Month: March 2024

Café review: U. Bakery, Crowthorne

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The origin story for this week’s review goes all the way back to last December, and involves a chap called Chris.

I was at home recovering from Covid, minding my own business, and I saw that Chris had sent a message to the blog’s Facebook page containing a video of him and his mates having dinner on a Tuesday night at Masakali. It had just opened at the time. To be honest I was just relieved it wasn’t hatemail, but it was rather sweet to see the camera panning round a group of friends enjoying dinner together. “Just sending you a video message, which is a bit weird” Chris began, before telling me I really should try Masakali. “It’s the restaurant place opposite TGI Friday that always changes. Love you Edible Reading! Please come here before it closes!”

I took my time – I blame the Covid – but then of course I got round to it a few weeks back, and when I did a comment popped up on the Facebook post about it. “The video message outcome!”, Chris said to a friend, one of his fellow diners. I resolved to be a little bit quicker acting on Chris’ next recommendation – it seemed the least I could do – and I got my opportunity when he chipped in after my controversial visit to the mediocre Honesty at Thames Quarter.

Chris knew just how I could get over the disappointment of that meal. If I wanted a seriously good pain au chocolat, he said, I needed to get myself to U. Bakery in Crowthorne. It was a stone’s throw from the train station, so no fuss to get to. He sent me a message with more details, telling me that the owner Uri was from Tel Aviv and the range of baked goods included plenty of stuff you couldn’t get elsewhere. “I can tell you with certainty that you won’t be disappointed” he added. “If you don’t agree I’ll pay for your train fare!”

How could I argue with an endorsement like that? So I did my research, and made plans to hop on the Gatwick train last Saturday, just in time for lunch in Crowthorne. The homework I’d done backed up what Chris had told me: U. Bakery opened last spring, owner Uri Zilberman did indeed hail from Tel Aviv and he was keen to offer a menu inspired by the food he grew up with. That meant, among other things, challa and chocolate babka, neither of which you often see round these parts. The smelly, tired old Gatwick train was packed that morning, but I at least felt like I was taking it to go somewhere better.

U. Bakery is literally two minutes’ walk from Crowthorne station and was very full when I got there. It’s a corner plot with tables outside on both sides, nearly all of which were occupied by couples and families enjoying the sun. Plenty of dog walkers, too, which was unsurprising with all the wide open space nearby. Inside I think the place seated about sixteen and again a lot of the tables were full, with a big queue in place, some waiting for tables, some grabbing loaves and coffee to go. The whole thing had that tasteful, muted, Scandi look to it – the baked goods were all on display under glass behind the counter and through a door to the left you could see the bakery, where everything on sale was produced.

The place was bright and sunny, light pouring in through the big windows, and had the happy bustle of success. And I thought to myself that Chris might be on to something, because I couldn’t think of anywhere in Reading that combined this kind of style and polish with goods baked on the premises. You had the Collective, which had this kind of aesthetic but bought their stuff in, or Geo Café, which made good pastries, but didn’t bake most of its own bread and had a more homely feel. Or, of course, there was Rise which has plenty of fans but has no space for customers to eat in.

No, on the face of it U. Bakery was the whole package – and racking my brain the only place I could think of that was anything like it was Exeter’s rather magical Exploding Bakery, just round the corner from its own train station. If you’d told me I could have something even a little like the Exploding Bakery a thirteen minute train journey from Reading I might have exploded myself, with jubilation. But anyway, looking good was less than half the battle: it was time to try the merchandise.

I’d been hoping to try the much vaunted pain au chocolat but by the time I got there, a smidge before noon, pretty much all the pastries were gone: I now understand from looking at U. Bakery’s Instagram that pastries in general and cruffins in particular shift fast after the bakery opens at 9am. But there was still an excellent range of sweet treats, many of which looked enormously tempting – Basque cheesecake, blueberry muffins, orange polenta cake and that babka. Easter being round the corner there were also hot cross buns and chocolate hot cross buns, although regrettably the latter still came with dried fruit which ruled them out for me.

A few savoury options were on display too – huge, spiralling feta swirls, filo bourekas stuffed with cheese. And then there was a range of sandwiches – mozzarella, gouda, tuna or roasted veg. They also sold big squares of rosemary focaccia, although I wasn’t quite sure why you’d pick one of these with no filling, or oil to dip it in. Whether by accident or design, nearly everything was vegetarian and the rest was pescatarian, and I heard the staff running some customers through a decent range of gluten free options including a potato sourdough which nearly made it home with me.

Prices struck me as hugely reasonable, especially when you got an idea of the work that went into everything, so cakes were between three and four pounds and those sandwiches were just shy of six pounds. I thought back to my trip to Honesty at the start of February, a place which on paper had claimed to be everything it seemed U. Bakery actually was, and I understood why Chris had told me to check out this place.

Of course, none of that would have mattered if the stuff from U. Bakery had been as underwhelming as Honesty’s output. But that never felt like it was going to happen, and once I took my order to the table I’d bagged and began to tuck in I was delighted that the hype was more than justified. My mozzarella sandwich was outstanding stuff. I sometimes think the clamour about burrata has relegated mozzarella to the status of also-ran, but great mozzarella is a wondrous thing, and the best thing you can do with it is serve it cold and fresh in thick discs, not heat it up, stretch it out and kill its magic.

