A few weeks ago, I was invited to Chiquito in Hemel Hempstead to try out their menu and see how the restaurant was getting on. They had a party back in May to celebrate their 500th day, and with nearly a year and a half under their belt, are well established in the Jarman Square part of Hemel.
If you know the area, Jarman Square used to be known as Jarman Park - a leisure park with a swimming pool, cinema, a couple of restaurants and a big Tesco. It was built in my teens, so twenty odd years later it was looking a bit sad and in need of some TLC. That's finally happened recently, with plenty of new restaurants opening up including a Bella Italia and a Nando's, and the Empire cinema being replaced by a Cineworld. It's streets ahead of where it was when I worked in Hemel a couple of years back.
We popped into Chiquito on a Friday night, and it was busy and bustling. Neither of us had been to a Chiquito for years, so we opted to try a few new things on the menu and see what was new. My overriding memory of previous visits to Chiquito is eating tons of food and leaving uncomfortably full, so I was a little worried that we wouldn't be able to move for our cinema trip later, but there was so much on offer in the menu that I went a bit mad trying to choose everything. Shame I hadn't had time to change out of my work clothes (even if I did switch my heels for comfy flats from Spartoo before I went).