You weren’t meant to be getting a review of The Three Guineas this week. My companion for this week’s review was my friend Izzy, a veritable girl around town who I’ve known for yonks, and when I gave her a free choice of all the establishments on my to do list she went – rather to my surprise, to be honest – for the Crown On The Bridge, the pub on the edge of Caversham which has recently relaunched with a menu largely revolving around hot dogs and bangers and mash.

Despite this being a quixotic choice in the middle of a summer as hot as balls, I was happy with it. I figured I could meet up with Izzy, hear stories of her latest exploits on Tinder or Bumble (although based on her recent experiences I think she may have accidentally merged them into a single app called Tumble populated exclusively by a freakish parade of emotionally stunted men) and work in a few jokes about Izzy going on a sausage hunt. Really, it was too perfect: she could be Carrie Bradshaw, we’d have a good old gas and I’d get a review into the bargain (I’ll leave you to guess whether I’m more like Miranda, Samantha or indeed Stanford Blatch).

The day before the review, disaster struck: Izzy had had a good week at Weight Watchers and unlike most people, who would fall on a plate of sausages like a hungry beast to celebrate, this meant she wanted to be Sensible. Could we go to The Three Guineas instead, she asked? It has a very tempting looking poached salmon and vegetable dish. Leaving out the fact that, in my book at least, there’s no such thing, I agreed immediately. Are you pissed off with me? she asked. Of course not I replied, mildly pissed off. She knows me well enough to know I was fibbing.

When they first announced that The Three Guineas had protected status as part of the project to build the new station I was surprised. I’d always thought of it as a pretty skanky pub – with a handsome exterior, admittedly, but still not one deserving special treatment. I turned up on a warm day to review it and there were people at most of the tables outside soaking up the sunshine and drinking something fizzy and yellow (so, in that respect at least, very much like its previous incarnation).

But going inside it was clear that the refurb had been done very nicely indeed – the pub was broken up into sections, each with a slightly different feel, but done in a way where nothing was jarring. I especially liked the upper area with a tiled floor and stools, reminiscent of a railway brasserie somewhere much more glamorous and continental, and the dining area with its fetching deep red button-backed booths. I installed myself there, because it seemed to be the main part of the pub which did table service.

To my relief when Izzy came in, resplendent in hipster glasses and a ironically retro Fleetwood Mac t-shirt, she announced that she had eaten very little all day and was keen to make up for lost calories. I was far too pleased by this to say anything petulant about sausages (although I can’t say it didn’t cross my mind) so I bit my tongue and we scoured the menu to try and figure out how to best attack it.

I must say, I found the menu a bit uninspired, especially the main courses. It had the name of the pub’s head chef on it, but I’m not really sure why because I didn’t see much there – fish and chips, shepherd’s pie, burger, curry – that showed any signs of identity, personality or distinctiveness. More interesting was the array of nibbles around the four pound mark, which I assumed were small plates slightly smaller than a conventional starter. That was my excuse for us ordering three of them to share, and I’m sticking to it.

Cauliflower pakora was probably the nicest of the nibbles we ordered – beautifully cooked florets, still with a little bite, and a light and crunchy batter. In a theme that was to continue all evening, however, it wasn’t quite what you’d expect it to be from the menu. Instead of many small florets these were big old buggers, and the “almond coronation mayonnaise” they came with was more like a curry dip. As so often with these things, there wasn’t quite enough of it. Less successful, although still very tasty, was the black pudding Scotch Egg. “Not as good as the Lyndhurst’s” was Izzy’s verdict and I had to agree – it wasn’t at all bad but it was decidedly subtle, especially where the black pudding was concerned (I found it almost undetectable). Most surreally, the “popcorn chicken” was nothing of the kind. I was expecting an upmarket take on KFC and what I got instead was tasty, coated and seasoned pieces of chicken but with absolutely nothing about them that would make you think “popcorn”. They came with a mayonnaise which was meant to have tarragon in it, but I think the tarragon had gone the way of the popcorn.

Lots of quibbles there, but oddly I really enjoyed all the small plates despite the missteps and false advertising. The worst thing about them, though, was how much they made me look forward to the main courses, because that turned out to be the biggest piece of false advertising of all.

My main course sounded amazing on paper: “braised West Country shoulder shepherd’s pie”. It stood out on the menu, begging to be ordered, and the least I could do was oblige. What turned up, though, went past mediocre to verge on insulting. The ratio of filling to topping in a dish is a debate people could have all day. It can be dish dependent, too: if you gave me a rhubarb crumble that wasn’t at least fifty per cent topping, I’d be most disappointed. But, whichever way you want to look at it, a shepherd’s pie which is eighty per cent mashed potato isn’t going to impress anybody in their right mind. Surely this isn’t just me?

I didn’t realise this at first, so I kept taking forkfuls of the mash hoping to hit lamby paydirt, but lamby paydirt never came. When I finally scraped the bottom, literally and metaphorically, it was a thin layer of lamb bulked out with diced carrots which tasted of very little. The spring greens which came on the side were sorry, thin, lukewarm things. Izzy’s menu said that this came with red wine gravy, my menu didn’t: the kitchen clearly had my menu rather than hers. The whole thing cost fourteen pounds and had me ruefully remembering the kind of food that money got you in the Lyndhurst. Instead I had mash, cold cabbage, a few cubes of carrot, some strands of lamb and the unshakeable feeling that they’d seen me coming. They do a better shepherd’s pie in M&S for a fiver. I found myself wishing I’d ordered the poached salmon, and that’s a profoundly sorry state of affairs.