Here it was its best self, and it came with gorgeous cherry tomatoes, red and yellow bombs of sweetness, some salad and a glug of balsamic vinegar which transformed it from components to a composition. But the thing I liked best of all about this sandwich, and there was plenty to choose from, is that the bread was the star of the show. It was a long, thin pretzel roll with that distinctive taste, the slightly glazed exterior and little salt crystals. It had the structure to stand up to all the goodies that had been put in it, not dry, not mushy from the balsamic, a great roll in harmony with a great filling.

What a sandwich! What a great way to spend just over a fiver and just under fifteen minutes on a train. Lunchtimes next week, I thought to myself, would be pretty dreary – and good luck finding anything of this quality in Reading for approaching the same price.

U. Bakery’s cinnamon bun was a triumph, too. More like a kanelbulle than a more ho-hum cinnamon swirl, it was a dense and sticky knot of sweet and lacquered joy. I tore into it and tore it apart, enjoying every mouthful. I think it’s possibly the best cinnamon bun I’ve had in this country, and up there with anything I can dimly remember from Copenhagen four years ago. It made me wish I’d got there earlier so I could try the pastries, although that would have meant sitting around like a lemon for quite some time until lunch. Maybe this was why all the Crowthorne residents sitting in the café looked so at ease with their life choices, because they didn’t have to rely on Great Western bloody Railways to get there.

If U. Bakery’s weakest link was its coffee, that’s not to say it wasn’t good. It came in an extremely tasteful cup, which by the looks of it they sell in the shop, and although my first sip made me think it had some lingering bitterness which might keep it out of the top tier, I found as I worked my way through it that it was a very creditable latte.

This is the point in the review where I wish I was telling you about the Basque cheesecake; I saw a portion go past to another table, simultaneously looking burnished and fluffy, and I thought is it greedy to go back up? And I nearly did, but I’m getting married in a couple of months and I keep telling myself that when I stand in the Town Hall, wearing a suit for the first time in something like five years, I’d ideally like to be ever so slightly less corpulent than I am now. It probably won’t happen, but I have to at least give myself a fighting chance.

Even so, I could easily see how you could settle in at U. Bakery for longer – grab another coffee, try one of those savoury snackettes or another cake, watch the line of people snaking in to collect their treasures. Everyone was so happy to be there, and the staff were uniformly all smiles and sunshine. I heard the spiel, obviously frequently delivered, explaining that you had to be there early for cruffins. One customer, walking away with an armful, said “it’s not for me, my wife’s in the car”, which may or may not have been true. On a warmer day, those tables outside would have looked mighty tempting, too.

All told, my bill came to just under twenty pounds, although that’s because I also picked up a little bag of chocolate chip shortbread to take home; I’d been under strict orders to bring something back with me. We ate them a couple of nights later in front of Interior Design Masters, and if you struggle to believe that a bag of six dense little shortbread biscuits, crumbly but with a hint of chewiness, shot through with plenty of dark chocolate, can be worth seven quid, all I’ll say is that U. Bakery might just change your mind. They just about changed mine.

The trains back from Crowthorne are hourly, so with time to kill I hopped next door to The Hive, which is more of a café by day and a craft beer bar by night, and sat there with a beer and a paperback. The Hive, like U. Bakery, is the kind of place Reading just doesn’t have – the closest was the Grumpy Goat, before it closed, although the new Siren Craft place due to open on Friar Street will change the landscape considerably.

It was a lovely place to while away the time, full of people watching opportunities (and, again, plenty of those people had dogs), there was outside space for when the weather was good and aside from the half dozen or so beers on keg the fridges were groaning with interesting stuff, some of it from breweries I’d never heard of. And I thought how curious it was – Crowthorne was kind of a one horse town, with just two places I might want to visit, but they happened to be side by side and between them, offering coffee, beer and baked goods, they ticked a lot of my personal boxes. The Hive also did food, including charcuterie boards, and I made a mental note for next time.

So there you have it – a very useful tip, from the man who sent me a random video three months ago. And I’m very grateful that he did, because otherwise I might never have heard about U. Bakery at all, let alone paid a visit. Having done so, I could appreciate why the people of Crowthorne might have been keeping it to themselves, but I don’t see why they should have all the fun. So thank you very much, Chris. You don’t have to reimburse the train fare, although I know you never expected that you’d need to. I might have to invoice you later in the year, though, to help support my baked goods habit as it careers out of control.

U. Bakery – 8.2
198 Duke’s Ride, Crowthorne, RG45 6DS

https://www.ubakery.co.uk

Restaurant review: Pierre Victoire, Oxford

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I had to check because I thought my mind might be playing tricks, but there used to be a French restaurant chain called Pierre Victoire, the Côte of its day, thirty years ago. I remember eating in the Nottingham branch when I lived there at the turn of the last century, and I’m pretty sure Reading had one too. Perhaps readers with even longer memories than mine can correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to recall it was on St Mary’s Butts, where Favourite Chicken is now. Anyway, also around the turn of the century the chain went bust leaving just one outpost, on Little Clarendon Street in Oxford, as the only survivor.

And it’s still going strong.

