City guide: Paris

On March 31, 2023September 7, 2025 By ediblereadingIn Travel2 Comments

Paris was one of the last places I visited before the start of the pandemic: I was there in November 2019, when only the very well-read and well-prepared had even the slightest inkling of what was in store for all of us. It was my first trip there with Zoë, although back in the day I used to go there on a practically annual basis, and we stayed in the Marais, my favourite part of the city, eating in all my favourite places.

It was a parade of greatest hits. We grabbed a table at L’As du Fallafel and ate their legendary many-layered falafel wrap, studded with sticky cubes of aubergine and all the good stuff. We went to the Marché des Enfants Rouges for lunch and hunkered down at a tiny table to eat Japanese food at Chez Taeko. We had pizza at Briciole in the Haut Marais, surrounded by people infinitely thinner and more fashionable than us. Maybe they were those share-one-pizza-between-two types: I was too busy eating mine to notice.

We strolled out past the Canal Saint Martin, an area so hip I’ve never really tried to explore it, and had a wonderful meal at Le Galopin accompanied by a wine that, at the time, was too funkily advanced for me: I wonder if now, many lambics later, I’d like it better. We sat side by side in Boot Café, a ludicrously Instagrammable place that seats, and this is no exaggeration, the grand total of four people. Imagine living here, I must have said, about a thousand times. We had some iffy meals too – you can’t win them all – but we were in Paris and so really, did it matter that much? At the end of the trip, replete and far more skint, we got onto the Eurostar at Gare Du Nord and I remember parting company with the city with real sadness. We’ll be back soon, I thought. But then three years passed, so it turns out that I wasn’t.

Finally returning this month, I was comforted by how little things had changed but perhaps slightly disconcerted by how much I had. I think my taste for crowds, such as it was, evaporated entirely during the pandemic, so often I found myself thinking that there were just too many people, everywhere. But it wasn’t just that. I think the kind of cities I like spending time in has been subtly changing for years; I like smaller, scruffier, less touristy cities now.

I think that whenever you go to a city on holiday you only really scratch the surface, but in a smaller city you can at least fool yourself that you’ve managed that. In a city as vast as Paris, one you could spend a lifetime exploring, you’ll never come close. That wouldn’t bother everybody, but for a lifelong FOMO sufferer like me it just meant a constant worry that I was missing out on better meals, better coffee, better wine, better bars. I mentioned this on Twitter and someone told me he’d had exactly the same experience when he went to Budapest at the start of the month. “I felt like I was just doing it wrong”, he said.

Anyway, despite all that I managed to have a marvellous time. I tried to pick carefully, not do too much, not beat myself up too much about all the places I didn’t go and generally keep my glass half-empty tendencies in check (in fairness, in Paris, if your glass is half empty it’s never too long before you’re filling it again). It may be a while before I return again, but I know I will: Paris isn’t the kind of place you quit once it’s got under your skin, not really. Besides, just imagine living there: short of re-watching Amelie, holidays are always the next best thing.

This piece doesn’t even pretend to be any kind of definitive guide, but it’s a collection of places I loved eating and drinking on my most recent trip, and they’re geographically spread enough that they might come in handy if you’re going there yourself. I wasn’t sure whether to write this up, but in the run up to going plenty of people said they’d be watching my social media with interest as they had a trip lined up. One person even booked one of the restaurants in the list below and went there the weekend before my visit, a huge vote of confidence.

But I know that Paris is so huge that you might only find one or two entries in here that appeal to you; when I said I was going at the start of the year and asked for recommendations I got plenty that were probably excellent restaurants, but in parts of the city I wasn’t going anywhere near. In any case I hope it gives you food for thought, or even just transports you during your lunch break. There remains something incredible about the city – even if you visit it, as I did, on a week when the chic pavements of Saint Germain-des-Prés are lined with walls of black bags full of uncollected rubbish and crossing the boulevards involves zigzagging through hordes of well-tempered demonstrators.

Where to eat

1. Parcelles

Parcelles was probably the fanciest of the places I visited on this trip – the epitome of the perfect Paris restaurant, all bare stone walls and tasteful terrazzo floor, the warm glow seeping out through the huge windows on to the Marais pavement outside. I’ve seen a lot of buzz about it and bookings online come available about four weeks in advance, so this one requires a little forward planning.

The best of the food was close to perfection too – a slab of pressed beef cheek with a glossy foie gras core, burnished sweetbreads tumbled onto the most buttery mash, the whole shebang surrounded by a moat of jus so shiny you could almost see your face in it. And the chocolate tart was heavenly, liberally topped with candied pecans.

It wasn’t completely flawless – there are good tables and not quite so good tables, and we got the latter only to see later arrivals ushered to the former. And the pacing was a little breakneck, until we reined it in by ordering a bottle of dessert wine and two desserts, one after another, a life lesson I learned from Nora Ephron (and my friend Al). The dessert wine, by the way, a 1996 Coteaux de Layon, was ambrosial – honeyed and golden, so beautiful that somebody from a neighbouring table wandered over to ask what it was.

