Month: July 2018

Clay’s Hyderabadi Kitchen Competition: the results!

On By ediblereadingIn Competitions, News1 Comment

I’m delighted to announce the results of the Edible Reading competition in conjunction with Clay’s Hyderabadi Kitchen. One of these days I’ll do something like a simple prize draw, but I do like making people work for it and flex their creative muscles, and this competition was no exception. I asked entrants to describe their ideal three course Reading meal in 200 words or less, with each course coming from a different restaurant.

My competition postbag was as eclectic a group of dishes as Reading has restaurants or I have readers, and the whole thing made me inordinately proud of both Reading and my readers. From Thames Lido to Cafe Rouge, from l’Ortolan to Alto Lounge, all gastronomic life seemed to be covered. I was hugely grateful to be spared an agonising decision and the inimitable Adam Koszary has stepped up to do the honours. He’s done a truly marvellous job. I do like to tax my judges’ patience, so before I announce the winners I also asked Adam to (drop to the floor and) give me 200 words on his ideal Reading three course meal. Here’s what Adam came up with:

I would never win the competition I’m judging.

I have been disappointed by too many undercooked, overpriced brownies, and so I eat two course meals like it’s a religion. I’m also terrible at describing food, and my tastes often veer to the meat and potato.

But here goes.

If I had money in my pocket and three courses to spend it on, my first course would be I Love Paella’s Patatas Bravas. Yes, they’re simple, but they’re absolutely lush. I made my parents try them. I’ve tried to make the same sauce at home and failed miserably. My partner and I genuinely reminisce about eating them.

For the main I had a hard time deciding between Bakery House’s humble shawarma and Papa Gee’s Sofia Loren pizza, but if you turned the thumbscrews I would opt for the latter. It’s better than any pizza I’ve had in Italy. Their meat tastes like it’s fresh from some hoary Italian mountain man’s pig, the sauce from an Italian matriarch’s pot. It’s all chili and sausage and fun in the mouth.

I don’t eat desserts so I’d have a Magnum from Cemetery Junction Co-Op on the way home.

Job done.

Personally, I think Adam’s meal sounds pretty good to me: I must get him to come out on duty with me some time. Anyway, without further ado, here are the winner and our two runners-up, along with Adam’s comments. Roll the tape!

WINNER: Graeme Fancourt

A perfect food crawl around Reading on a hot summer’s evening would have to begin at House of Flavours. While we exhale the woes of the day and the hopes of the evening ahead, I’d be enjoying the Adraki lamb chops; a perfect start of crisp fat and tender meat that’s infused with ginger spice and all things nice. And I’d have to do my best not to order it twice.

We’d then have an excitable wander round the corner to the Lyndie where I’d order their just-creamy and just-salty-enough pan-fried brill in lobster sauce. More than any other dish in Reading’s restaurants this is the one, for me, that most closes the gap between the A4 and the ocean.

Mainly to stop me boring everyone about the samphire, we’d leave the Lyndie and wander across to Pepe Sale. We make up for the cheap Lyndie Chardonnay by ordering a bottle of the Moscato, and I’d get my ice cream fix from the cassata fragola. The liquor-soaked sponge cake is just filling enough after the light fish dish to be the perfect end to the evening while we polish off the Moscato and plan our Autumn food crawl.

Adam says: I admire people who can write about food. When I try and do it, my brain can only reach for the words ‘lush’, or ‘alright’. In this competition, then, I was on the lookout for writing which would not only make me imagine the meal on the plate, but also make me want to stuff my face with it.

This entry certainly managed that.

I want that lamb chop. I want that tender meat in my mouth, and I want that crisp fat on my lips. My god.

I also had a slight heartburst at the description of the excitable wander around the corner to the Lyndie – a wander I’ve done many times. The patient wait at the pedestrian crossing, with the beckoning shining windows of the Lyndie across the IDR, feels almost like the final trial before the prize of good food and Yakima Red.

It’s also obvious that the cassata fragola has been chosen logically as ‘just filling enough’, and I get the impression that this writer has thought sensibly about the logistics of a Reading-wide three-course journey. It honestly makes me want to polish off a Moscato and bumble merrily off home.

FIRST RUNNER-UP: Ben Thomas

Fareham Drive Shopping Precinct may look like the set of This is England but it harbours one of Reading’s great restaurants – Himalaya Momo House. Amongst their many knockout dishes is the unmatched aloo papri chaat. This chilled delight incorporates chickpeas, potato, and starchy wafers, but manages to avoid stodginess, as cooling yoghurt and astringent tamarind add the lift needed to make this a perfect balance of spicy, sour, and fresh.

Picking the main was tough, but I couldn’t drag myself away from Thai Corner’s exquisite rendition of my favourite meal – beef massaman. This dish is a product of the influence of Islamic traders on Thai cuisine, and the darker, earthier tones that introduces wrestle with the tropically aromatic base of the traditional Thai curry, and both benefit as a result. Add some coconut rice, and that’s my death row meal right there.