It’s approaching its thirtieth birthday in a couple of years, and I can’t remember a time in my restaurant-going life, really, when it wasn’t there. It’s been an ever-present across the past two decades, constant as my life has shifted and changed, and I’ve had countless lunches and dinners there, with family and with friends. Back when I didn’t review places outside Reading, it was my venue of choice for eating in Oxford, especially pre-theatre before watching something at the wonderful Oxford Playhouse. But there were more than a few boozy evenings there too: I still remember the horror and confusion of an American friend I lost in the divorce, trying snails for the first time.

Just as my life has changed in that time, the topography of Oxford has too. Little Clarendon Street used to be the epicentre of Oxford, for me, where everything was going on. It had Pierre Victoire, a great little tapas place next door and ice cream café George & Davis opposite, a brilliant interiors shop called Central and another little shop across the way called Ottoman selling cool bits and bobs. At night it was criss-crossed with fairy lights, just a magnificent place to be.

And then the years intervened and other parts of Oxford got more interesting – Jericho just around the corner, Summertown further north, the explosion of interesting restaurants and coffee down the Cowley and Iffley roads. I found myself more likely to have lunch at Arbequina and coffee at Peloton, or to amble down North Parade before a reservation at Pompette. The Westgate, a shopping development that makes the Oracle look sad and tired, altered Oxford’s landscape too. Little Clarendon Street by contrast didn’t really change, both its biggest strength and weakness.

But in recent times the pendulum has swung back, and heading to Pierre Victoire last Saturday for a late solo lunch I was struck by the fact that Little Clarendon Street is having another moment. Central may have closed, but next door social enterprise and excellent café Common Ground was doing a roaring trade. Across the way, The Jericho Cheese Company was full of lactic treats to take home and newish bottle shop and restaurant Wilding, where the Café Rouge of my student days used to be, looked very tempting. And there, familiar and unchanged, was Pierre Victoire: I was surprised by how gladdened I was to see it.

Pierre Victoire only opens for lunch Friday to Sunday nowadays, and it’s a tribute to how popular the place is that when I rang in the week to make a lunch booking pretty much all they had left was a table at quarter to two. And the place was humming with life and conversation when I stepped through the front door. The ground floor dining room goes back a long way and I seem to remember they have another dining room upstairs, or they certainly used to. I’m pretty sure these bare brick walls predate any trend for exposed bricks: it’s that sort of place.

But the tables at the front, with daylight, are the plum ones. Mine, literally tucked behind the front door, had “table for one” written all over it but gave a great view of the room and the happy diners of North Oxford. A table for six was making a meal of settling their bill, and the staff were perfectly attentive and friendly, showing no frustration. A steady stream of diners came in even after me – some with bookings, others chancing their arm on spec. All of the latter were turned away: an establishment this busy at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon has cracked something which eludes many restaurants, including a lot of the ones I review.

Pierre Victoire offers a prix fixe menu for lunch and dinner, and they differ slightly in terms of how much choice you get and the type of dishes: for instance, duck confit is on the lunch menu, while it’s magret de canard for dinner. The price varies too – lunch is about twenty pounds for two courses and twenty-five for three, whereas dinner is closer to thirty and thirty-five. Back when Pierre Victoire was open for weekday lunches I think it was even more affordable, but back when Pierre Victoire was open for weekday lunches literally everything was more affordable: I’m not sure how helpful that comparison is, really.

In any event the menu was full of French classics, many of which I’ve tried over the years – onion soup, chicken liver parfait, moules, escargots, steak frites and so on. I was a little jaded after an evening on the wine with a friend the night before, so I swerved the wine list on this occasion and instead opted for a fortifying Orangina. It came in the classic, original bottle and I wondered, short of Perrier and Fanta Limon, whether any non-alcoholic drink had as great a capacity to transport you as Orangina does. My body needed the sugars, that was for certain. The staff also brought a jug of iced tap water without me having to ask. Either they do this as standard or I looked as off the pace as I felt: either way, it was appreciated.

The other thing they always bring without you having to ask at Pierre Victoire is bread. Not ubiquitous sourdough: sourdough has completely passed Pierre Victoire by, or rather it’s above such things. No, you get a little basket of cheap, plain baguette with some decent butter which came out of the fridge a little too recently. But it’s always ambrosial; like the Orangina, like the hubbub, there’s something of elsewhere about the whole thing. You’re simultaneously mentally very much in Oxford and across the Channel, both of which are pleasant experiences.

My normal order at Pierre Victoire would be the chicken liver parfait, which comes in a little sphere with brioche toast and sweet, sticky, jammy red onion. But I was trying to be less predictable for once, so I chose the one vegan dish on the menu, a fricasée of mushrooms. It came out mere minutes after I’d ordered – I’d forgotten how brisk, how well oiled a machine Pierre Victoire is at lunchtime – and was a lovely and delicate piece of work. The decision to put it in a little chalice of filo pastry was a clever one which added texture, as did resting the whole lot on what I assume was a splodge of butternut squash purée.

I wasn’t sure about the tangle of pea shoots – one or two restaurants I love tend to overuse these as punctuation and I wish they wouldn’t – but overall it worked nicely. The mushrooms themselves, a mixture of wild and button if the menu was to be believed, were in a sauce with cognac and a little sweetness, but I found it slightly thin. It needed the cosseting touch of cream, I reckoned. But then it wouldn’t have been vegan, and that was the box it was ticking on the menu. Even so it was polished off in minutes, and there was just enough bread to mop up the last of the sauce.

