Last month, after a very successful ER readers’ lunch at Kungfu Kitchen – a total of fifty-six guests in attendance and what felt like about the same number of different dishes to try – the hardcore lunch-goers were sitting in the luxurious surrounds of Park House up on campus, shooting the breeze. It was early evening and even though it was right at the beginning of December it felt, to me at least, like the start of the festive season.

I always love that bit, when the event has gone well and everybody is full and happy and I get to have a few pints and chat to all the people I haven’t yet caught up with. The readers’ lunches have been going for six years now and although there are always newcomers, many of my regulars have been coming along for a fair old time, a few since the very beginning. 

On this particular occasion I found myself in conversation with Jonathan, a newbie who very specifically wanted to talk to me about a bugbear of his: how come there weren’t any good neighbourhood restaurants where he lived in east Reading? I thought about it, and told him I had to agree. I said that since O Portugues had mysteriously closed in the spring there was nothing that even came close.

You could eat in the likes of Rizouq on the Wokingham Road, I supposed, as it had a few tables, and I’d heard suggestions that a burger joint, Pattie N’ Pulled, was operating out of the Roebuck (it looks like they’ve since moved on). But apart from that, and the artist formerly known as the Garden Of Gulab, restaurants were thin on the ground. I thought that would be the end of the conversation, but Jonathan wanted to talk about it in more detail, as if I had the power to change it.

I do get it though. As a proud East Reading resident myself, albeit one living far closer to the centre, it is an enduring mystery that it’s such a dead zone for restaurants. Caversham is well served, and Whitley and Katesgrove have a handful of places. Tilehurst, with the addition of spots like The Switch and Vesuvio, is seeing a bit of a resurgence and the Oxford Road has always been a crucible of culinary invention. Even dear old Woodley, where I grew up, has a handful of restaurants worth a visit.

By comparison, the Wokingham Road feels like slim pickings. It has takeaways, and two biryani places, and the likes of Earley Café and Chaiiwala, but nothing you could describe as a neighbourhood restaurant. It’s almost as if the people living near Palmer Park are expected to hop on the 17, walk to Kungfu Kitchen, settle for the Hope And Bear or, if all else fails, fall into Ye Babam Ye. If it wasn’t for the likes of Smash N Grab and Cake & Cream, you might struggle to see redeeming features at all. And Smash N Grab, sad to say, has its last ever service tomorrow.

I did remember, though, talking to Jonathan that there was one possible contender in the form of Hala Lebanese. It opened last June on the Wokingham Road, just past the stretch of shops, in a spot formerly occupied by another Lebanese restaurant, Alona. I still remembered Alona, partly for the astroturf but mainly for the wobbly shawarma that had slightly traumatised my dining companion John and me. I told Jonathan I would get to Hala as soon as I could and, what with Christmas and Covid, I think I’ve pretty much kept my promise: last Saturday Zoë and I trekked up the Wokingham Road to give it a whirl.

First things first. They’ve kept the astroturf, with a couple of pub garden tables outside that might come into their own once we make it to summer. But if you look at the picture at the top of this review it looks cold and clinical, harsh bright lights, big glass doors and windows that say this is a takeaway. So actually I was really pleasantly surprised, when we went in, to find that it was on the homely side. Nothing spectacular but decent sized tables, comfy seating and lighting which was just the right side of too full on (not that I was complaining – I like to be able to see my food, and this meant it photographed pretty well).

The panelled walls had a feeling of shipping containers about them, but I found all the framed art on the walls eclectic in a good way: I didn’t expect to see pictures of Princess Diana and Amy Winehouse adorning a Lebanese restaurant, that’s for sure. The welcome was warm and immediate, and as soon as our server ascertained that we wanted to eat in she ushered us to a table.

I think most people choose to get their food delivered from Hala, as evidenced by the regular sounds from the till and steady flow of riders with their blocky insulated backpacks. But based on my experience they might be missing out because I found it quite a lovely little space, even if we were one of only two tables eating in. I put that down to being pretty early on a Saturday evening. The couple next to us told us to move to their table after they left because it was right under the heater and they were right: it made for a cosy place to eat, especially looking out on the bitter cold beyond the door.

The menu is largely devoid of surprises, so if you’ve ever been to a Lebanese restaurant in Reading – or indeed anywhere else – you pretty much know what to expect. That’s by no means a bad thing but the usual suspects are all present and correct, like houmous, baba ghanouj, kibbeh, shawarma and dishes from the charcoal grill and a section of wraps for the lunchtime trade. Hala doesn’t bake on site the way Bakery House does, so those elements are dialled down in the menu.

The other noteworthy thing about Hala is its sheer affordability: the prices are reminiscent of Bakery House shortly after it opened, so almost no starters bust the five pound mark and most of the mains are well south of fifteen quid. In what must surely be a random typo, unless they love palindromes as much as I do, houmous will set you back £4.24.

We stuck to old favourites on this visit, which you could see either as sheer laziness or a diligent attempt to benchmark Hala against its peers. In truth it was probably a bit of both but it was a very effective tactic. Hala allows you to have houmous with either chicken shawarma, lamb shawarma or diced lamb and we went for the latter. It was a superb start, the houmous thick and rich with tahini, the crater in the middle piled with hot little nuggets of lamb.

All of it was impressively savoury and the lamb in particular was spot on. This can easily compete with Bakery House and ironically one of Hala’s drawbacks – shop-bought pita – worked in its favour here. It may have been rigid and lacking in the fluffy give of Bakery House’s balloons of pita, but that structure made it much more suitable for dipping, loading and shovelling. I know that doesn’t paint an elegant picture, but we both enjoyed it far too much to even pretend to be elegant.