I often skip desert, but if I’m visiting Côte, I’ll leave room for a praline crêpe. Caramelised banana is a textural experience of the first order, and the rest is self-explanatory. If it were possible to eat this after an aloo papri chaat and beef massaman, then I’d be a happy man indeed.

Adam says: This one very nearly won it for me.

What I enjoyed about it is what’s sprinkled on top. The three words ‘This is England’ immediately placed Fareham Drive Shopping Precinct for me, and I love that a culinary jewel can still shine even in the most Grimsby-like of places. I also bloody love the use of ‘astringent’ as well. I admire the audacity of it.

The other thing which put this entry ahead is the historic context. Food is often more than food – it is culture and history. Just as my home’s regional dish of faggots will tell you a lot about the Black Country, I love finding out what other dishes say about where they’re from, and I can just imagine the melding of cultures and cuisines on the silk road. The praline crêpe is self-explanatory.

SECOND RUNNER-UP: Tara Pritchard

I’d begin with the Gobi 65 from Chennai Dosa (sadly closed). Perfectly cooked, crisp florets of cauliflower, bright with spice and bursting with flavour. Perfect way to wake your tastebuds at the beginning of a meal.

Moving onto the baghare baigan from Clay’s: two plumb baby aubergine resting beneath a rich and yet surprising light peanut sauce. This restaurant can pull off the alchemy of blending spices into a perfectly balanced melody and yet still allowing each flavour to sing alone. Paired with fluffy, delicately scented basmati rice it was a dish that hushed conversation as the first taste was savoured. I’m not vegetarian; but finding a vegetable dish that could easily hold its own against the more carnivorous elements of the menu was a delightful surprise.

To finish, I’ll be dragging you to the Griffin for their salted caramel sundae. Sticky and gooey with just enough salt to cut through the sweetness. It’s a guilty pleasure and once, when a friend stepped away from the table to take a work call, I managed to eat two. In my defence, it was a hot day and the ice cream was melting. Any one of you would have done the same!

Adam says: Choosing the second runner-up was also tricky. I’d hoped someone would have taken a pilgrimage of all the Greggs in the town centre, sampling a sausage roll at each one. One entry came close, but I don’t consider their choice of third course – 2009-grade ketamine – as food.

Maybe as seasoning.

As it is, we have this journey from a defunct Chennai Dosa through to baghare baigan and finishing in the Griffin. I appreciated the bittersweet memory of a meal which can never be had again, and the image of two plump baby aubergines fighting the corner for veganism. The cherry on top, however, was the great sundae robbery. I’ve often considered the theft of an absentee fellow diner’s food, and I applaud the audacity of someone who says fuck it and does it.

Huge congratulations to the winner and runners-up. Graeme wins a three course meal for two with a a bottle of house red, or a bottle of house white, or four pints of mango beer (and the mango beer would be a pretty decent prize all on its own). As for Ben and Tara, Clay’s has generously offered a runner-up prize of a portion of free kodi chips if you go for a meal there – trust me, that too is a pretty decent prize. Thanks to everybody who took part, and I’ll do my best to rustle up another competition for you in due course.

Oh, and since literally nobody asked, I also jotted together 200 words on my ideal three course Reading meal, inspired by what Adam said about bittersweet memories. What better way to finish the piece but on a bit of a downer? Exactly…

This is my gastronomic Ghost Of Christmas Past, the three course meal I most miss about Reading, the one I can no longer enjoy.

It begins with the sukuti at Namaste Kitchen. Small punchy cubes of mutton, oh-so-slightly chewy with perfectly crispy fat. The plate comes with a few cocktail sticks and you know you must share, but you wish you didn’t have to. Halfway through, you wonder why pubs don’t serve snacks like this, so perfect with a beer. Except one used to, and then it stopped.

Then you move on to Dolce Vita’s saltimbocca – slender, tender veal with sage, wrapped in Parma ham and cooked just as much as it needs to be, with a sauce you daydream about for days. No longer available, of course. Cause of death: greedy landlord, as so often.

Finally, Tutti Frutti’s smoothly complex peach and amaretto ice cream. You should eat it late in the evening, in the old part of the station (the bit with a soul) watching the workers in their high-vis jackets and people home from their London train, merry or tired. I wish I’d known, the last time I had it, that it was the last time.

Right, that’s enough of that gloom. For every place that closes, another new place opens, so tune in next week for a brand new review of one of Reading’s newest contenders. You might like this one.

Afghan

On By ediblereadingIn Reviews1 Comment

Afghan closed following a fire in January 2020 and is yet to reopen. As a result, I have marked this restaurant as closed. I’ve kept the review up for posterity.

My dining companion this week is Martijn Gilbert, the outgoing (in every sense) CEO of Reading Buses. I realised Martijn wasn’t going to be your usual dining companion relatively early on in our meal at Afghan, just after we took our seats in one of the booths at the back of the room and began looking at our menus. I was looking at the menu, anyway: Martijn, on the other hand, was peering intently through the big windows out on to the Wokingham Road.

“What’s that doing there?”

“What do you mean?” I said, assuming he was talking about the presence of houmous on the menu of an Afghani restaurant.