If I’d chosen a curveball as a starter, I played safe for the main. I don’t think I’ve ever been to Pierre Victoire for lunch and not seen duck confit on the menu, and it’s rare for me not to order it there. I don’t understand why more places, especially pubs, don’t serve duck confit: it’s so easy to get right and such a joy to eat. There’s always plenty of meat, it always falls off the bone to the point where picking it clean is a meticulous delight and, done well, you get that crispy skin and that subcutaneous, glossy fat. Confit duck, as it happens, is one of the options on the menu for my wedding later in the year, and it will take all my strength not to pick it.

I really love how Pierre Victoire serves duck confit, too, with just the two accompaniments. A brick of rosti, which in this case was maybe a tiny bit too soggy and not crispy enough, and a bitter orange sauce which brought everything together beautifully. Good luck finding duck à l’orange anywhere on a menu these days – it’s one of those relics of the past, at least in this country – but Pierre Victoire’s smart, affordable take on it is all you really need.

It was a perfect, simple pleasure and it made me very glad to be at that table, in that room, in that restaurant, in that city, exactly where I should be. My paperback (an Anne Tyler I’d never read) stayed untouched throughout my meal because when I wasn’t eating, or taking pictures, I was too busy enjoying where I was. Watching the staff, so on it and so harmonious, always in control without being mechanical. And looking at my fellow diners, imagining their stories and their lives outside this little parcel of Saturday afternoon where we all happened to be in the same place.

As I said, Pierre Victoire is nothing if not efficient – I’d be surprised if I was the first customer at that table that lunch service, and I saw other tables turned while I was there. But they never made me feel processed, and I gave the dessert menu serious consideration before deciding to settle up. It’s more compact than the choice for the other two courses, and a crêpe au citron called to me, but not loud enough. My bill for the two courses and that iconic Orangina set me back twenty-two pounds fifty, not including tip. Pierre Victoire maybe isn’t the bargain it once was, but I’m not sure I want restaurants I like to be bargains any more. I want them to survive.

Don’t be fooled by the rating below (I know you’ve probably already scrolled down and checked). Yes, I gave Pierre Victoire a 7.3, but what I would say is that there are 7.3s and then there are 7.3s. There are the expensive restaurants where dinner or lunch costs you the best part of three figures and you think “well, it was okay”, and there are cheap and cheerful places where you come away thinking that your hosts have surpassed, or possibly even transcended, your expectations. And yet Pierre Victoire, would you believe, is neither of those things.

No, what Pierre Victoire is is that rarest of beasts, a truly consistent restaurant. I can honestly say that the last time I went there was every bit as good as this time – and not just that, but every bit as good in exactly the same way. The time before was too, and I dare say the next time will be as well. And there will be a next time, the next instalment in a series of meals that started something like twenty years ago and, if I’m lucky, will go on for many more.

Your mileage may vary, but for my money that’s worth a dozen culinary comets or flashes in the pan. I’d say that every town should have a place like Pierre Victoire, although travelling to Oxford is really no hardship. And I’d almost go one step further and say that every town should have a Pierre Victoire, but that’s dangerous nonsense: it is, as we know, how chains get started. Pierre Victoire doesn’t need that. It’s already been there, done that, got the t-shirt – and then moved on, a long time ago, to far better things.

Pierre Victoire – 7.3
9 Little Clarendon St, Oxford, OX1 2HP
01865 316616

https://pierrevictoire.co.uk

Restaurant review: Masakali

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I’ve been asked about Masakali, the Indian restaurant that replaced San Sicario at the bottom of the Caversham Road, ever since it opened last November. I had a fair few messages on social media saying that it looked interesting, and when I’ve put Twitter polls up asking which of Reading’s newest openings I should visit first it’s always picked up a lot of votes. Being an awkward sod I still reviewed Minas Café, Filter Coffee House and Hala Lebanese before getting round to Masakali, but better late than never: here, at last, is the review literally some of you wanted.

I can see why people noticed Masakali. Something about the polish of its website made people dispense with their usual cynicism about yet another restaurant opening at a site which sees a new occupant every few years. The branding felt completely realised, in a way we don’t often see with new independent restaurants here. Masakali means pigeon in Hindi, and the restaurant is apparently partly inspired by A.R. Rahman’s Bollywood song of the same name: some of that might just be marketing guff, but at least they were trying.

The other thing that stood out about Masakali was the menu. Generic Anglo-Indian curries were kept to a minimum, and instead everything looked – on paper at least – properly interesting. No mix and match proliferation of protein and sauce, instead a range of more singular dishes. A few interesting cultural cross-pollinations here and there, like kulcha stuffed with truffle ghee or a chaat apparently topped with Walker’s crisps, but otherwise a good range of regional Indian dishes.

Someone had done their homework. And you know the C word was going to come up eventually, so here it is: the whole thing felt like a land grab for customers of Clay’s Kitchen rather than, say, people who went to the Bina (assuming, of course, that people still go to the Bina).

Now, before I get into talking about the food, the room, the service there are a couple of things to disclose. The first is that Masakali contacted me not long after they opened, asking if I wanted to do a paid partnership with them (they did one with the Reading Chronicle, although it’s unclear what that involved, other than a Facebook post saying the restaurant was open). I declined, as I always do, but I asked the restaurant if this was their first venture and they told me that they were part of the same group as Biryani Lounge on the Wokingham Road.

