It’s strange to think that I took nine years to review anywhere in Maidenhead, and then went there three times last year in relatively quick succession. The Elizabeth Line is, of course, the main reason for that, making the place only twelve comfortable, air-conditioned minutes away. But the other reason, which is similar but not the same, is the effect the Elizabeth Line is having on Theresa May’s stomping ground.

Speaking of the great woman, here’s a true story: I was within spitting distance of the former Prime Minister last year when she was the mystery star guest at my secondary school’s fiftieth birthday celebrations. Fuck me, it’s Theresa May! I said as she walked past the bench where I was drinking warm cider out of a plastic glass (fortunately she didn’t try to, although I’m pretty sure she heard me).

As I’ve mentioned before, all sorts of interesting restaurants are proliferating in Maidenhead now it has these shiny new transport links, and many are the sort of places you might wish Reading had. A Hoppy Place has the best part of twenty beers on tap with a scale and central location that combines the best of the Nag’s Head and the Grumpy Goat. Seasonality, which I reviewed last year, is the kind of seriously good small independent modern European restaurant that has long eluded central Reading.

Sauce & Flour – still hate the name – might not have been my bag but even so it was undeniably bang on trend. El Cerdo, which opened recently, is building good word of mouth for its tapas (Reading town centre last had a tapas restaurant in 2016, if you’re keeping score).

And finally, getting to the point, there’s Knead, the subject of this week’s review and the reason I plonked my arse on that iconic moquette about half an hour after I closed my laptop for the week, pulling out of Reading Station with Zoë, a weekend of sunshine, food and company ahead of us. Within another half an hour we were sitting in the sun outside A Hoppy Place with a couple of cold beers, a packet of pork scratchings and one eye on the menu of our dinner venue. Life was good.

Knead’s story is a time-honoured one involving many of the elements you often see in independent hospitality businesses. Husband and wife team (check) Olivia and Simon Perry bought a van (check) in 2018. Four years of street food events (check), catering (check) and pop-ups (check) later, they decided to take things to the next level and move into a permanent spot. They carried out some crowdfunding last year (check) and finally, in December they opened their first restaurant in the middle of Maidenhead.

I don’t mean to sound dismissive or to brand that narrative as a cliché. Scrolling back in time all that way to 2018, seeing the whole thing unfolding in reverse like Memento, I was struck by how hard the Perrys had worked to get to where they are. This was no flash in the pan, no affectation or fad but the culmination of years of work. It made me really want them to do well. It made me think about whether, really, I’ve ever stuck at a dream even half so long. And, of course, it made me hungry.

Knead is on the ground floor of a new build, like A Hoppy Place, Barista & Beyond and, for that matter, Dee Caf and that gives it advantages it makes the most of – proper space outside, big double aspect windows and a surprisingly generous room. I loved the framed prints and the “hydroponic wall”, thick with basil, and if the tables were cheek by jowl the place was so buzzy and happy, filled with the promise of a new weekend, that I was really unbothered by that. At the next table, a couple were sharing a pizza: come to think of it, maybe behaviour like that is why they have to cram them in.

“Who shares a pizza with restaurants struggling like they are right now?” I said, possibly louder than I intended, and Zoë gave me a look I know well, the one that silently says why do you have no indoor voice? I’d like to say I made a mental note there and then to order more food, but in truth that decision had been made hours before, as the train doors had closed.

Knead’s menu is good, small and pleasingly eccentric, by which I mean that it’s full of surprises. Half a dozen red pizzas, three white ones, a handful of nibbles and sides and a couple of sharing boards. That’s all, and many of the obvious pizza choices are missing – including the anchovy and caper combo I would normally pick on autopilot. Pizzas max out at thirteen pounds and everything is keenly priced – so again, what people are doing taking up a table and just eating the one pizza completely escapes me. I’m sorry, I won’t mention that again.

Another encouraging sign is that suppliers get a name check. Some, like Marlow Cheese Company or Agosti Gelato, who make their ice cream in Cookham, are local. Others like Islington’s Cobble Lane (who provide the cured meats) may not be but have a good reputation. I also absolutely loved Knead’s decision to stock beers by White Waltham’s Stardust Brewery, because I think nothing goes with pizza quite like beer. I had their Saaz Pilsner, which was crisp, bitter and rather nice, while Zoë tried their Optic IPA: a sip of hers made it clear that I’d made the wrong choice.

We started with Knead’s charcuterie sharing board, which clocks in at just under fifteen pounds, and it was easily the least impressive thing I ate all evening. This could and should have been an opportunity to showcase how well Knead buys, but it fell flat. The prosciutto had the sheen of something freshly decanted from plastic, the mortadella was – well, still something I’d never really choose to order. The salami was decent but unexceptional. Cobble Lane does lovely cured meats, but I’d be surprised if any of this came from them.

So with the charcuterie not exactly the star of the show, that left the rest. And the rest felt a little like padding. Artichoke hearts tasted thin and nothingy and had, I imagine, been fished out of a jar. Sundried tomatoes, bocconcini and olives were all perfectly unexceptionable, but you could get this in a plastic tub from M&S. And the “no waste focaccia” made from leftover dough was just sticks of pizza dough and not focaccia at all. Presentation just looked like everything had been shoved on a plate, an attempt to say “look how much you’re getting”.