Equally good, if not better, were Hala’s chicken livers. By weird coincidence it’s almost a year ago to the day that I published a review of Lebanese Village by Caversham Bridge, having been lured there by a report that the chicken livers were something else. As it happens they were something else, other than good, but Hala’s rendition was everything I could have hoped for. Big old bastard things, cooked beautifully, with a little bit of caramelisation outside but not mealy or grainy inside.

And the sauce they were swimming in was knockout. Although there were pomegranate seeds strewn on top, Hala doesn’t fall into the trap of leaning on the pomegranate molasses or killing you with sweetness. Here, whatever sweetness there was had been held brilliantly in check with a slow, glowering heat. Just perfectly done, and, with the exception of Clay’s Kitchen, arguably my favourite chicken livers in Reading. We dredged our remaining pitta through that sauce, loading up with red onions, until not a drop remained. And I had that thought I often have at times like this: please don’t blow it with the mains.

That was needless worrying, as it turned out, because my main was a real star turn. I’d chosen the mixed grill, to try as wide a range of food as possible, and it was simply brilliant. For fifteen pounds you essentially got a greatest hits package: chicken shish, lamb shish, lamb kofta and, underneath that big pile of meat, a bottom layer of both lamb and chicken shawarma. For one person I can’t think of anywhere like this – not Bakery House, not Lebanese Village, not Tasty Greek Souvlaki for that matter – that gives you so much for so little.

But this isn’t just about quantity because lots of what I had was genuinely stop-and-notice excellent. The lamb had a lovely tinge of char and had clearly been marinated and cooked well because although it wasn’t pink inside it was superbly tender and positively delicious. The chicken, big hefty chunks of it, had a lovely colour and was cooked so well, without any drying out. The lamb kofte was equally good – big, uneven, coarse and exceptionally tasty. I thought at the time that this was probably the best mixed grill I’ve had in Reading, and further reflection hasn’t changed that.

Wanky food bloggers would talk about “grill work” at this stage, when they just mean cooking on a grill, in much the same way that they praise a restaurant’s “pasta work” when they just mean making pasta. I’m sure they think it makes them sound dead professional. Anyway, the bottom line is that this kitchen really knows how to grill meat.

The shawarma was also excellent. Normally I prefer lamb shawarma to chicken, and Hala’s lamb shawarma wasn’t bad but it was sliced a little thicker than I personally like; I like it ribbon-thin and caramelised, like Tasty Greek’s beautiful gyros meat. And I was slightly put off by the fact that the first couple of pieces I had were bouncy, but it was plain sailing after that. The chicken shawarma though was another standout – surprisingly fragrant, with lemon in the mix playing an important role.

Zoë went for a whole plate of the lamb shawarma and loved it, so it’s quite possible you might too. But I couldn’t help looking at that plate and thinking about everything you could get on the mixed grill for a mere three pounds extra. Either way, by this stage I wasn’t convinced you could order badly at Hala. Their garlic and chilli sauce – both potent and a little more three-dimensional than their equivalents at Bakery House – rounded things off beautifully.

You can have anything off the grill with chips or rice and we asked for something listed on the menu as “Lebanese lamb rice”. It was beautiful too – warming, spiced and shot through with little pellets of minced lamb. I expected them to charge a little extra for this, but when the bill arrived for whatever reason they hadn’t. The lamb rice is a real beauty. If you go to Hala, ask for the lamb rice.

Service was really lovely throughout, looking after us – for most of the meal we were the only customers eating in – asking if we wanted more pita and generally making us feel welcome rather than a distraction from the stream of Deliveroo orders. Our meal came to £44.44 exactly (another palindrome!) for all that food, a bottle of water and a Pepsi Max, and when we tried to tip they wouldn’t let us. It’s worth adding that Hala, like Bakery House, doesn’t have an alcohol licence, but it does serve some fruit juices along with ayran and conventional soft drinks. I didn’t miss alcohol at all during my meal, for what it’s worth.

I’m on a bit of a lucky streak when it comes to Reading reviews – if I’ve ever had as good a three venue run as Minas Café, Filter Coffee House and Hala Lebanese I certainly can’t remember it. But everything about my meal at Hala, from start to finish, made me smile and I’m so happy that I ate such gorgeous food in a brilliant, welcoming place that didn’t put a foot wrong.

On the walk home we stopped in at Chaiiwala and I grabbed a sweet, milky, perfumed karak chaii for the rest of the journey. And I thought to myself that East Reading really wasn’t all bad – I hope if nothing else this review gives Jonathan and any of my other East Reading readers another option to consider that doesn’t involve voyaging into town. It definitely gives me another place to go when I want a casual, really enjoyable evening meal.

Here’s something I only remembered when I sat down to write this: Hala Lebanese actually contacted me on Facebook a couple of months after they opened, asking me to come and try their food. I wasn’t clear if they were offering me a comped meal or not but I replied, as I always do, saying that I don’t take freebies but that I would be in at some point before too long. I asked them what dishes they recommended, and they told me to try their houmous, chicken livers and mixed grill. I must be very susceptible to (not especially) subliminal messages because of course, five months later, that’s exactly what I ordered.

I also asked them to tell me something about their restaurant and what made it different from Reading’s other Lebanese restaurants. The response was humble, simple and nondescript: it’s a family run business, we have low prices on every meal and everything is fresh. Now that I’ve eaten there – and I really wish I’d done it sooner – I am convinced that they were selling themselves short. Hopefully this review explains what their reply didn’t, because I thought there was something endearingly special about Hala Lebanese.

Hala Lebanese – 8.2
133 Wokingham Road, Reading, RG6 1LW
0118 9667000

https://halalebanese.uk