Grocery Shopping and Dining at Nando's in the Gold Coast

Grocery shopping is one of the mundane activities than we experience on a daily basis. I like rolling in with a cart from one row of goods to the next. It's like expecting surprises from a such mercantile preoccupation. While this isn't worth blogging about, it's different when one does this non-touristy things in a strange foreign land. Who would have thought I'd pick a carton of milk or a packet of bacon strips in Queensland, right?

But this one had some surprises. Girlie's been very generous about the whole thing, she'd prod me to pick what I wanted - so I picked cherries and another fruit (below) whose name escapes me at the moment. Anyone can help me here?

What's different about this experience? When we've finalized our haul, I didn't realize that the usual cashier's booth was just a stall where we had to pull down our plastics and bag them ourselves, then as if that wasn't enough, we had to run them over the price checker and swipe the credit card ourselves. No human intervention! The machines have finally taken over man's modern daily toil. Would that work anywhere in Asia where every grocer or supermarket has a slew of humans, not machines, finalizing your shopping haul? Ain't Australia cool?

Before heading back to Oyster Cove, we passed by Nando's, famous worldwide for their chicken dishess. The restaurant chain is a South African casual dining franchise restaurant that had its start from a mining town in South Africa ith a predominantly Mozambican populace. The combination is nothing less exotic: Mozambiqan-Portuguese. Wouldn't you want a piece of that? Nando's specializes in chicken dishes with lemon and herb using Peri-peri marinades officially called Galinha a Africana. Peri-peri is a variety of Capsicum frutescens widely grown in East and Southern Africa. 

Historically, the restaurant began in 1987 when Portuguese-Mozambican Fernando Duarte along with Robert Brozin bought a restaurant called Chickenland in Rosettenville, southern Johannesburg in South Africa. 

They renamed the restaurant Nando's, after Duarte. The restaurant incorporated influences from former Portuguese colonists from Mozambique, many of whom had settled on the south-eastern side of Johannesburg, after their homeland's independence in 1975. The logo is derived from the Rooster of Barcelos.


This is the Eye in the Sky!

Bag our stuff and pay without human intervention.

Had to pick some cherries. They cost $10-15/kilo in Manila but a dime a dozen in London and just a wee bit more in Australia.

Forgot what these are. :) Help?

Mozambican-Portuguese influences in the international chicken-serving restaurant called Nando's.

Quarter Chicken costs Aus$19 at Nando's Restaurant. That's PhP779 in Philippine money. Ouch! :)

Chicken Burger with fries

Rice peppered with vegetables

Rooster of Barcelos.