“That bus that just went past. It’s a 14 – they go to Woodley – and this is the 17 route. If there’s a diversion in place I don’t know about it.”

“Is that a problem?”

Martijn gave me a kindly, indulgent look, as if he’d just heard something crashingly stupid but was far too nice to correct it, and said something about low bridges. It all sounded very convincing, although my mind was also whirring with other thoughts, mainly about how many main courses we could snaffle between the two of us. After all, Martijn had specifically told me he only had a salad for lunch to ensure he was in peak dining condition.

“If you don’t mind, I just need to phone the control room.”

So he did, and it turned out it was a known diversion and not some bus driver having a funny five minutes or, worse still, about to recreate Speed just outside the Early Café. But even that incident gave me an idea about what Martijn was like in work mode, and it was impressive stuff: the sort of perfectionism I also see in some restaurant owners, where they know everything about everything when it comes to their business. I aspire to that, which is why I re-read my reviews countless times before they are published on the blog – scanning for typos and needless commas, mostly – but I’m small time compared to this.

The irony about Martijn’s intervention was that I’d deliberately chosen Afghan to review with him because it was on the 17 bus route; just like the tote bag they sell in But Is It Art? says, the number 17 route is the backbone of Reading. Sometimes it seems like all human life joins and leaves that great thoroughfare at some point – whether it’s the leafy gentility of the Earley borders, the icon that is Cemetery Junction or the fleshpots of the Oxford Road. I used to commute to work on the 17, many moons ago at the dog end of the 90s, from a shared house on Talfourd Avenue where I was the only person not doing drugs, and I’ve always had a big soft spot for it; to me, as much as the River Thames, it defines the town.

It pleased me, too, that Martijn caught the number 17 to the restaurant – as did I. Martijn told me previously, during a boozy night in the Retreat, that if the number 17 route hadn’t already existed, nobody would have invented it: it simply made no sense to join up the far East and West of Reading in this way, and in any other town it would have been two separate routes. But Reading had it, and it worked, and people seemed to like it, so nobody has ever messed with it. “Our data shows us it isn’t always heavily used during the day” said Martijn, “but we’re not changing the timetable. It goes every seven minutes, without fail. That’s the 17 for you”. I loved that, another of many things to love about Reading.

Of course, I don’t just pick restaurants because of their public transport links and Afghan had come highly recommended by a number of people in the run up to my visit. One friend told me they had a real talent for cooking lamb, another friend enthused about her trip there a couple of days before my visit. My regular reader Mansoor – an expert in these things – recommended one dish in particular, telling me his wife had ordered it three times in two weeks. All that and independent and in an area somewhat lacking in decent restaurants: how could I not give it a whirl?

The room was pretty much unchanged from its previous incarnation as Lazeez – a big square, booths and banquettes around the edge and tables in the middle (I know that, because I looked up the old review for Lazeez and was struck by how much of it I could have just copied and pasted). Martijn and I were at one of the booths, which could have generously seated four but turned out to be just right for the quantity of food we ordered. The menu reminded me very much of the menu at Kobeda Palace, the Afghan restaurant at the other end of the 17 route, only a little wider and far more polished-looking: at Kobeda Palace you could be forgiven for thinking you were in a kebab house, with the preparation and cooking front and centre, whereas Afghan was more obviously a restaurant. Some dishes were more expensive, but many weren’t.

I managed to persuade Martijn to order a starter and three mains to share, and as nobody at Afghan tried to deter us I assumed that our order was deemed plucky rather than foolhardy. The first thing to arrive was a dish I’d been very excited about trying, the chapli kebab. This was the dish Mansoor’s wife had so admired, and it’s been described as the best thing to come out of the Khyber. As a die hard Carry On fan I found this difficult to believe, so I was determined to see what the fuss was all about.

A chapli kebab is quite hard to describe, but here goes: it’s sort of like a spiced lamb kofte but instead of being in your traditional cylindrical shape it comes as a flat patty more like a burger, cooked in fat and packed with onion and green chillies. When it arrived I thought it looked rather like a pair of smokers’ lungs, but from the very first mouthful I knew this was a dish to be reckoned with. How did they get the contrast between the almost crunchy outside and the juicy inside so bang on? It went beautifully with all three dips at the table – a green one full of coriander, a red number which looked like it would be diabolically hot but was more like a sweet chilli sauce, and a cooling yoghurt with mint.

“This is good” said Martijn, wasting no time setting out demolishing one of the kebabs, and I couldn’t disagree. The naan it was supposed to come with didn’t arrive until later, one of many oddities about the timing which slightly marred matters. Instead, we got the only conventional starter we’d ordered: bourani banjan, aubergine with tomato and yoghurt. Aubergine isn’t everybody’s cup of tea – often it isn’t mine – but this was a properly lovely dish and astonishingly good value at three pounds. The aubergine was sweet, sticky and beautifully cooked with none of that spongey boredom it all too often presents.