Izzy, after all that, went for the sweet potato, chickpea and spinach curry. It came with flat dippable naans and was topped with a splodge of raita. I tried it and didn’t mind it but it was hard to get excited. It tasted of the sweetness of mango chutney more than the heat of spice, and although I quite enjoyed my mouthful I wouldn’t have wanted to wade through a whole portion of the stuff. Was it better than something you could pick up in a Wetherspoon’s? I doubted it, somehow. Izzy liked it though, at least up to the point where I leaned over conspiratorially and said to her “I’m never happier than when a chickpea’s in my mouth”. That got a grimace, and no doubt a mental note not to come out on duty with me again.

Drinks, by the way, were pretty bog standard and inoffensive. I’ve read a fair few people complaining about the price of pints in the Three Guineas, but they have to recoup their outlay somehow and I fear it’s not long before Reading crosses the Londonesque Rubicon of five pounds a pint and never looks back (in fact, apparently the Thirsty Bear has beaten everybody else to it). I had a perfectly pleasant pint and a half of Cornish Orchard (four pounds eighty-five a pint, in case that makes you wince) and Izzy had a Hendricks and tonic followed by a Diet Pepsi. She specifically asked for cucumber in her G&T and when it arrived the cucumber was a few wispy strands which had presumably gone through a spiralizer. The overall effect was more like algae: truly random stuff.

Service for the first half of our meal was from a young chap who seemed genuinely terrified every time he approached our table. I don’t know if it was his first day, or if he was worried about dropping something – an understandable concern based on how he tried to clear our starter plates away. Maybe he was just struggling to look Izzy in the eye: I’m told some gents find this on the difficult side. For the second half of the meal though our waitress was fantastic – likeable, enthusiastic and engaging, a proper people person (“it’s so nice to look after dining customers”, she told us, “because otherwise I just end up going from table to table picking up empty glasses”). She managed to talk us into ordering dessert too, although this gave The Three Guineas another opportunity to prove that the only consistent thing about them was their inconsistency.

Izzy ordered the chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream. Now, I have a problem with this because I’ve always thought it’s a cake rather than a dessert. It might be that the kitchen at the Three Guineas agrees with me, because what turned up couldn’t really be described as a cake. It lacked the essential – to me, anyway – characteristic of having been – what’s the word? – baked. Instead what turned up was a vaguely rectangular wobbling slab of cake mix. If they’d tried harder it would have been a brownie, but then if I’d tried harder I wouldn’t have got a C in GCSE drama; you’ve got to stop making excuses eventually. “It’s very nice”, said Izzy, “but it’s just goo”.

My ice cream was three scoops, but the one on top was significantly smaller than the other two, like they’d given up partway through: if I’d taken the same approach as the kitchen, this review would abruptly stop here. Again, it’s a real pity because the ice cream was fantastic. It’s from Laverstoke Park Farm and had all the rich silkiness I associate with them – based, admittedly, on many a happy afternoon spent devouring their buffalo mozzarella. I loved the chocolate (what there was of it), I adored the salted caramel and I admired more than enjoyed the orange chocolate chip. But overall the ice cream was even nicer, I would say, than Tutti Frutti – especially in terms of texture. Even then, it rankled that the portion control was so haphazard and, even more oddly, when the bill arrived they’d decided to charge separately for each scoop, making it more expensive. The whole meal came to £64, not including tip.

As Izzy and I strolled across Forbury Gardens, heading to the Retreat for a post-meal debrief, we chatted about the meal.

“What rating will you give it?”

“I don’t know yet, I’ll think about it. The only real rule with ER ratings is that if it’s less than 6.5 I’d be unlikely to go back.”

“So is this right on the edge?”

“Yes, probably.”

Probably is about right, I think. I could see myself stopping there with friends for drinks, or popping in off the train and just wolfing down some of those small dishes. But I keep coming back to the mistakes, and god knows there were plenty. A shepherd’s pie which could almost have been made without the involvement of a single shepherd. A brownie which had never seen an oven. Cucumber like algae. Popcorn chicken which gave no clue as to how it got the name. I’m tempted to be generous to the Three Guineas because they’ve breathed life into a lovely old building, the interior looks great, and the service at the end was as good as any I’ve had in far more illustrious places.

But then I think about the money sunk into the place, and the prime location they have and I think that the food, overall, was just lazy. I keep coming back to places like The Lyndhurst, which get this stuff right and put proper thought into their food. And The Lyndhurst is flourishing despite not having the luxury of a captive, transient and (let’s be honest) possibly inebriated clientele to rely on. Why would I go to The Three Guineas when I can go there? So all in all I can’t recommend The Three Guineas, and that’s a real shame. Unless and until they sort out their food, they’re going to be wasting one of their best assets clearing glasses from tables, and Reading will – in some respects at least – waste one of its most attractive buildings.

The Three Guineas – 6.5
Station Approach, Reading, RG1 1LY
0118 9572743

http://www.three-guineas.co.uk/