Edible Reading is taking Christmas off. Many restaurants aren’t attractive places to visit over the festive season – full of work dos paying inflated amounts for a set menu you have to order weeks in advance. Besides, for many Christmas is all about the pleasures of eating at home – roasts, smoked salmon breakfasts, insanely huge cheeseboards – and I’m no different. So here’s a round-up of what you may have missed over the last couple of months, along with all the local food news I’ve been able to uncover.

The Lobster Room, 3.3 – A good cellar restaurant can feel like a well-kept, exclusive secret. This place, on the other hand, deserves to be more widely known for different reasons. Check out ER’s worst rating so far, and the review, here.

Sushimania, 7.4 – Reading’s replacement for the much-lamented Thai Nine offers all you can eat sushi and a range of Japanese noodle and rice dishes. But is the complicated pricing structure worth navigating? Click here to find out.

Forbury’s, 7.1 – One of the mainstays among Reading’s high-end restaurants, Forbury’s has a new chef who is determined to make waves. I went expecting great things, but was I disappointed? The review is here.

Café Yolk, 5.2 – Everyone loves Café Yolk, from Twitter to TripAdvisor. Is it a masterpiece of marketing or do they really do the best breakfast in Reading? The most controversial review so far can be found here, and don’t forget to check out the comments where the chef defends himself – admittedly under an assumed name, and pretending to be a customer, but I guess it’s something.

The Plowden Arms, 8.7 – Things had to improve after Café Yolk, and fortunately my first trip out of central Reading uncovered a hidden gem on the road to Henley. Sophisticated food, hearty pub classics and gorgeous vintage crockery, all under one roof? I loved the Plowden – go here to see why I was so impressed.

The Moderation, 6.6 – Spirit House has recently opened The Queen’s Head, up on Christchurch Green, but is The Moderation the original and best? I checked out the closest thing central Reading has to a gastropub, and found a decidedly mixed bag, here.

House Of Flavours, 8.3 – It had to happen eventually – Edible Reading reviews an Indian restaurant. But House Of Flavours might be a really good restaurant that happens to do Indian food, rather than a curry house. The review, here, explains why.

The last couple of months have been slow in terms of restaurant news. La Courbe in King’s Walk still shows no signs of opening, although they’ve now added a Twitter feed to their website (it said they were opening in September, then got changed to December 16th, so we can safely assume they’re a bit behind schedule). There are a couple of interesting openings in Reading, but both are cafés rather than full-blown restaurants.

Lincoln Coffee House opened a couple of weeks ago at 60 Kings Road, and looks interesting. The owners buy their coffee from Nude and are clearly influenced by the coffee scene in Hackney and Shoreditch; the interior looks quite handsome, if stark, and they offer coffee, an interesting looking range of tea (very welcome, as tea drinkers get rather a raw deal in Reading) and a variety of bagels and cakes. It will be interesting to see how they settle in – it’s a challenging location, and they’ll need a lot of lunchtime custom from the big offices nearby. The website is still being built (http://www.lincolncoffeehouse.co.uk/) and they don’t Tweet, but a Facebook page is here.

Also new, at 16 West Street, is Cappuccina Café, which is an even more curious beast. A mixture of Vietnamese and Portuguese food means that it will offer both bánh mì (the distinctive pork sandwich so popular in London a few years back) and pastéis de nata (that’s egg custard tarts to me and you). I’ve not been in yet, but a wander past suggests it’s doing a good trade so far and the sign on the door, suggesting their pastéis may be from Portuguese chain Café Nicola, is also a good sign. No website, no Facebook page and no Twitter presence, so you’ll just have to stop by and check them out if that floats your boat.

Neither a restaurant nor a café, but still good news for cheese lovers and ale fans, The Grumpy Goat, in Harris Arcade, opened on 14th December and plans to stock a full range of local cheeses. This is great news, whether you prefer the creamy delights of Waterloo, the hard nutty temptations of Spenwood (named after Spencer’s Wood, don’t you know) or of course Barkham Blue, possibly the best blue cheese in the world. It’s nice that Reading folk will no longer have to trek to Pangbourne, Henley or Wokingham to satisfy their cheese cravings. Again, no website yet but they’re on Facebook here and they also tweet.

Of course, Edible Reading isn’t the only source of local restaurant reviews. The Reading Post recently reviewed Bart’s Grill, here, giving it an impressive four stars out of five. They must really like Bart’s, because they also reviewed it barely four months before that, here. Not to forget the time that they reviewed it in August 2012, also a glowing review, here. That’s three reviews in – count them – fifteen months. Not to be outdone, the Reading Chronicle also reviewed it in November, here – although theirs was an “advertising feature”, so Bart’s paid the paper for the privilege (not sure why they bothered, when they get so much coverage from the Post for free). It must be quite a restaurant – perhaps I’ll check it out in 2014 and see what all the fuss is about.

Last of all, it’s worth pointing out the new pages on Edible Reading. If you want to see a list of all the places I’ve reviewed, in alphabetical order, you can find it here. You’d rather see it in order of ER ratings? No problem, that’s here! And if you want to see the list of restaurants in the pile to review, and even to suggest one yourself, you can find that here. Nearly every restaurant I review comes from a tip-off, suggestion or request from you, so please keep them coming.

Right, that’s all. Have a magnificent Christmas full of turkey, brandy butter, red wine, cheese and port (and devoid of hangovers, Lambrini, coffee creams and acid reflux) and see you on Friday 10th January when I publish the first review of 2014. Not sure where it will be yet, but I hear there’s this great place called Bart’s on the Wokingham Road…