In an ideal world we’d have been left to finish that little lot before more food turned up, but that was not to be. Instead, a groaning dish of lamb biryani was brought over when we were barely halfway through. How much you’ll like Afghan’s biryani, to some extent, will depend on how you feel about meat on the bone – most of it slid off, but there was a bit of a variation in texture. I didn’t mind it, and I know that lamb on the bone is far more authentic for these things, but it wouldn’t be for everyone. The rice was well spiced (if not the best example I’ve tasted) but there was a lot of it, so the ratios felt a little off. On the other hand, this dish was nine pounds, so that feels like a quibble.

At the risk of inducing déjà vu, in an ideal world we’d have been left to finish that (not especially) little lot before more food turned up, but that too wasn’t to be. So we were partway through pretty much everything we’d ordered when a big dish of charsi lamb karahi was deposited at the table, along with our naan bread which, by that point, I’d pretty much forgotten about. The lamb karahi is ordered in multiples of half a kilo, so we’d ordered the entry level five hundred grams. When it arrived, I told myself it was okay because much of it would be bone: and, again, how you feel about this dish will partly depend on where you stand on meat on the bone. I found this a little trickier and less enjoyable – the sauce was deep, thick and peppery but lacked some of the spice and fragrance of, say, Kobeda Palace’s quite extraordinary karahi.

We had an ordinary-sized naan bread (which was meant to arrive at the same time as the chapli kebab) but we’d also ordered an “Afghan naan”, because I’d been told these were quite the talking point. And it really was – a huge thing which turned up vertically, impaled on some metal stand and brought to the table. It was so big it blotted out some of the remaining daylight outside, so big in fact that Martijn took a selfie with it for sheer novelty value. But the novelty value was the main value, I think. Getting it off its makeshift gallows was a faff, and it was a little rigid and crispy rather than soft and yielding – you could load stuff onto it, but it was much more difficult to use it for scooping. That said, the karahi was a relatively dry curry, so perhaps scooping was a bit hopeful anyway.

“It’s great that Reading has independent restaurants like this and not just lots of chains” said Martijn, grabbing another mouthful of the karahi and I sensed, not for the first time that evening, perhaps a little bit of regret at leaving his adopted town. I could see why – I mean, he might be able to actually buy a house in the North East but would he ever find an equivalent of the Maiwand Lion, or Smelly Alley, or the Nag’s Head?

“That’s the whole point” I said, pontificating on as usual before returning to more important matters. “Try some more of the chapal kebab now it’s cooled down. If anything, it’s even more delicious.”

Like quite a few of Reading’s more interesting restaurants Afghan is unlicensed, so Martijn had something fizzy and I ordered my beloved mango lassi. It was three pounds for a glass or six pounds for a jug, so I got a jug and Martijn helped me out with it, although we left a little. It never disappoints, but it did have the slightly gloopy and sweet taste of stuff that might not have been freshly made.

Dinner for two came to fifty-two pounds, not including tip, which really isn’t half bad when you consider that what we ordered probably would have easily fed three less gluttonous people. I haven’t mentioned the service, but that’s because it was pretty unobtrusive: pleasant enough, just attentive enough but nothing to write home about. The restaurant wasn’t busy on the night we went, but there were a few families and bigger groups. As so often, I was struck between the contrast of the quieter, more polished interior of Afghan and the scruffy, more boisterous Kobeda Palace. Your mileage may well vary, but I think I prefer the latter.

That comparison has weighed on my mind a lot since my visit because if you’re comparing like for like, for me at least, I think Kobeda Palace would win every time. With the exception of the chapli kebab – a delicious, intriguing dish I could gladly revisit – I thought Kobeda Palace won on points at every level. I preferred the ambience, I preferred the karahi, I preferred the naan. In fairness, Martijn was a big fan of Afghan, but I did wonder if that was because he just hadn’t been to Kobeda Palace. Perhaps just using that comparison isn’t fair, because Afghan is also in competition with Miah’s Garden Of Gulab a few doors down, or Vel, or any of Reading’s countless Indian restaurants. And on that level perhaps it fares a little better – the food I had was good, and interesting, and I saw enough on the menu to want to go back, to try the samosas, or something else from the grill.

And, of course, you also have to bear in mind that East Reading has a dearth of good restaurants: Garden Of Gulab is no great shakes, the Hope & Bear is another Mitchell & Butler pub, “Smokey’s House” looks best avoided and I Love Paella has, perhaps sensibly, left the Fisherman’s Cottage. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king and Afghan is very far from one-eyed. Maybe it has a bit of a squint, but it’s still possibly the best option in that neck of the woods.

After the meal Martijn and I wandered to the Hope & Bear for a gossip and a debrief, which gave me the opportunity to confirm my suspicions that the facelift it received when it rebranded from the Abbot Cook largely consisted of painting the whole thing green and putting new furniture in the garden. On our walk there, Martijn spotted a bus stop which wasn’t to his satisfaction, and took a photo.

“Do you think your staff will miss you randomly sending them photos of bus stops on your travels?” I said. He smiled.

“They know I keep them on their toes.”