It was a full-sized bottle and the waiter told us we could save any leftovers, take them home and have them with our French toast in the morning. But that didn’t prove necessary, and we rolled out on to the street afterwards full and happy, drunk on life, drunk on Paris and drunk on all that wine. It was my birthday, after all.

Parcelles
13 rue Chapon, 75003 Paris
https://www.parcelles-paris.fr/en/

2. Double Dragon

Parcelles may have been the fanciest meal of my trip, but I think Double Dragon was my favourite. Out in the 11th arrondisement, this unpretentious and buzzy place served Filipino-French cuisine including some truly astonishing dishes.

Bao came filled with Comte and XO, a combination I would never have dreamt of in a million years: fortunately, Double Dragon did. A tartare made with smoked beef and Korean pickles, humming with gentle heat, might well have been the best tartare I’ve ever tasted. But the piece de resistance was the main, a huge piece of pork roasted, paraded in front of us and then taken away to expertly hack into pieces.

It came back as an adventure playground of flesh and stunning crackling, ready to be eaten with plain white rice, papaya and a chill sauce with the sweet funk of something equidistant between gochujang and hoisin. This felt a million miles from chocolate-boxy tourist Paris, and all the better for it. When I return to the city, this will be at the top of my list to rebook.

Double Dragon
52 rue Saint-Maur, 75011 Paris
https://www.doubledragonparis.com

3. Cafe Du Coin

When I got to Café du Coin I discovered that there had been a mix-up with our reservation, which had been lost, so the only space left was up at the bar. We took it, even though it gave me a fantastic view, in a look what you could have won sort of way, of a bright, well-lit and convivial space being hugely enjoyed by other people. It is, as the name suggests, on a corner and looks like much of the decor hasn’t changed in seventy years (let’s just say, from this trip to Paris at least, that Formica is having something of a resurgence). But even so I instantly took to the place.

And the food, at lunchtime at least, was belting. A simple menu of three starters, two mains and three desserts where you take your pick and it’s yours for twenty-four Euros. No wonder the place was packed. Despite a single misfire – you can bread and deep fry tête de veau and serve it with the nicest kumquat ketchup on earth but nothing can completely conceal its true, worryingly wobbly nature – everything else was superb, whether it was a puffed up pizzette resplendent with scamorza and wild garlic pesto, a densely delicious ingot of bavette with roasted beetroot and crispy capers or a marvellous piece of pollock with bright peas, roasted cauliflower and a creamy sauce made with cime di rapa and tarragon.

For dessert we both devoured a stunning quenelle of chocolate ganache whose only fault was how quickly it vanished, with a sharp, fresh ice cream. Wines were six Euros by the glass and included an extraordinary orange Riesling from the Alsace, and by the end of the meal I would happily have gone back and eaten their food in a broom cupboard it it was all that was available. Do yourself a favour, do a better job of booking than I did and, if you’re ever in Paris, go.

Café du Coin
9 rue Camille Desmoulins, 75011 Paris
https://www.instagram.com/cafe_du_coin/?hl=en

4. GrandCoeur

GrandCoeur, on some levels, is the restaurant you’re most likely to visit from this list – it’s a stone’s throw from the Centre Pompidou, so easy to work in as a pre-culture treat or a post-culture reward. It’s also formed a little tradition for me, being the last place I lunched in 2019 before catching the Eurostar home and playing the same role in 2023. It’s a really attractive room, all exposed stone and wood, marble tables and opulent banquettes, although – that Paris thing with the bad tables again – they initially sat us at a crap table looking out on a gloomy rain-spattered courtyard. The restaurant was empty at the time: what is it with that?

But the food! Well, the food redeems all. Zoë’s wagyu cecina with a few slices of pungent garlic bread was knockout, my hamachi served simply with toasted almonds, verdant coriander oil, blobs of ponzu gel and judiciously applied flakes of salt was as pristine and refined a dish as I enjoyed on my holiday. We both gravitated towards the same main, a square of slow-cooked lamb shoulder, surrendering to the fork, nestled on a sticky-sweet tumble of soft-edged sweet potato, shallot, dates and black sesame. If the dish had more of autumn than spring about it, it was far too tasty to quibble. That said, you could quibble the pace – everything came far too quickly (why is it that the more you spend in Paris, the quicker they seem to want to get rid of you?), so if you go make sure you get them to slow it down a little.

This, by the way, was the restaurant I mentioned at the start of the piece that one of my readers visited the week before I did on the strength of my recommendation. Happily, she loved it.

GrandCoeur
4 rue du Temple, 75004 Paris
https://www.grandcoeur.paris

5. Chez Janou

Now if we’re talking shit tables, Chez Janou gave us one of the shittest tables I’ve ever sat at. It was rammed into a corner of the restaurant which said “this is how we maximise our profits”. Zoë and I sat at right angles to one another: she was facing the wall, and I was facing a group of people at significantly better tables than ours. I honestly don’t know whose view was worse.

