Having stopped and reflected on ten years of writing restaurant reviews, followed by a trip to my favourite food city, followed by away fixtures down the M4 and up the train tracks, it’s time to return to business as usual: a review of somewhere in Reading. But is this a chance to begin a new era, to launch ER v3.0 with a bold new direction? A focus on the fine dining opportunities in the shires? A commitment to trying new restaurants the moment they open? A review clocking in at under a thousand words, just this once?

No, this week I’m reviewing a fried chicken joint. Why change the habit of a lifetime?

I must apologise, and not just to vegetarians, vegans and that one reader of mine who’s allergic to chicken. I know I eat a lot of chicken. At the last ER readers’ lunch in September at Clay’s Kitchen (opening course: kodi chips, made of chicken; penultimate course: ghee roast chicken) a number of people stopped me and said your top 50 had a lot of chicken in it, didn’t it? It’s indisputable. I even, earlier in the year, went to two London restaurants in one day, in what my friend James and I dubbed ChickenFest. It’s set to become an annual event.

Some restaurant reviewers rave about lamb, some are beef-worshippers, many love pork in all its many forms. But my weakness is chicken, and particularly fried chicken. Maybe it’s a throwback to childhood, when the fast food my Canadian uncle dubbed “Kentucky Fried Duck” was the biggest treat in the world. Or maybe it’s no Proustian nonsense like that. Perhaps I just really like chicken.

God knows I’ve eaten, reviewed and raved about enough of it in ten years, whether it’s the Lyndhurst’s peerless karaage, Clay’s wonderful Payyoli chicken fry or a sinful, hangover-redeeming tub of sweet chilli chicken from Kokoro. Or, for that matter, Soju’s wonderful dak-gang jeong, the beautiful Korean fried chicken which made it into my top 10 last month after an emotional reunion with the stuff in the restaurant.

Korean flavours are a particular growth industry for fried chicken, it seems. Years ago the only place in the UK for Korean food, surreally, was New Malden, not far from Kingston, on account of it being one of the largest expat communities of Koreans in Europe. But over the last ten years it’s gradually gained a foothold – it was as long ago as 2014 that I first tried bibimbap, in Coconut of all places, and since then Soju and Gooi Nara have opened in town.

But Korean tastes, and specifically the unmistakeable taste of gochujang, have started to bleed into what you might call fusion food. Back when Gurt Wings was still at Blue Collar their JFC – a cross between popcorn chicken and karaage – comes “Lost In Translation”, drizzled in a combination of gochujang and sriracha mayo, sprinkled with togarashi and sesame seeds. You can call it cultural appropriation, you can say that geographically it’s all over the place with Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Thai influences, but whatever you call it you also have to call it delicious.

And it’s not just Gurt – not to be outdone, the Lyndhurst does fantastic chicken wings every Wednesday, coated in a potent gochujang sauce, and even though wings are about my least favourite way to consume chicken I still can’t get enough of them. I live in constant hope that the Lyndhurst will do a chicken thigh burger, with that same gochujang coating, cooked until tender but crispy. Maybe they’ll take the hint – I know they like a challenge – or maybe I’ll just have to ask them nicely to serve one at my wedding reception.

I suspect part of this is also due to the increasing cultural popularity of all things Korean. I don’t think everybody is suddenly watching Old Boy and Lady Vengeance, but Squid Game was massive a few years ago, not to mention the Oscars in 2020 for Parasite. And is it too reductive to say that it might have something to do with BTS?

I am more aware of that than some, because my future mother in law is fully paid-up ARMY and is just as likely to say that she purples you as anything else. If you have to look up either of those expressions then you’re where I was at the start of the year, but it’s been quite an education. She recently went to a kind of fan gathering in some halls of residence near Chichester, where any fears about meeting new people were eradicated through the steady application of inhibition-lifting soju, and apparently the whole affair was a roaring success. She talks about going to Korea soon, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that happens. If she does, I hope for all our sakes that she comes back: “once you Jimin, you can’t Jim out”, she likes to say.

All that brings us, by a roundabout route, to The Bap, the new Korean fast food place on Market Square, occupying the site recently vacated by the ill-fated La’De Express (before that it was a Select Car Leasing shop opened in 2017 by “Reading FC chairman Sir John Madejski”: how times change). It’s The Bap’s third branch, after openings in Farnborough and Swindon according to the website, which could do with a little proof reading. Our Reading branch is located at the Market place where the heart of town in Reading it says. Err, fair enough. Oh, and “bap” means rice: this is very much not a sandwich shop.