This took me by surprise, as it’s difficult to imagine two more different Indian restaurants. I reviewed Biryani Lounge in 2022, finding it a sterile, no-frills kind of a place with functional tables and no drinks licence that sold biggish portions of unremarkable food. I didn’t hate it, far from it, but I wasn’t falling over myself to go back. The leap from a restaurant like Biryani Lounge to Masakali, deliberately positioning itself as Indian fine dining, was a sizeable one. What had prompted them branching out in this way, I wondered?

That’s where the second thing to disclose comes in. Masakali’s website used to contain a link to another company called Curry Fwd who they used to put the restaurant together. They’ve taken it down now, probably wisely, but it’s a fascinating discovery because Curry Fwd is essentially an external consultancy specialising in “India-inspired food concepts and hospitality projects, worldwide”. And their website is well worth looking at: if only because I for one had no idea such things even existed.

Curry Fwd can essentially handle every element of the restaurant, from designing the space to putting together and curating the menu. “Our knowhow and focus on regional Indian cuisine is your advantage”, their website says, along with “We are always digging up family recipes from moms and grandmas across India”. So if I thought the branding looked grown up, or the menu was full of interesting dishes, that was why: it had been put together by specialists, subcontracted by the owners.

When I first read that I was dubious. It wasn’t exactly AI, but it felt like the hospitality equivalent, constructing something in some way ungenuine. But then I thought about it some more. Did it really matter? After all, if you take a restaurant like Clay’s they still had help with their brand, and they’ve been open about that. They still had someone do the interior design of their new space in Caversham. How was this any different?

You could say this was an authenticity issue, but putting together a menu in this way, using experts working out of Kolkata, might arguably be more authentic than cobbling together the same dishes as every other Indian restaurant with an RG postcode. Maybe the restaurant didn’t have a backstory like Clay’s (couple move to Reading to realise their dream of cooking the food of Hyderabadi) or even Biryani Lounge’s (four university friends open a restaurant together to offer their favourite dishes). But did it need one, or was wanting to open a really good restaurant, make people happy and make some money narrative enough?

Perhaps the only real mistake Masakali had made was accidentally including the link to Curry Fwd on their website. Anyway, all those thoughts – acknowledging the preconceptions, challenging the preconceptions, trying not to let the preconceptions colour my evening – were whizzing around my head as Zoë and I, after a few pre-prandials at Phantom, made our way to the restaurant to see what the reality was like.

Whoever it is, whether it’s Masakali or Curry Fwd, they’ve done a nice job of making the place over. The room always had decent bones, if it risked being on the big, cavernous side, but it looks grown-up and classy, from the dark panelled walls to the faux-parquet floor and the mustard-coloured dining chairs. Again, the closest thing I could compare it to was Clay’s, and I liked some of the little touches like the pigeon-themed lights on the walls. I must say though, it’s hard to reconcile “Indian fine dining” with “why don’t you plonk yourself on this bench?”: fortunately there weren’t too many of them.

It was strange to think that the last time I’d been in that dining room was last May, for a readers’ lunch at San Sicario. The room was completely different back then, lighter and airier, less ostentatiously glam (Masakali’s bar is especially glitzy: their Bollywood-themed cocktails looked appealing). It’s weird how you can eat at a restaurant and nobody involved – the punters, the staff, the owners – knows that in three months time the place will be shuttered, and three months after that it will open as something else. It makes you think. In any event, the buzz at Masakali, which wasn’t rammed but was a long way from tumbleweed, made it seem in good health.

I’m apparently breaking the unwritten rules of restaurant review composition by going back and talking about the menu some more – clunky, many would say – but some of you seem to enjoy knowing what you can expect when you go to a restaurant and I quite like letting you know. I’m old fashioned like that. So yes, it generally avoids the standard issue but some of what’s on offer verges on fusion: I’ve already talked about the truffled kulcha, but there’s also a beetroot croquette with goats cheese aioli, if you want to culturally appropriate across continents.

Prices are pitched at the slightly higher end of average. Starters cluster either side of the ten pound mark, and curries max out at fifteen quid or so. And again – yes, I keep using the C word – some elements of the menu will be familiar to Clay’s-goers, like kale pakora, stuffed mirchi, baby aubergine in a peanut masala. In a town before Clay’s this would have been revolutionary, possibly even compared to House Of Flavours. In a post-Clay’s Reading, the main question it invites, like it or not, is I wonder if this will be as good as Clay’s?

I thought the starters we picked made a creditable start, as it happens. Mutton pepper fry was an enjoyable and generous plate – even the style of plate looks oddly familiar, come to think of it – which was just tender enough, sticky and interesting with a good whack of heat, dotted with the deep green of curry leaves to break up the brownness. I liked this more than Zoë did, I think, but I could happily have polished this off on my own. You don’t see enough mutton on menus in Reading, even in Indian restaurants, and this was decently cooked.

What we could agree on was the galli chicken pakora (cooked up no doubt – sorry about this pun – in a galli kitchen). I know I’m predictable going for some variant of fried chicken pretty much whenever I see it but this was great stuff – thigh meat, nicely spiced with a very pleasing texture.