Fortunately, after a better table came clear I begged and cajoled and the super-efficient, patient wait staff let us move. And from that point on, it was all gravy (well, jus). Because Chez Janou is a packed, busy, madcap place serving Provencal cuisine, in that part of the Marais close to Place de la Bastille, and it’s a magical place to eat, provided you feel like you’re part of it.

The food isn’t really the point at Chez Janou – it’s very nice, not amazing, but not the whole of the Chez Janou experience. Despite saying that, everything we had was solid and, in its way, quite delightful. I had goats cheese baked with sweet tomato to start, the kind of dish made for dragging crusty bread through until not a mouthful remains. My tuna with braised fennel was a joy – and a huge, expertly cooked piece of tuna at that – and Zoë’s confit duck with duck fat roasted potatoes and a shimmering rosemary jus gave me a little stab of menu-based regret.

I don’t think Chez Janou is for everyone, and you have to throw yourself into it. We were sat next to a couple from Kent who seemed ill at ease. She had asked for the tuna but without the fennel and with the sauce on the side – Sally Albright she definitely wasn’t – whereas he’d accidentally ordered the entrecôte with salad and then had to flag a waiter down to ask for a separate helping of potatoes. I think they’d have been happier somewhere a little less French.

And they made the fatal mistake of not ordering the chocolate mousse: someone comes to your table, plonks a plate in the middle of it, dishes out an enormous dollop of it from an earthenware bowl, hands you two spoons and leaves you to it. Reason enough to go to Chez Janou in its own right, believe you me.

Chez Janou
2 rue Roger Verlomme, 75003 Paris
https://www.chezjanou.com

6. Le Petit Marche

Le Petit Marché, just tucked away off the Place des Vosges, is a restaurant with sentimental attachment for me. I’ve been eating there, whatever twists and turns my life has taken, for the best part of fifteen years. And in that time it really hasn’t changed – it’s a lovely corner spot on the edge of the Marais, it’s dark and cosy and conspiratorial, you sit cheek by jowl with all sorts of people, the wine by the carafe is fucking A and there are few better places to spend an evening. There are dishes on their menu I know so well I can close my eyes and imagine them now – cubes of just-seared, sesame-encrusted tuna with a couple of dipping sauces, or medallions of soft lamb with a basil cream sauce and the best mash in the world. In another life, on my frequent visits to Paris, it was the place I always ate on my first night. It’s how I knew I had arrived.

On this trip it seemed fitting to have my first meal there, for lunch on my birthday, which is how I learned that it’s just as pretty a restaurant in daylight, is ridiculously busy even then and has a real bargain of a set lunch. The first of the French season asparagus – asparagus was everywhere on my visit – was glorious, my blanquette de veau was exemplary, served with a mound of pearl barley and Zoë won lunch, as she often does, with a beautiful piece of haddock served with a sauce corail which was a thing of beauty. They even have a website now, something most French restaurants wouldn’t have been seen dead offering when I first set foot in Le Petit Marché, all those years ago.

Le Petit Marché
9 rue de Béarn, 75003 Paris
https://www.lepetitmarche.eu

7. La Palette

One day we headed along the Seine and across the Pont des Arts, denuded of its legendary padlocks, on the way to the Left Bank and to Saint Germain des Pres, Paris’ most glamorous quartier and, I understand, the stomping ground of the really annoying eponymous heroine of Emily In Paris.

On the way, heading down roads lined with imposingly expensive-looking galleries, we stopped at La Palette, a ridiculously gorgeous street-corner cafe which has been around for yonks and, back in the day, played host to the likes of Cézanne and Picasso. It’s an unbeatable place to sit outside and watch people wafting past, wondering why everybody in Paris seems inevitably more stylish than their counterparts the other side of the Channel. It’s funny how gilet is a French word but somehow it’s hard to imagine that a Parisian would be seen dead in one. Of course, if they did I’m sure they’d carry it off, but I’m equally sure they’d draw the line at fleeces.

Anyway, this was a chance to indulge one of my favourite things – boards of cheese and charcuterie groaning with delectable things and far better than they needed to be, given what a great spot they have. Everything was spot on – small soft cheeses that had given up the fight for structural integrity and were ready to hang over the edge of the table, Persistence Of Memory-style. Multiple other cheeses, unnamed, a mixture of sharpness and tang, all magnificent in subtly different ways. A Comte and a blue, because no cheeseboard is complete without both. Dried ham and an abundance of cornichons to wrap it around, big hunks of saucisson sec to slice and chew in wordless glee. Cubes of terrine with a slight honk of offal, completely compelling, and a deep gamey rillette to slather on bread. Plenty of bread, by the way, with more when you ran out, and the most incredible unsalted butter to boot.

All that, Margaux by the glass and an endless parade of your fellow flâneurs wandering by, a procession you would join just as soon as the archetypal Paris lunch had come to an end. What could be better? Just one thing: finishing the meal with a tarte tatin, all soft apple and golden sunshine, or the most exquisite eclair, piped full of chocolate mousse. How are the French thin when they can eat like this? It must be that mythical quality, self-restraint, that I’ve heard so much about but never possessed.