The employees of Reading Buses might not miss it, but actually I will, and I suspect Reading might too: it’s nice to have somebody in charge who cares. We sat in the garden, pretending it was warm enough for a couple of pints, and discussed Martijn’s plans to get through all ten of the dishes on my list of Reading’s most iconic meals. I don’t think anything from Afghan will make the second edition, although the chapli kebab might scrape an honorary mention.

At the end of our evening we took the 17 together from outside the pub.

“This timetable is wrong too!” said Martijn, taking another photo. “It lists every single departure time from the stop, when our new timetables say they go every seven minutes. That’s the whole point, because we can’t be precise about exactly when a bus will go past.”

“And the newer timetables will look much cleaner, too.” I said, finally feeling like I was getting the hang of it. Martijn’s enthusiastic reaction suggested that maybe I was.

The bus pulled up and the driver let us both on, and if he was anxious about the prospect of driving the head honcho into town he kept a magnificent poker face. “I like to think they see me as one of the gang” Martijn told me, as we sat at the back and watched the Kings Road hurtle past, riding Reading’s greatest thoroughfare again. How many times have I taken this bus in my life? I wondered. It felt like the 17 had always been there, and I found myself hoping it always would be. And best of all, I got to travel back to the Village for nothing because I was taking the bus with the boss. I reflected later that it might be the only freebie I’ve ever received on duty: a freebie of which I’m strangely proud.

Afghan – 7.2
146 Wokingham Road, RG6 1JL
0118 9668802

https://www.facebook.com/afghanrestaurantreading/

Competition: Clay’s Hyderabadi Kitchen

On By ediblereadingIn Competitions19 Comments

I’m delighted to announce that the third ever ER readers’ competition is in partnership with Clay’s Hyderabadi Kitchen.

I first heard about Clay’s at the start of April when the owners contacted me with some information about the restaurant, and from that very first mail I sensed a real passion about food and excitement about their project. The owners, a married couple, had put everything into their dream of opening a restaurant and they told me all about their dishes, their background and what they felt they could offer to Reading’s food scene. I can offer you a certain amount of help, I said, but if I do more than that you’ll know who I am, and then I won’t be able to review you. So I gave them some general pointers about Twitter, who to talk to for more assistance and ideas and so on, but we agreed that we’d keep it arms length. Keep in touch, I said.

I was happy with that, because I sensed that Clay’s would be the kind of place any restaurant reviewer would want to visit on duty. Right from the off I had an inkling that it was going to be one of the most exciting restaurants to hit Reading in as long as I can remember, promising a specific kind of Indian regional cuisine you couldn’t get anywhere else. Further emails only confirmed my suspicions, from the degree of care that had gone into the menu to other details throughout: the wines, the beers, the spirits, the crockery, the cutlery, the glasses. In fact one of the beers on offer – the Hyderabadi IPA from West Berkshire – is the result of a meeting between Clay’s and the brewery which was arranged by my beer-loving friend Tim (nice work, Tim).

So far, so good. I’d done my bit while preserving my anonymity. What could go wrong? Here’s what: a couple of people blew my cover to Clay’s. It’s my own fault, really: in that first mail from Clay’s the owner told me that she had been reading the blog for some time and had taken to eating in Bakery House and the sadly-missed Namaste Kitchen while taking a break from the building work. Namaste Kitchen hosted the first Edible Reading readers’ lunch, which meant that the legendary Kamal knew my identity. And despite being sworn to secrecy he managed to give my details away, possibly after a couple of his favourite single malts. A second lapse at Blue Collar from another set of loose lips while waiting in line for my chicken wrap from Georgian Feast (another recommendation of mine), and the damage was done.

Oh well. It’s probably for the best, because the more I exchanged emails with the owners, the more I liked them and the more I wanted them to do well. Could I really give an unbiased review to a restaurant when I knew just how much they had poured into the place? This is the problem with getting too close: even if I managed to stay anonymous, I still probably couldn’t claim to be completely impartial. So, as it happens, I think the food at Clay’s is fantastic. I’ve been a few times – once before they opened, to finally meet the owners properly, and twice since opening day. I took my family (who revere Royal Tandoori) to Clay’s on a Saturday night, and they raved about the place.

Everything I’ve had there had been extraordinary , whether it’s the kodi chips (thin, spiced, battered slices of chicken – the best bar snacks in Reading for my money), the delicate discs of paneer, the miniature dosa with their buttery crunch and soft, spiced filling or the beautifully perfumed rice of the biryani.

That’s before we get on to the tilapia fillets with rich, reduced, roasted onion, star anise and chilli, or the red chicken curry with a hot, complex, hugely satisfying sauce.

And, unlike most Indian restaurants in Reading I can think of, there are just two desserts both of which justify you leaving a little space. One is a sweet dessert with onions which is worth trying for novelty value alone. But the second – my personal favourite, this – is double ka metha, a soft square of bread soaked with subtle sweetness, a dish which manages to be the perfect light, clean way to end a meal. But you can take that opinion with a pinch of salt, because during their journey to becoming a restaurant I find I started to feel invested in that journey (and, for full disclosure, I didn’t pay for all my visits there). Never mind – this isn’t a review, and you can take from it what you like.

