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Naanwich
- Price Range:
-
$
- Attire:
- Casual
- Good for Groups:
- No
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
- Takes Reservations:
- No
- Take Away:
- Yes
- Waiter Service:
- No
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Alcohol:
- No
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
2 reviews for Naanwich
2 reviews in English
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Review from Patrick R.
Victoria, BC
Updated - 9/24/2010
Sadly, this location, and the Douglas street location, both appear to have shut down. I'm hoping this is temporary, but by the appearance of the two store fronts, this is probably not the case.
1 Previous Review: Show all »
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6/26/2009 First to Review
Naanwich is a small Victoria chain which specializes in making wraps. As the name suggests, the… Read more »
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Review from A E.
Victoria, BC
11/29/2009
This chinese-run franchise of an indo-canadian fast food chain is as weird as it gets. The whole place is plastered with propaganda telling how their food is 100% chemical free and 100% healthy. No matter where I look, sitting in the restaurant as I write this, I see words like healthiest, alternative, 100%, chemical.
I must congratulate them on having healthy food, however, I see it like keeping free range chickens. The chickens are happy but their eggs are the same (incidentally, free range does not equal brown). Take away the propaganda and you are left with something resembling a excessively lit-up Subway restaurant furnished with tables and chairs stolen from several country diners. The "naan" which wraps their sandwiches, made in house, is a half baked, tasteless, textureless soft tortilla to which they forgot to add a rising agent. The "butter muffins" and "butter cookies" they offer are exactly as advertised, and not to their credit. Their sauces and meats are nothing to brag about - they don't even have the large rotisseries we are used to seeing in gyro places. I couldn't tell were the meat came from at all. Other than sandwiches, they offer virtually nothing. There is the usual assortment of canned pop and a couple of bottled juices. They have a basic coffee maker, tea and soup.
Nothing good can be said about the decor. The bright green and yellow walls make the restaurant look like the ball room at Ikea and the stereo system in the corner emits the high pitched whine of a local radio station which would need to be ten times louder to drown out the refrigerators and fans.
The staff is friendly, but they are the over-attentive type. If you flinch while reading the menu, they chirp "what would you like?". While I sit at my table looking pensive, they try to talk to me over the radio and fans, through the plastic sneeze guard about something to do with my sandwich and how they made someone else's sandwich before mine when that person paid after me and how they are so sorry... et cetera. I smile back as I try to ignore them and swallow pieces of the complimentary christmas butter-muffin. Which reminds me, they make cookies which are completely white. I wondered if they had been baked at all until I realized they must have just shaped a shortbread cookie into a regular cookie.
Returning again to posted signs, I can't help noticing a prominent one, supposedly posted for employees which reads as follows:
IMPORTANT NOTICE: We at the NAANWICH CORPORATE OFFICE have established policies that are tried and true. It is important that you follow our established policies to the letter, or be at risk of being let go... These policies are to be followed by no only the STAFF but the MANAGEMENT as well... etc.
Every restaurant has these policies, but writing and posting them this way is usually a strategy to give customers a false sense of security.
To their credit they do use real food and I'm watching them prepare a whole cabbage as I write this; but eating in this restaurant plastered with signs telling how their food is healthy and not toxic is unnerving. It reminds me of the XKCD comic about the asbestos-free cereal. Unfortunately, they have nothing else going for them. I don't expect to return here, however, this is a place to eat for anyone wanting real-food-fast. I wouldn't call it healthy. Just real. And fast.
On a closing note, they didn't fold the end of my wrap properly and half the contents fell out onto the paper plate.