La Palette
43 rue de Seine, 75006 Paris
https://www.lapalette-paris.com

Where to drink

1. Le Barav

I often make the mistake, on holiday, of having my main meal at dinner time. Well, it’s not a mistake per se (although Paris’ menus du jour can make lunching both a bargain and a pleasure) but it does mean that I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve found myself drinking in a cool bar only to have to grab my coat and scramble to a restaurant, or wandering past cool bars after my meal to find that I’m full, the bar is too and I just can’t face it. Just me?

I was determined not to make that mistake with Le Barav, a bar on the edge of the Marais that I’ve frequented and loved for years. So I had a decent lunch and made sure I was at Le Barav when it opened. There are no reservations, so we grabbed a table in their front room and started making inroads into the wine list.

It really is a wonderful place, and although it was empty when I got there every table was taken within a couple of hours, seemingly none of them by tourists other than mine. Again I got that sense of the real life of a city, not just the Instagram filtered kind (although of course I still put a picture on Instagram: you kind of have to).

The wine is great. Around a dozen – red, white, sweet and sparkling – are available by the glass and everything I tried was terrific. If you feel like really settling in, a bottle from their shop next door attracts a deeply modest corkage fee; I ended up buying something to take home, though I bet it tastes even better drunk on the premises.

Equally importantly, Le Barav has a superior range of bar food. Fuet, a Catalan salami, was sliced thin and fanned out on a plank. Saint Marcellin was baked with honey until it was a decadent, gooey mess, perfect for scooping up with torn baguette. Beef carpaccio was dressed with pesto and Parmesan, every mouthful a beauty. And toasted sandwiches with truffled brie or truffled ham were golden-striped from the grill, cut into meat triangles and perfect for sharing.

Many units and calories later I left my table with a heavy heart, hoping that the next people to sit at it would understand just how lucky they were.

La Barav
6 rue Charles-François Dupuis, 75003 Paris
https://www.lebarav.fr

2. L’Etincelle

Another leading light in the Great Formica Revival Of 2023, L’Etincelle (it means “spark”) is a fantastically scruffy, lively bar just off the Boulevard Beaumarchais. Inside it’s all neon and a slightly unreal pink light with a hugely varied crowd of hipsters, would-be hipsters and people who don’t give a shit whether they’re hip or not: naturally, they are the hippest of all. It reminded me very much of another bar I love, La Perle in the heart of the Marais, but the real difference here is the wine – much of it organic, natural, biodynamic stuff. But unlike some natural wines, everything I tried was intensely gluggable.

I managed to grab the last free table in the place – admittedly the one nearest to the lavatories – and had, as so often, that slight twinge of knowing that my search for the next big thing (the evening’s restaurant reservation, as usual) was depriving me of the opportunity of fully enjoying the current big thing. The menu contained bao and spring rolls, interesting stuff, and I could have consoled myself with the knowledge that it was probably crap. But then, just as we were about to head out into the night, I saw one of the staff bringing a plate of chips out from the kitchen. And wouldn’t you just know it, they were hand cut, irregular, golden and wickedly tempting. Damn it. Next time, I told myself. Next time.

L’Etincelle
3 rue Saint-Sebastian, 75011 Paris

3. Magnum La Cave

Arguably the yin to L’Etincelle’s yang, Magnum La Cave is a chic little wine bar in Village Saint Paul, a gorgeous, sleepy bit of the Marais that hides in plain sight between rue Saint Antoine and the river. It’s on rue Beautrellis – fun fact, this was where Jim Morrison spent his last night on earth, popping his clogs and joining the 27 club in the bath in an apartment just down the street – and I chanced upon it during a wander down to the Seine. We made a mental note, returned the next night and loved it.

Again, it has a great selection of wines by the glass, what look like a cracking set of small plates and the service was warm and welcoming. Again, I didn’t see any other tourists in there. And again, I left sooner than I wanted to with a dinner reservation to make. Perhaps that’s how I’ve been doing Paris wrong all these years. But what I was really thinking, as I shut the door behind me, is that Reading’s not really had anything like this – no, Veeno doesn’t bloody count – and I wish someone would take a chance on opening one. But I’ve been saying that every year for the last ten years, with a brief break when The Tasting House looked like it might become that sort of place, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I do it for the next ten, too.

Magnum La Cave
26 rue Beautrellis, 75004 Paris
https://www.magnum-lacave.fr

4. Liquiderie

Liquiderie, on the other hand, I went to for a post-dinner drink after my stunning meal at Double Dragon, and I’m so glad I did. It’s deeper in the 11eme arrondisement, on the edge of Belleville, but easily walkable from the nearby restaurants earlier in this piece. It’s a really fantastic craft beer bar – not a side of Paris I’d ever seen before – with a friendly buzz and a proper neighbourhood feel.