What I did get in return for my help, apart from a guided tour through some of the highlights of the menu, was a treat for one of you. The winner of this ER competition will get a three course meal for two people – a starter, main and dessert apiece – along with either a couple of pints each (of mango beer or Hyderabadi IPA) or a bottle of house wine (white, red or rosé) to share.

All you have to do is this: describe your favourite Reading three course meal in 200 words or less. The only catch is that the starter, the main course and the dessert all have to be from different Reading restaurants. Email your entry to me – ediblereading@gmail.com – by 11.30am on Friday 20th July.

As regular readers will know, I may not be completely impartial about Clay’s, but I’m definitely impartial about reader competitions. So, as always, I’ve enlisted somebody far more qualified than me to judge the competition and pick the winning entry. This time it’s Adam Koszary. You might know Adam as the digital lead for MERL and Reading Museum, it’s more likely that you know him for that Tweet about the sheep that went crazy ape bonkers. But personally, I prefer to think of him as the chap who wrote this gorgeous love letter to the Ding. However you cut it, he’s going to be a superb judge and I’m really pleased to have him on board.

Only one entry per person and – as always – the usual terms and conditions apply. Adam’s decision is final, no correspondence will be entered into, no bribes will be accepted and you don’t get any extra points for deliberately including either a mutton dish or the words “absolute unit”, so don’t even try. The very best of luck to all of you, thanks to both Clay’s and Adam for making this happen and I’m looking forward to announcing the winner really soon.

Feature: The 10 Reading Dishes You Must Try Before You Die (or relocate)

On By ediblereadingIn Features8 Comments

It’s a while since I did a feature on the blog, but this one has been percolating for some time. Eighteen months ago I went on holiday to Malaga, and although it was a mixed bag, one thing I really loved was the food culture. I did a food tour which took me from restaurant to market to bar to restaurant, trying the best dishes from the best places, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself (I also spent much of the time apologising to all the lovely Europeans in my tour group about the Brexit referendum result, but that’s another story).

When I visited, Malaga was celebrating “Tapas Month” – well, it’s got to beat Veganuary – and participating restaurants had teamed up to put together a tapas trail across the city, each one offering a special edition tapa for a couple of Euros, only available for that month. I spent much of my trip wishing I could stop and try all the dishes – that, and wishing that I was on holiday with someone who would want to.

When I returned home, I pondered whether either of those things would work for Reading, but decided it was just too difficult in practice. What was I going to do, walk them to the farmer’s market and then take them to Sapana Home for momo? No dice: Reading was too small, and it definitely didn’t have enough of a small plates culture, so I abandoned the idea.

This year, I vaguely revisited the idea of readers’ events, namely lunches, and we’ve had two very successful ones so far – at Namaste Kitchen in January, and I Love Paella in May. At the latter, the kitchen (headed by the redoubtable Edgar) put together a set menu including a special dish: ox tail empanadas. They were easily one of the loveliest things I’ve ever eaten at I Love Paella: meat cooked into sticky, yielding strands, deeply savoury, all wrapped up in that astonishing light pastry.

If you were there, you’ll know how good they were, and if you weren’t you’ll have to take my word for it, because they were on offer for one day only. So I didn’t manage a tapas month, but for just one day we got our very own exclusive Reading tapa. If they’d made it on to the menu, they’d easily be one of the must-try dishes in Reading. But what else fitted that description, I got to thinking. What were Reading’s culinary equivalents of the Seven Wonders Of The World?

So my initial idea morphed into exactly that, and it crystallised when I was down the pub with, of all people, Martijn Gilbert, the outgoing CEO of Reading Buses. Martijn has kindly agreed to come out on duty with me before he leaves for pastures new (my way of saying thank you, you could say, for the splendid app which allows me to reply to texts from my mother like “what’s your ETA this evening and would you like a gin when you get here?”). But before that, I spent an evening showing Martijn round the splendid pubs of the Village and I found myself wondering: what should be on his gastronomic bucket list before he heads off to the North East to take up his shiny new job?

That’s when I decided – I would compile the list of Reading Dishes You Must Try Before You Die (or, less melodramatically, relocate). After painstaking research and contemplation, I’ve boiled it down to ten signature dishes which, I think, demonstrate the many faces of Reading’s magnificent independent restaurant scene. With one exception, they are dishes you can only get in Reading, or at least only get this version of here: and that means that there are no chains in this list, however much I like Honest Burgers or Franco Manca’s lovely anchovy and caper pizza (I’ve relaxed this rule for number 6, but it’s a tiny chain with two branches).

I’ve applied a couple of other rules: one was that I only picked one dish per restaurant, which excluded a lot of wonderful dishes. Another was that they had to be dishes from permanent restaurants, which meant that sadly, Peru Sabor’s delicious ox heart anticuchos and the incredible spiced chicken wraps from Georgian Feast didn’t make the cut. I should also add that I am not a vegetarian or a vegan and I have chosen on merit rather than by quota, which means only one vegetarian dish makes my list.

