Nando’s Revisited
This week’s Hackney Gazette quotes this blog post and reports me saying of the local drive to boycott Nando’s on Stoke Newington Church Street:
“The campaign isn’t about banishing chains - the street has enough of those… It’s not about protecting independent businesses - Nando’s isn’t in competition with them. It’s about keeping Church Steet exclusive, expensive, homogenous and middle class. And an area with a very high average house price.”
Naturally, this has infuriated some. But I was delighted to discover that, in the NO! to Nandos on Church Street group, I’m not far wrong. Try this for size:
Couldn’t be much clearer if he just wrote “Peasants Out”.
This is the same guy who said elsewhere that “You wouldn’t get a fantastic pub like the Shakespeare in Primrose Hill”.
Well, no. I suppose not. But he would get a fantastic little pub like the Shakespeare if he visited some of the others that seem to have the same format, and presumably belong to the same chain - the Approach in Bethnal Green; The Rosemary Branch in De Beauvoir/Hoxton; the Prince George in Dalston; The Royal Inn on the Park, Victoria Park; and so on.
So that’s nice and clear. Chains are fine in N16, as long as they’re the chains middle class people want.
Thankfully I’m not alone in thinking this pathetic.
Chicken wing, anyone?
Published on 13th June, 2008
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