Again, it has a good menu if you want something to accompany your drinks but really, it’s all about the beer here. Quite aside from an impressive fridge featuring lots of sours and lambics they have fourteen lines and plenty of names from home – Deya, Beak and Polly’s all make an appearance. But I wanted to try some of the local beer and had a devilishly sharp fruit beer (with a hint of Pickled Onion Monster Munch) and a elegant, restrained imperial stout from La Brasserie du Mont Salève, a little brewery near Annecy, along with a DIPA singing with Sabro and tonka from Brasserie Cambier, not far from Lille. Heaven for Untappd geeks like the person I have unexpectedly become, and the icing on the cake of a gorgeous evening.

Liquiderie
7 rue de la Présentation, 75011 Paris
https://liquiderie.com

5. Yellow Tucan

Yellow Tucan was just round the corner from my hotel and it was a really welcome stop, post pain au chocolat, at the start of a day exploring the city. A far cry from the exposed chipboard not-especially-chic of many of the U.K.’s third wave coffee shops, it was a bright, tasteful yet calming space which, more importantly, did a very accomplished latte. Great merchandise too, so if you want a mug with their distinctive toucan on it, or an equally snazzy tote, this is the place for you. One of the latter found its way back to Reading in Zoë’s suitcase.

Yellow Tucan
20 rue des Tournelles, 75004 Paris
https://www.yellowtucan.com

6. The Beans On Fire

First of all, hats off to the name: it’s not the most accurate reflection of what happens in the roasting process, I’m sure, but perhaps the owners are just really big fans of Julie Driscoll or Absolutely Fabulous. However they picked such a random moniker, I’m prepared to overlook it because TBOF’s coffee was among the nicest I tasted in the city. They have a nice little outside space in the 11eme arrondisement overlooking a little square – with a boules court! – and I liked it so much that, no higher praise than this, we gave up our plans for a pre-lunch amble and stopped for a second coffee.

A bag of their beans made it back to Reading in my suitcase, and when it makes it into the V60 I will remember a very happy morning shooting the breeze with no particular place to be. Incidentally they have a second branch in Montmartre, so it’s worth checking out if you’re making a visit to the Sacré Coeur.

The Beans On Fire
7 rue du Générale Blaise, 75011 Paris
https://thebeansonfire.com

7. Recto Verso

Many years ago, when I wrote a very different blog to this one, there was an American in Paris who wrote a blog called Lost In Cheeseland and we read one another’s stuff. Fast forward twelve years or so and Lindsey Tramuta – that’s her name – is the author of two authoritative books about the New Paris with an envy-inducing Instagram feed and almost a hundred thousand followers, while I’m sitting on my sofa writing this. Still, I bet she’s never eaten at Clay’s, the Lyndhurst or Kungfu Kitchen so who’s the real winner here, that’s what I’d like to know.

Recto Verso was a tip from her Instagram and is the newest venue in this piece, opening this month in a sidestreet off the rue des Archives. And it’s a really attractive spot, all stone and wood, reminding me of some of the cafés I’ve known and loved in Bologna, much further afield. We had just fought our way across one of the boulevards, the streets thronged with protestors and seemingly every sidestreet teeming with life, and we really, really needed a coffee. And there in that peaceful space I got quiet and caffeine, and the great reset button of life was gently pressed until you heard a click. Nothing mattered after that.

Incidentally, a street full of aerated Parisians is tricky to cross. But they should try getting across Friar Street this Sunday when the Reading half-marathon is on: these French agitators don’t know they’re born.

Recto Verso
6 rue Portefoin, 75003 Paris
https://www.instagram.com/rectoversocafe/

(Click here to read more city guides.)

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Restaurant review: Bagheera at the Spread Eagle

On March 17, 2023October 12, 2025 By ediblereadingIn Reviews3 Comments

One of the best things to happen to Reading’s food scene during Covid wasn’t the influx of American chains blighting the town centre, complete with inexplicable queues for weeks. Rather it was the return of a welcome trend, with independent businesses setting up shop in the kitchens of established pubs, offering interesting menus in a way which minimised the commercial risk for all concerned. Everybody won, particularly Reading’s diners.

The notable proponents of this were in West Reading. At the Butler on Chatham Street you had Chef Stevie’s Caribbean Kitchen cooking up a storm, with beautiful dumplings, bronzed jerk chicken, moreish slabs of macaroni pie, plantain and so much more; I visited in the summer of 2021 and adored practically everything I ate. Further down the Oxford Road at the Spread Eagle, just next to Kensington Park, there was Banarasi Kitchen, offering an Indian menu with some regional specialities. I reviewed a takeaway from them early in 2021, and loved it.

All good things must come to an end, and by the end of last year both pubs had parted company with the businesses that had made them brilliant places to eat. At the Butler, it was Chef Stevie’s choice – he left to cook at Liquid Leisure in Windsor, only for the water park to close later that month in tragic circumstances. Now the Butler plays host to a business called The Toastily that serves toasties, breakfasts and that retro staple, the jacket spud. As for Chef Stevie, so far as I know he’s yet to turn up elsewhere, but if he ever does I will be there, ready and waiting to order.