I know I sound like I’m having a mither. But this kind of starter is one of my favourite things in the world when it’s done right, no better than something you can knock up yourself when it isn’t. In Reading, Mama’s Way does something similar that shows this up for the pale imitation it was. And at the Lyndhurst they’ve just introduced their own charcuterie board. For the same money you get generous quantities of three different types of charcuterie, all from Cobble Lane, and a thick slab of terrine, and they throw in a black pudding Scotch egg. I know that because I tried it the night before my visit to Knead. That’s how I know Knead was going through the motions.

But that’s not, I suspect, where Knead’s strengths lie, and perhaps they just have that dish on their menu because they think it’s something a pizzeria should have. Once we moved on to the pizzas themselves they became significantly more assured.

Mine, the “Sergeant Scoville” was that modish classic, the pizza with ‘nduja and some other stuff. In this case they hadn’t thrown the kitchen sink at it, so just ‘nduja, chillies and some hot honey from a London company called Dr Sting. Maybe my tolerance to heat has ramped up after years of Clay’s and Kungfu Kitchen, but I thought this was affably mild. The ‘nduja though, from Cobble Lane, was absolutely spot on with that almost-acrid, savoury punch, and they weren’t stingy with it. The hot honey got lost in the mix a little, but I’d love to see Knead pair it with some blue cheese.

Starting with the toppings, though, is a little arse about face because the fundamentals – the base and the tomato sauce – really were top-notch. A brilliantly chewy, speckled crust, a base that held together and a total package that wasn’t sloppy or untidy. Its closest peer in Reading these days would be Sarv’s Slice, which I really rather liked, but Knead’s pizza is a little bigger, a little better and a little better value. I also ordered a pesto mayo to dip my crust in, which I thought didn’t taste quite right. I subsequently realised from looking at the bill that it was vegan – given that neither pesto nor mayo should be vegan, I thought that was a tad disappointing.

Zoë’s choice, which she out and out adored, was a white pizza. Now, I have friends who think these are against God and against nature, but I personally think there’s a time and a place for them. Based on Zoë’s reaction to this one, the place might be Knead and the time might be the next time I go to Knead.

In the “Hello Gourd-Geous” (when did wacky names move past craft beer and just become what everybody does?) the ‘nduja was still present and correct but harmonising with a completely different backing band. This time it was a sweet creamed pumpkin base spiked with blue cheese (“and there’s loads of blue cheese”, Zoë added). She had a sriracha mayo dip for her crust, which would have been overkill for me but suited her just fine.

Out of sheer greed – why have one pizza between two when you can have two and a half? – we also ordered the “Dreamy Garlic Bread” with mozzarella. I liked it, but it’s a silly name: when something involves quite this much garlic a better name might be something like the “Fucking Honking With Garlic Bread”. Given that they’re probably trying to appeal to families, maybe not.

Dessert rather had to be done, although the selection is on the slender side. I really wanted to try the gelato, which is made locally with milk from the fantastic Lacey’s Farm. I was also drawn to this because the flavours speak of more than a passing acquaintance with Italy – pistachio was a very creditable effort, and the chocolate was nicely bitter, not making the easy concession to pack in sweetness. But what I really loved was the fior di latte ice cream. Our default ice cream in this country is vanilla, as if we can’t accept that ice cream could just taste of itself. It takes confidence in your raw materials to make an ice cream like this, and I loved it. Only a handful of ice crystals in a couple of the scoops spoke of a few quality control issues.

Zoë had a scoop of that bitter chocolate ice cream – a generous one at that – on top of a fudgy, gluten free double chocolate brownie. Just as I have friends who think a white pizza isn’t a pizza, I have other friends who think a brownie isn’t really a dessert. I have more sympathy with the latter school of thought, but anyway Zoë loved it.

Our bill for all that food and a couple of beers came to sixty-eight pounds, not including tip. I do also have to call out the service which was excellent throughout: Knead has a young, enthusiastic team who were working their socks off on a busy Friday night and you really wouldn’t have known that the restaurant was barely six months old. It has that maturity which comes, I guess, of working on their concept and striving for this for such a long time. I left with a full stomach and that warm feeling that comes from spending your money in the right way, with the right people. Nothing is quite as good as excellent hospitality when it comes to delivering that.

All in all I really enjoyed Knead. The only real misstep was that charcuterie board at the start – and if Knead is going to offer something like that they should do it properly and have the courage of their convictions when it comes to actually using the charcutier who supplies the restaurant. For that matter if they want to keep it local Bray Cured, just down the road, do some of the best cured meats I’ve had in this country. But that gripe aside, Knead was very hard to fault. The pizzas were very accomplished – better, on balance, thank anything we have in Reading – and the commitment to local suppliers for cheese, gelato and beer is laudable.

To have this a twelve minute train ride away, with an excellent selection of beer and cider practically next door, makes Knead a very easy place to recommend on a Friday or Saturday night, or even in the week if you can’t be bothered to cook – which, in fairness, describes me most evenings. So Maidenhead has an excellent high end modern British restaurant, a great town centre craft beer venue and a cracking indie pizzeria. For all I know, it might have a destination tapas bar as well. While these places are opening in Maidenhead, Reading got a Popeyes. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Knead Neapolitan Pizza – 7.6
Unit A, Trinity Place, St Ives Road, Maidenhead, SL6 1SG
01753 973367

https://www.knead.pizza