But again, you saw that conflict where Masakali wanted to be high end, but weren’t completely sure what that entailed. I liked this dish but whacking four thick rings of raw red onion on top like a cack-handed take on the Olympic symbol wasn’t elevating the presentation. I have no idea what the dip was, even though I’d only had a handful of beers at Phantom beforehand, but I rather enjoyed it. The menu neglected to mention it completely.

Our other starter, because we were greedy and had three, came from a section entitled “Timeless Kebabs”. I know this will sound snarky, but I’m not sure how timeless a kebab can be. We had chosen something verging on fusion, a paneer tikka kebab with a basil chutney. In fairness the issue here was execution rather than the idea. It might well be that basil would go brilliantly in this context – it does with mozzarella after all – but the chutney itself was thin and watery, lacking the edge you would get elsewhere.

Just to compare Masakali to other Reading restaurants so this doesn’t get repetitive, Kamal’s Kitchen does a better chutney and the paneer tikka itself was probably just below the level of what you can get at the quietly understated Pappadam’s. But again this wasn’t a bad dish, and even if it didn’t entirely match the standard you can enjoy elsewhere it didn’t stop me rather liking it.

By this point the restaurant, while nowhere near full capacity, had the kind of vibrancy you want to see on a Saturday night. You want to be surrounded by people having a good time, people ordering cocktails for the hell of it, big groups attacking the menu with gusto, seemingly unconcerned about the hangover Sunday morning might bring. And the staff were on it – speedy, efficient and unobtrusive. The whole thing had that slight shimmer of success, and I didn’t really care at that point if it was curated or manufactured, if it missed a backstory or had been dreamed up in a meeting room in Kolkata, brainstormed on a whiteboard.

Our drinks, I should say, were a mixed bag. I don’t think it’s the strongest part of the restaurant’s offering, excluding the cocktails which might be lovely for all I know. It wasn’t a hugely inspiring wine list, although to their credit over half of it’s available by the glass, and my Pinotage was nice enough but not stellar. I thought Zoë’s mango lassi was passable, she found it a bit thin and synthetic. They offer pretty generic beer, certainly nothing to match the likes of Phantom just round the corner, but Zoë spotted one she’d never tried before called Lal Toofan, so she tried a half. Unimpressed, she left most of it.

My main course didn’t work out as I’d hoped, which was partly due to a mixup between me and my server. I was torn between two chicken dishes and when I asked her what the differences were, I didn’t get a very clear answer except that one was on the bone and the other wasn’t. I thought the one I picked, Andhra chicken, was the one off the bone but when it turned up it was clearly the other way round. Now, that isn’t necessarily a problem: I know many people swear by the flavour of chicken on the bone and I was fully prepared to get stuck in. But for this dish to work, there needed to be enough chicken and it needed to slip off the bone with minimal persuasion.

Neither of those were the case here, so instead you had a handful of small, stubborn little knots where what meat there was had to be persistently prised off. It’s especially a shame because the sauce itself – and there was plenty of it – was glossy, almost-fruity and with a little lurking fire. It maybe lacked the complexity of Reading’s finest examples, but it was no slouch. It was good poured onto my saffron pilau rice, I enjoyed dabbing the thin, slightly shiny butter naan in it. But it needed more chicken. I’ve read some reviews online by people who also ordered this dish and felt short changed: I think if the chicken is on the bone, it’s a pretty basic mistake not to say so on the menu.

Zoë curry was more my bag, although she said it carried too much heat for her liking. Mysore lamb curry was definitely more brooding and punchy than my main, and up my alley. And credit to Masakali because these two dishes were clearly discrete, rather than variations on a single base. That, and the tenderness of the lamb, made you feel like everything had spent time together as part of the cooking process rather than being awkwardly introduced at the last minute. But again, the sauce to meat ratio prioritised the former, as I think you can see from the photo.

By this point my mind was shuffling the Rolodex of Reading’s Indian restaurants, trying to work out what Masakali was similar to, superior to, worse than. If I’d gone with my expectations set by the buzz and the website, I might have been slightly underwhelmed. Knowing how the concept had been put together and that it was run by the people behind Biryani Lounge meant that, if anything, I was pleasantly surprised.

But what was the true experience, behind all that smoke and mirrors, free of preconception and counter-preconception? I decided to mull it over some more, and we settled up: our bill for three starters, two curries with rice, a naan and three drinks came to just under ninety-six pounds, including a ten per cent service charge. I know that because I saw a bill, and you should never trust a restaurant reviewer who doesn’t.

There are things, on reflection, that I do admire about Masakali. They’ve created a pleasing space and, whoever’s ideas the concept and the menu were, they’re not a bad concept or menu. I rated the service and there was much to like about some of the dishes, especially the starters. But beyond that I rather wish I liked them more. They are unfortunate to have arrived in Reading five years after Indian food, and food in Reading in general, changed hugely for the better. If you’d dropped Masakali in Reading in 2013 you might well have seen rave reviews (especially from the Reading Post: they were anybody’s for free scran). But Reading in 2023 is a different place, with higher standards.