The story with Banarasi Kitchen is a little more opaque, and began very curiously indeed. Last October the Spread Eagle made an announcement on Instagram. “We’re restructuring our management team” they proclaimed, language that sounded more IT and telecoms than hospitality. What did that mean for Banarasi Kitchen, somebody asked? It’s now called Bagheera, they said. But was it? Their next post had the old Banarasi Kitchen logo on it.

A couple of days later, the panther out of the bag, the pub said again that the restaurant would soon be known as Bagheera. Along with the new name came a new menu, new signage, a new chef and a new kitchen team. As further announcements came out, you could be forgiven for wondering whether we’d gone past the point of rebranding alone. The logo looked snazzy, the mock-ups of the dining room (or, as they put it, the “design concept” – more corporate speak) looked classy. Was this a conscious attempt to go upmarket?

Things continued to be baffling. In early November the pub confirmed that they had officially rebranded as Bagheera. But for some reason they didn’t announce their official opening until early December, even though they did continue posting about their menu and dishes during the intervening time. All clear as mud, but it seems that the business is one hundred per cent Bagheera now (although at the time of writing they still have the link to Banarasi Kitchen in their Instagram bio: go figure).

Café review: Richfields Deli & Grill

On March 10, 2023October 12, 2025 By ediblereadingIn Reviews

I’m under strict instructions to find some new dining companions. Dragging poor Zoë out on a weekly basis to accompany me to restaurant X or Y, with all the cashflow and calorific consequences that entails, is apparently getting, in her own immortal words “too much”. The cost of living with me crisis. So I was told in no uncertain terms that this week’s review would have to be a solo mission. Make some more bloody friends, seemed to be the unspoken subtext.

Which was fine: I woke up on Sunday morning, feeling a mite jaded after a day spent introducing friends – relatively new ones, as it happens – to the delights of Reading, to Double Barrelled and the Grumpy Goat, to our brilliant beer scene and the equally brilliant number 17 bus. You forget how great this town can be, and it’s always a tonic to see it in the eyes of somebody else, even if that does involve going all the way down the Oxford Road to an industrial estate near a big branch of Screwfix. Whatever: I slouched out of the house, a couple of paracetamol freshly gulped down, badly in need of brunch.

Nothing quite hits the spot like a full English when you’re hanging out of your arse, and I had Richfields, at the end of the Caversham Road, in my sights. I’d been there just over five years ago with a then friend of mine who used to accompany me on reviews, Costanza to my Seinfeld, and we’d both had lunch dishes, even though it was more of a breakfast place. “I’ll make an effort to go back there for brunch next year” I said, but next year came and I didn’t. Ditto for the year after, and then of course the world changed entirely. But I’d always felt I ought to give them another try, that my review was getting out of date, and a slightly hung over solo brunch date with myself presented a perfect opportunity.

Restaurant review: San Sicario

On March 3, 2023September 2, 2023 By ediblereadingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

San Sicario closed in August 2023. i’ve left the review up for posterity.

“What was this place before it was Cozze?” said Zoe as we flipped through the menus at San Sicario, the newish Italian restaurant at the bottom of the Caversham Road which has replaced Cozze’s central Reading branch.

“How long have you got? Before Cozze it was a Mexican restaurant called Maracas. And before that it was another Italian place called Casa Roma. Casa Roma and Maracas were owned by the same people…”

“…and they changed it to Maracas because they could use all the letters from their old sign? You’ve told me that story before.”

I smiled, although I did wonder if it was a good thing to have reached the you’ve told me that story before stage in our relationship.

“Yes, and before that it was a Lebanese restaurant called El Tarboush. That wasn’t bad actually – this would have been around 2009. Before that it was a place called La Fontana, but they moved out to Twyford.”

“Another Italian?”

“More generic Mediterranean, really. And before that it was a restaurant called Chi’s Oriental Brasserie. Now that was a restaurant! It was run by a chap called Wayne Wong from Cardiff, of all places. I still remember their XO chilli prawns. They ended up moving to the spot where Buon Appetito is now. I did karaoke there once, would you believe.”

Suddenly I had memories of nights in that restaurant over twenty years ago. At the time, I was going out with a woman who took great pride in stealing a six inch, brushed steel soap dispenser from Chi’s Oriental Brasserie’s ladies’ toilets: it was, with hindsight, one of many indicators that we wanted different things out of life.

“It keeps defaulting to Italian, I suppose.”

“Sort of. I guess Italian is a go-to option in this country – it tends to be mid-priced, it’s easy to do multiple pizzas and pasta dishes. Even now we still tend as a nation to have Italian out and Chinese or Indian food for a takeaway.”

That doesn’t tell the whole story, though, because before this place was San Sicario it was San Carlo – same location, same owners, but a name they had to cease and desist from using barely a month after they opened last November because of a large national chain of Italian restaurants called San Carlo.

I felt for San Sicario when I heard that – a far from auspicious start in a site where, if history was anything to go by, the owners would need every lucky break they could get. That’s when I made a mental note to pay San Sicario a visit sooner, rather than later.

“It’s got to be better than Cozze, anyway.”