But you could fill an impressive enough list with all the other dishes that didn’t make the grade, from Papa Gee’s Sofia Loren pizza to Shed’s Top Toastie, from House Of Flavours’ lahsooni chicken tikka to London Street Brasserie’s fish and chips. You’ll doubtless have your own favourites which I’ve missed, and hopefully you’ll comment telling me how wrong I am: lists like this are made to be disagreed with, and that’s as it should be. But in any event, I hope there’s at least one dish on this list you’ve never tried, and that this piece makes you feel like giving it a whirl.

One final thought before I begin: this could have been a very different list if Namaste Kitchen was still offering its old menu, or if Dolce Vita was still with us. If nothing else, I hope people try some of these dishes out so I’m not lamenting the loss of any of these restaurants a year from now. And in a year’s time, who knows what this list might look like: after all, the venison bhuna from Clay’s Hyderabadi Kitchen already looks like a contender in the making, and that place has only been open a couple of weeks.

1. Big pot cauliflower, Memory Of Sichuan

Because, it turns out, Chinese bacon is a thing.

I can’t lie: Memory Of Sichuan can be an intimidating restaurant to walk in to. Most of the customers aren’t Western, and the ones that are aren’t eating from the proper menu, the one with all the good stuff on it. And even the proper menu can be quite an eye opener, with all sorts of dishes you wouldn’t recognize or wouldn’t want to try – duck blood here, pig’s ear there, like a cross between Old Macdonald Had A Farm and A Nightmare On Elm Street. But the big pot cauliflower is well worth it: I suspect it may have more going on than any of the other dishes on this list. So there’s cauliflower, of course, lovely firm florets of the stuff, but there’s also bacon like char siu, colossal quantities of garlic, spring onion and soy beans. By the end, at the bottom of the pot, you have a sticky, sweet mixture of all of the above just waiting to be chased round the dish with a fork, relentlessly hunted down and consumed. Order it and enjoy – and feel a little sorry for everybody there who’s making do with sweet and sour.

Memory Of Sichuan, 109 Friar Street, http://www.memoryofsichuan.co.uk/web/

2. Charsi chicken karahi, Kobeda Palace

The pride of the Oxford Road.

Earlier in the year I went to a house party on Brunswick Hill. I was reluctant about going, but I promised I would attend provided I could slope off and have dinner at Kobeda Palace – well, it was just round the corner after all. But the Oxford Road’s Afghan grill house is well worth a hop on the number 17 bus (the 17 bus route is the backbone of Reading, don’t you know) any day of the week. The thing to do, if you can persuade your friends, is to order a huge dish of the chicken karahi – they sell it by the quarter of a kilo – and some naan and spend your time grabbing some chicken, shredding it off the bone (which never takes long) and scooping it up with the naan, along with the beautiful sauce packed with coriander, chilli and ginger. If you can’t persuade your friends, order half a kilo and have at it on your own. This really is one of Reading’s unsung, unforgettable dishes hiding in plain sight in one of Reading’s most unglamorous and little-known restaurants. The party, since you asked, was okay I guess. But the chicken karahi was out of this world.

Kobeda Palace, 409-411 Oxford Road, http://www.kobedapalace.co.uk/

3. Chilli paneer, Bhel Puri House

Vegetarian perfection, cubed.

I’ve written about Bhel Puri’s chilli paneer so many times you may be bored of hearing it, but it bears repetition: whether you’re vegetarian or not this is one of the very best things you can spend your money on in Reading. I introduced a good friend to this dish recently, after a long absence, and I got to experience just how wonderful it is through the eyes of somebody else. She enjoyed it so much her face struggled to register it, and instead you got an expression as if she was trying to solve an especially hard Sudoku. It’s so good it almost induces consternation, and I can sympathise: the first time you get that combination of crispy, sticky cheese and sweet green pepper – and the delight of spearing both with your fork and eating them in a single mouthful – is something you simply do not forget.

Bhel Puri House, Yield Hall Lane, http://bhelpurihouse.co.uk/

4. Dak-gang jeong, Soju

It’s KFC, but not as we know it.

It’s not even a month since my review of Soju, but from the moment I first ate their fried chicken I knew this was a dish I would be evangelising about to all and sundry. The coating was just right, the flesh underneath was spot on, the sauce had just the right mixture of hot and sour without any sweetness. I’ve thought about it dozens of times since, and wondered whether it would be over the top to go back simply to order the chicken and a cold beer, followed possibly by another portion of chicken and a cold beer. An instant classic.

Soju, 9-11 Kings Walk, https://www.thesoju.co.uk/

5. Double duck scotch egg, The Lyndhurst

Pub food, done right.

This choice will probably come as no surprise – The Lyndhurst won my World Cup Of Reading Restaurants earlier in the year on Twitter with good reason – but it’s still a thoroughly deserved entrant in my top ten. The Lyndhurst has transformed in the last eighteen months or so, offering a range of classic pub food (excellent fish and chips and a very creditable burger) along with cheffier, prettier things: I was particularly bowled over, on a recent visit, by a pork chop with a breathtaking wild garlic pesto. But the Scotch egg is the centrepiece – a generous duck egg, wrapped in duck meat and cooked so the outside has that crispy crust, the meat hasn’t dried out and the golden yolk is the perfect texture for oozing. I’ve even ordered one when I’ve just been at the Lyndhurst for drinks: is that just me?