So to calibrate Masakali fairly I think it’s better than the likes of the Bina or the now-departed Standard Tandoori, although that isn’t the highest bar in the world. It doesn’t come close to Clay’s, over the bridge. I think the fairer comparison is somewhere like House Of Flavours, but Masakali doesn’t reach that level. It might, yet, but whether it will get anywhere near the grace period House Of Flavours enjoyed is another matter. Masakali isn’t revolutionary, or game-changing, but it has charm and potential, even if it partly achieved it by raiding the recipe books of a gaggle of unnamed Indian grandmas.

But I hope it makes a go of it, because I’m painfully aware that the last time I ate a meal where Masakali is right now it was in a restaurant living on borrowed time. Fingers crossed they escape the same fate.

Masakali – 7.1
93-97 Caversham Road, Reading, RG1 8AN
0118 3048858

https://www.masakali.co.uk

Restaurant review: Yo Momoz

On By ediblereadingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

Zoë was telling me about an article in the Guardian at the weekend, which said that trading standards was considering outlawing the word “cheeze” to refer to vegan alternatives to cheese. It wasn’t just cheeze in their sights but all the other words in that genre like chick’n, which I’d heard of, and m!lk, which I hadn’t. In case you weren’t sure whether the people who had proposed this were killjoys, the article included a sentence that read “the document says plant-based brands should not use homophones, asterisked characters or other wordplay.” Quite right too – I mean, how dare they? Down with wordplay!

But really, it all feels so needless. The whole point of calling a product, for example, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter is that it’s implicit in the name that it’s not butter. Nobody is being misled, and once you’ve tasted I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, I can’t believe you’d honestly think it was butter, either. It’s easy for contrarians to moan about products branded as “vegan mozzarella”, but surely nobody wants that rebranded as “vegan soft-white balls with a light cheese flavour”, do they? That’s just balls, in the worst sense.

The one thing I do have sympathy with trading standards about, though, is that particular word. Cheeze. Because if I ever sweep to power (and I’m coming to terms with the fact that it looks increasingly unlikely) one of the first things I’d do is outlaw the unnecessary use of fake Zs. This started out in mobile phone shops called things like Fone Bitz – would it kill them to spell either of the words correctly? – but it’s since infected all manner of brand names.

I’ve complained before about a gentleman’s hairdresser called Ladz Barbers, down the Oxford Road. I suppose we should be grateful that they’ve only swapped one of the Ss for a Z: it’s across the road from Biryani Boyzz, which has no such qualms and has swapped a single S for two Zs. That’s inflation for you. There’s also a Biryani Boyzz down the Wokingham Road, not far from Milano’Z Pizza on the other side of the road. I can forgive the apostrophe, but not the capitalisation.

And it turns out there’s also a Milano’Z Pizza down the Oxford Road, so perhaps this particular kind of epically bad spelling is catching. I had a quick Google to confirm all this and Google said Did you mean Milano’s Pizza? I wish I did. At the time of writing the Biryani Boyzz on the Wokingham Road has a hygiene rating of zero: it might not just be the bad spelling that’s contagious.

Anyway, I begin with this crabby, middle-aged rant because the subject of this week’s review is another culprit. I first spotted Yo Momoz, in the Wokingham Road’s Z contagion zone, on my walk back in January from Hala Lebanese, a restaurant which is presumably only weeks away from rebranding as Hala Lebaneze. It’s worth paying attention heading up the Wokingham Road or the Oxford Road because you invariably spot something new, something that wasn’t there last time you checked: it’s how I pass off those trips to Double Barrelled on the number 17 bus as vital research.

It’s also how, for instance, I know that the cursed site that used to be Lazeez, then became Afghan, then rebranded as Khan’s Karahi but never seemed to open is in the process of emerging from its chrysalis as a second branch of Karak Chai & Coffee, a sibling to the one that replaced Wolf Italian Street Food on Broad Street. And it’s how I came across Yo Momoz, the subject of this week’s review, just by having a wander and keeping my eyes peeled.

Yo Momoz! My first response was to think ouch, the name, but my second was to walk up to the door and read the menu. And it seemed rather interesting – worth a visit, in any event – so I made a mental note to investigate further. It looked like it opened about five months ago, and the reviews I could see online were positive, especially about the service.

Other than that my research was inconclusive. The restaurant joined Instagram in January, and the branding was defined and consistent, although some of the wording seemed to have been put together either by ChatGPT or Americans: JOIN THE NOODLES CLUB, LET YOUR TASTE BUDS EMBARK said one caption. SAVORING THE SEA WITH A PLATEFUL EXQUISITE CALAMARI read another. As for the website, it was just word salad. “Flavors inspired by the seasons”, it said, adding that “We have experience of over 10 yrs on satisfactory of the quality of food, taste and the ambiance to our customers”.

Satisfactory is not a word that should be anybody’s aspirational standard. But anyway, a lot of good restaurants have bad websites, and a fair few decent restaurants don’t get social media either so there was only one thing for it: earlier in the week I hopped on the number 17, straight from work, to check it out on a rare solo excursion.

Considering the slightly brash branding, I was surprised to find the inside was quite muted. It was more spacious than you’d think from the outside, a banquette down one wall and booths along the other, a darned sight nicer than the sterile interior of its near neighbour Biryani Lounge. The burnt orange was right out of the Shree Krishna Vada Pav colour palette, but I didn’t mind it at all.

