Nairobi News

There’s a new Galitos in town.

In the fight to take over the burger market, Galitos has expanded once again by opening new branches at Thika Road Mall and Capital Centre on Mombasa Road.

Galitos, formerly known as Nandos, has been struggling to gain its footing in a market already assuaged with cheaper and better fast food.

Through a lot of revamping, offers, and all that fanfare, the food chain has been able to boost its market share better than anticipated, considering Steers and its unwillingness to relinquish its reign.

Galitos at Capital Centre takes over at the food court from the defunct Wimpy, who, seeing that their glory days were over, bowed out limping. Does Galitos do a better job?

Well, for one, the new place is very clean. Hopefully they will maintain the standards.

When we walked in, we went straight to the booths and sat down, a few minutes later, we were told that, this was a self-service joint in spite of the restaurant-like booths.

The booths, by the way are not comfortable at all.  And they would be even more uncomfortable for the kind of person who eats burgers a lot, if you catch my drift.

So we went to look at the menu, which is typed large (as with most Galitos), above their counter.

Like most fast food places, the choice of beverage is limited to soda and water.

Galitos offers chicken, salads, wraps – the usual stuff. I had a chicken wrap and my partner had the quarter chicken.

The attendant gave us a buzzer that would go off when our food was ready, at which point we would have to get up again, go to the counter, give in the buzzer and have the food brought to the table. This system seems pretty efficient to me.

There is also a sink next to the eating area which is convenient if you don’t want to go to Capital Centre’s public toilets to wash your hands.

The wrap was huge and positively slathered in creamy mayo; but if you don’t love mayo, you may not appreciate it.

The quantity of the quarter chicken and chips seemed more like a kiddie’s meal than an adult’s. The chicken was very tasty, though over after two bites.

They offer flavours of lemon herb, mild, hot and very hot for the adventurous.

The wrap cost Sh500, and so was the quarter chicken combo (with chips and coleslaw).  The soda was Sh100.

This is the average pricing of the food here, though you can get the half chicken and the family bucket combos.

I really do not think the amount of food begets value for money, but it’s a good place to go if you are not starving and have money that you don’t want to spend on Java’s significantly less flavourful chicken.