The Lyndhurst, 88-90 Queens Road, http://www.thelyndhurstreading.co.uk

6. Gaeng massaman, Thai Table

The ultimate comfort food.

Most Thai food I can take or leave, but I always console myself with knowing that the bit at the end, where all that’s left is the coconut rice and the warming, aromatic sauce, is the best part. Thai Table’s massaman curry turns that on its head because although that bit is still amazing, the beef is simply spectacular – cooked until it completely falls apart, no resistance or (worse still) bounce at all. If I was feeling a bit defeated by life, or worried about the state of the world, I can’t think of any dish on this list I would sooner eat. The spice is there, but sweetened with the coconut milk and the fish sauce the whole thing comes out feeling like an embrace.

Thai Table, 8 Church Road, http://www.thaitable.co.uk/

7. Lamb shawarma wrap, Bakery House

The sandwich of the gods.

Bakery House’s menu is an embarrassment of riches, many of which could easily have made it onto this list. The baby chicken, more boneless than a Tory Remainer and far more appetising, is one of my favourite things to eat there – as are the perfectly light falafel, not to mention the chicken livers, in a rich sauce which manages to be both fruity and fiery. But in the end, it was impossible to look past the lamb shawarma. How Bakery House manages to pack such rich flavour into shards of lamb I will never know, but when you team that up with a smudge of tahini, salad and sharp, crisp pickles you have the perfect sandwich. Well worth a short lunchtime walk out of town and miles better than anything you could pick up at the likes of Pret A Manger.

Bakery House, 82 London Street, http://bakeryhouse.co/

8. Quiche Lorraine, Workhouse Coffee

Greg’s 1, Gregg’s 0.

Workhouse Coffee might not be everybody’s first choice of a lunch venue. It has little to offer the tea drinker – owner Greg Costello seems to hold tea drinkers in much the same regard as I hold members of Britain First – and you may want somewhere with wi-fi, or comfy seats, or even a readily accessible loo. You might want to see the prices of everything clearly listed, and who could blame you? These are all fair challenges, but what you can’t knock is the wide array of baked goods and sandwiches he lays on (figuratively not literally, thank Christ). I once Tweeted that Workhouse’s quiche Lorraine should be available on the NHS and I stand by that. It’s a marvel: crumbly buttery pastry, creamy egg, salty bacon and ribbon upon ribbon of sweet, caramelised onion. Order one for lunch when you have some time to spare (they don’t arrive at your table too quickly) and properly take your time eating one of Reading’s great dishes. Far more expensive than the steak bakes up the road on the market place, but worth every single penny. I’ve eaten this many times, but never stopped to take a photograph: I think that tells its own story.

Workhouse Coffee, 10-12 King Street, http://www.workhousecoffee.co.uk/

9. Spiced chicken salad, I Love Paella at The Fisherman’s Cottage

Yes, I picked a salad. Deal with it.

This is, no doubt, where I will part company with many of you. How could I overlook the empanadas? The goat’s cheese, its surface golden and grilled, served with tomato jam? The salt cod churros, the kind of fishfingers Captain Birdseye would make if he actually gave a shit about food? And the chicken paella, the seafood paella, the arroz negro? Have I gone mad? Well, maybe, but the understated star of the menu is the spiced chicken salad. This chicken – thighs, as always with ILP – is beautifully spiced and liberated from the starch of a paella or some bravas it really sings. The salad – leaves and halved cherry tomatoes – might look like not much, but it’s everything. And the dressing is oil but no vinegar, leaving a dish that is all sweetness and spice with no sharpness. Ironically I’d never have had this dish if it wasn’t for my mother – it’s the kind of thing she would order and I would avoid like the plague – but I went to ILP with her once and she chose the chicken salad. My exasperated eye-rolling was replaced with powerful food envy. I’ve been ordering it ever since. (N.B. I Love Paella has now left the Fisherman’s Cottage which is now under new management.)

I Love Paella, 3 Canal Way, http://ilovepaella.co.uk/thepub/

10. Suckling pig, Pepe Sale

Roast dinners around Reading.

I’m often asked what the best roast dinner in Reading is, and I always cop out, telling people I don’t really review Sunday lunches. Reading used to have a magnificent blogger who did exactly that, and now he has moved to London where he writes brilliant weekly reviews. I’ve always thought that Sunday roasts are best done at home where you can have them exactly how you like and time everything perfectly. But actually, on reflection, there is a clear candidate for the best roast in Reading, the only drawback being that you can only order it on Friday and Saturday nights. Pepe Sale’s suckling pig is a phenomenal piece of work – beautifully dense slabs of pork, no sign of dryness, along with a crackling that’s so good you could almost weep. I realised in the course of writing this piece that I don’t have a photo of this dish, which is the cosmos’ way of telling me to go back soon.

Pepe Sale, 3 Queens Walk, http://pepesale.co.uk/

So, come on then: what did I miss?