Zoe was right about that – Cozze, San Sicario’s predecessor, had been terrible. I still remembered my meal there, eating carbonara paler than Cate Blanchett. It was a mystery how they’d ever expanded to three branches.

The interior of San Sicario was especially jarring: the glassware might have been different – and rather fancy – but the furniture, the banquettes, the exposed brick-effect wallpaper and the faux Kandinsky wall art had all been inherited from Cozze. Literally inherited: they’d lightened up some of the colour scheme, but it was fundamentally exactly the same.

It was a big room, and the owners hadn’t really done anything to break it up into zones or to soften the noise – a room which really had to be full not to look a bit strange, although full it would have been deafening. On a Saturday lunchtime it was far from packed, with about three other tables occupied. Another three or so groups came for lunch after we sat down.

The first sign that this was a very different beast from Cozze came when I paid attention to the menu. I was never sure just how Italian a restaurant could be when it did chicken wings and burgers, but San Sicario’s menu left you in no doubt that it was a Proper Italian Restaurant. The menu was big – possibly too big – but it didn’t feel like it was chasing customers from Prezzo or Zizzi; the chef has cooked at Pepe Sale, and that felt far more the ballpark here.

That doesn’t mean that San Sicario didn’t sell pasta and pizza – far from it, they did – but the pasta was an interesting range of sauces and shapes rather than a boilerplate way of flogging the two in an almost infinite number of combinations (just typing this reminds me, by the way, how little I miss Wolf Italian Street Food). But there was also a reasonably priced set lunch menu, which they even offered on Saturdays, a specials menu with five additional dishes on it and a Valentine’s Day menu, which I assume they hadn’t got round to removing yet.

The main thing I thought, looking at the menu, was that these were classic dishes and combinations, and that if the restaurant could pull them off it would be the kind of restaurant Reading hasn’t had for some time. I know many people miss Dolce Vita, and others miss what Pepe Sale used to be before the original owners sold up. Some, for that matter, still talk about Nino’s. But really, I’m not sure Reading has had a truly classic Italian restaurant since Topo Gigio closed.

Our first dishes came as we were making inroads into a couple of very servicable drinks – a powerful negroni for her, a G&T made with fragrant Italian gin for me – and they made for an excellent start. According to the restaurant’s social media they make their own bread and focaccia every day, and they were both pretty decent, especially the focaccia which came sliced into little cubes, perfect for dipping in oil and balsamic vinegar, just enough salt scattered on the crust. We saved the bread for mopping, showing uncharacteristic foresight.

I picked the best of the starters, which is something I don’t get to say often enough. White crab meat came heaped onto what could have been crème fraîche or mascarpone, the whole thing sitting on a potato rosti. Simple, elegant, pristine flavours, and if the advertised watercress was nowhere to be seen I was hardly complaining, as it would have thrown the whole thing out of kilter.

It wasn’t perfect – the rosti could have done with more lightness and crispness, and felt more like a latke, and I had a few bits of shell in the crab – but none of that detracted from just how delightful it was. And could I think of anywhere else in Reading where this dish would end up on the menu? Not really.

That was one of the specials, as was Zoë’s starter. Calamarata, a shape of pasta I’ve never had before, are short thick rings of pasta thought to resemble calamari (they were obviously named by somebody who’d never eaten a packet of Hula Hoops, that’s all I’m saying). They were paired up with a tantalising-sounding ragu made with beef, lamb, pork and veal. Four different animals on one plate: just imagine!

For what it’s worth, I enjoyed this dish more than Zoë did – just as well because, as a generous-sized starter, I got to finish it. The sauce hugged the pasta better than I was expecting and I quite liked the ragu which was studded with tender meat. But I agreed with Zoë that the ragu was a little unbalanced – it was underseasoned, which meant the sharpness of the tomato was more prominent than it should have been. A carpet of parmesan couldn’t save it, although maybe it would have done if it had been a lot thicker.

A final starter sounded so good, and looked so good online, that we were greedy and ordered it to share. A pile of wild mushrooms – accurately described for once – was sticky and reduced, topped with a crispy breadcrumbed egg. The egg was cooked just right, with only a little over-wobbly egg white, and when cut open the yolk worked its magic spreading across the mushrooms, an edible sunrise.

Again, it was a dish so close to superb but not quite there – I wanted more savoury depth in the mushrooms, and that was missing. I didn’t mind that it was on the small side, and I didn’t mind that it was a tiny bit pricey (it was just under a tenner), but I did mind that. If the flavour had been spot on, none of that would have mattered in the slightest.

All that said, main courses were pretty good. Zoë’s lamb rump was expertly cooked, far better than at, say, London Street Brasserie, and four really generous slices of it were fanned out on top of a very creditable caponata with plenty of black olives, the whole thing bathed in jus. The salsa verde was denser than Owen Jones, but considerably more appetising (and like Owen Jones, a little went a very long way). This dish wasn’t cheap at just over twenty-five quid, but I thought it was probably about its money. Again, Zoë found it a smidge underseasoned. She might have been right.

