all over the BBC and SkyNews. And so is Gustav.
** Our SlingBox is working really well. It's attached to our TV at home and through our computers we can see exactly what we could watch in our living room at home. So Keith got to watch a little Clemson football (which turned out not to be so great) and I got to watch "Mad Men." Technology is unbelievable. I'm ready to do an ad for SlingBox!