Saltimbocca has always been one of my favourite dishes, and since Dolce Vita closed nearly five years ago I’ve never found one that came close. San Sicario’s, I’m pleased to say, did – three pieces of veal, topped with prosciutto and luxuriating in butter and sage is one of the loveliest, simplest plates of food you can eat. Again, I feel a bit like I’m kicking a puppy saying this but it needed more – more butter, more sage, more seasoning, more oomph. The courgettes it was served with were pleasant enough, and certainly not cooked to mulch, but they felt like a bit of a plod without plenty of that butter to trawl them through. In my mind I was hoping for courgette fritti, but it wasn’t to be.

We did, however, make an excellent choice of side. Potatoes were wonderfully bronzed cylinders, all crinkled edges that spoke of a far healthier relationship with fat than I’ve ever managed. They were more fondant potato than roast potato, and all the better for it. Three pounds fifty, too, which is ludicrous value. “This is a lot better than that medley of veg you get at Pepe Sale” said Zoë. I couldn’t agree more.

By this point the restaurant was as full as it was going to get at lunchtime, and it was interesting how that exposed some problems with the service and the space. We eventually ordered some wine – a glass of barbera for Zoë and a sauvignon blanc for me – after we finished our starters. Both were lovely, but by the time they’d arrived our mains were in front of us. We hadn’t specified what size we wanted, he hadn’t asked and he brought us large glasses, which isn’t really what we wanted.

We didn’t make anything of it, it wasn’t a biggie, but there were a few niggles like that. The waiter was absolutely lovely, and quite up front about his limited English – still, of course, infinitely better than my Italian – but there was just the one of him and he did seem to struggle a little with half a dozen tables demanding his attention. And the room was so big, and the tables were so spaced out, that it could be difficult to grab him when you needed him.

I would say desserts are San Sicario’s weak point. The menu sensibly only has half a dozen, but they don’t bowl you over. Having ordered tiramisu at practically every Italian restaurant I’ve reviewed since 2019 we gave it a miss this time, although it turned up at a neighbouring table and looked good. Zoë chose a cheesecake, and enjoyed it without ever going into raptures. It was billed as a vanilla lemon cheesecake with berry compote – talk about covering your bases – but actually it was a slab without compote and with a layer of fruit jelly on top. I didn’t try it, but tellingly I didn’t especially want to.

I’d picked an affogato, prompted by fond memories of the one Tamp Culture used to do back in the day. It was entry level – two scoops of vanilla ice cream that could have been Walls, a jug of burnt-tasting espresso and, allegedly, some amaretto. It looked like the ice cream might have had a few molecules of the stuff splashed over it, but not enough to taste of it. When a dessert is this simple, every aspect of it should be good. With this one, none of it really was.

Our bill for all that food, a couple of drinks each and a post-prandial espresso came to one hundred and thirty pounds, not including tip, and took a fair old while to conjure up. I actually think quite a lot of what we had was pretty decent value, and it’s also worth pointing out that for the time being the restaurant is offering 20% off food Tuesday to Thursday via their Facebook page. After we settled up we went to Phantom for a drink, and it was hosting some kind of punk pop festival which made me feel ancient – I’m old enough to remember Basket Case the first time round – so we hopped into a taxi, went to Double Barrelled and had a very pleasant couple of hours working our way through the pales on offer. A perfect Reading Saturday.

If it’s brave to open a restaurant in the winter of 2022, knowing everything we know, it’s especially brave to open the kind of restaurant San Sicario is. I think the lower end of the market, your Franco Mancas and Zizzis, are possibly better protected from the economic shocks of the moment than somewhere unapologetically upmarket like San Sicario. And that’s before you factor in that their site is enormous. That their site is in a location that’s not in town or in Caversham, with limited parking. That it’s a site that has proved to be a poisoned chalice for so many restaurants. Then consider all the faff and palaver of revealing your name in November and having to change it literally on the 3rd of January – talk about New Year, new you – and San Sicario starts to look positively heroic.

And yet I really hope they make a go of it. It’s truly encouraging to see somewhere trying to offer what Reading doesn’t have – a genuine, interesting, high-end Italian that doesn’t just pile up the pizza and pasta, lazy variations on a theme, and try to take easy money. Some of the dishes I had I simply wouldn’t have been able to get elsewhere in Reading, and the fundamentals of the restaurant are solid. They need to tighten up the service a little, and I’d like them to be a little more liberal with the seasoning, but in honesty there’s nothing wrong with San Sicario that a few more customers wouldn’t solve.

Restaurants run better busier, and if I’d been there on a Saturday night, all buzz and bustle, I suspect it could have been fun enough to quite make me forget the glory days of Chi’s Oriental Brasserie. I will be back, and I sincerely hope San Sicario breaks the duck of one of Reading’s unluckiest sites. After all across town, in an equally ill-starred space, their compatriots Madoo have proved that it can be done.

San Sicario – 7.6
93-97 Caversham Road, RG1 8AN
0118 9560200

https://www.sansicario.co.uk