There was a second, darker, cosier room out back behind the counter, but from the look of Yo Momoz’s website that could either be for karaoke or the way to their shisha lounge: as we’ll see, they like to cover all bases. Either way it was empty – as was the restaurant, partly because I arrived very close to six o’clock.

Nonetheless the welcome was warm and I plonked myself down in a booth with a menu. Indian music was playing at a volume just the right side of tolerable, and something was showing on the widescreen telly fixed to the wall with the mute button on, although I can’t remember what it was. The opposite wall had generic-looking neon signs surrounded by faux foliage. This is my happy place! said one, along with Good vibes and Hello gorgeous. If I sound like I’m being sniffy that’s not my intention: I actually rather liked it.

The menu felt big – reaching the kind of size where I wondered whether they could execute it all well. In fairness the menus at Sapana Home and Kamal’s Kitchen aren’t the smallest, but this one felt like it was trying to cover more ground. You had the eponymous momo, eleven different permutations of them in two different sizes, chicken, prawn or vegetable but, strangely, no buffalo or lamb. And there were the usual variations on chow mein that I’m used to seeing in Nepalese restaurants, along with other Nepalese dishes – chatpate, sukuti, pangra, choila and so forth.

But then there was all the other stuff, all in different shades of tangential. I wasn’t surprised to see an Indo-Chinese section with fried rice, Manchurian chicken or cauliflower, wonton soup and what have you. I wasn’t necessarily surprised to find other Indian dishes like masala fish, although “masala sausage” sounds like a brainchild that should never have been conceived. But once we got into the ramen, the sesame prawns, the calamari – exquisite or not, what were they doing there? – and a section of hanging kebabs, I was beginning to feel like the kitchen sink had been chucked at this menu, and not in a good way.

But no matter. I stuck to dishes I knew from other trips to Nepalese restaurants, trying to strike the balance between not ordering the same stuff I always have and picking dishes that gave me some point of reference, a balance I’m painfully aware I probably often get wrong. My server was attentive and friendly and I can’t praise that highly enough. But he struggled with explaining the menu, to the point where I asked him questions, heard the answer, rephrased my question and was still no clearer.

What was the difference between the masala fish and the Meleku fish, I asked him. The answer, as far as I could gauge, was that they were both spicy but in different ways. He seemed mainly concerned about warning me off spicy food, rather than telling me what was good and what wasn’t. Similarly with the momo, there are 11 different types but when I asked him what the difference between, say, dragon momo and sadheko momo he told me they were both spicy, but in different ways. As opposed to the steamed or kothey momo which were plainer.

So he was lovely to a fault, but perhaps not as helpful as he could have been. But never mind – we muddled through the process and I ordered a few small plates as best I could. I would have had a mango lassi too, but he explained to me that although lassis were on the drinks menu he wouldn’t have them available until tomorrow. So a simple, unfussy bottle of water (from Costco) it was.

At this point I realised that my server’s concern about insulating me from spiciness extended beyond the food, as I heard him talking to his virtual assistant and asking it to stop playing the Indian music and instead play something “like Ed Sheeran”: I’m not sure I’ve ever been so offended in my life.

As the limp strains of Let Her Go by Passenger – a song so wet you could wring it out – filled the room I wondered whether most of Yo Momoz’s customers were Nepalese and they didn’t know what to do with a punter who wasn’t. By this point the TV was showing some old programme featuring James Martin, with the sound off. Was this the kind of person he thought I was?

If I didn’t know what to make of the restaurant then, it was compounded when the food came out. Chilli paneer was a very different beast to its peers at, say, Bhel Puri House or Shree Krishna Vada Pav. It was glossily coated with a dark, sticky hot-sour sauce, most of the cubes with lovely crispy edges, dressed with spring onion, red onion, sweet and crunchy red peppers and two random slices of cucumber.

Considering how in your face some of the branding was, I don’t think I expected a portion so delicately presented or so small. I liked it, quite a lot in fact, but it just wasn’t what I was expecting. It sort of went with the music, when I felt like it shouldn’t have. For seven pounds, though, it was priced a tad on the high side.

Having completely failed to grasp the difference between masala fish and Maleku style fish I’d chosen the latter and it turned out to be a wise move. This was a wonderfully delicate fish fry with a superbly craggy, crispy coating, a generous portion of it for the same price as the paneer. This made me wish I’d come with company and ordered a wider cross-section of the menu, but this was my pick of what I had.

The deep, sour dipping sauce in a little metal cup struck me as indistinguishable from the stuff coating my paneer, but it worked well in this different context and had me dabbing my nose by the end. Those cucumbers though – the Ed Sheeran of the veg world – could jog on. I wonder if anybody eats them.

Last of all, I had to try some momo. I still didn’t understand the difference between the varieties of spicy momo on the menu, but I’d chosen the Sadeko ones because I always have pan fried momo, which shows a distinct lack of imagination. You can have 6 for £6.50 or 10 for £9, which is roughly consistent with other momo prices in Reading. I’d chosen the smaller option expecting to be full, what with ordering two other dishes, but if I’d known how dainty portions were I might have chosen the bigger size.

But as it turns out it wasn’t a tragedy because these were the most middling thing I had, and ten would have been too many. Even saying that I’m aware it’s not great, because I’ve never gone to Momo 2 Go, or Kamal’s Kitchen or Sapana Home and come away saying “do you know what? I could have done with a couple fewer momo”. That tells its own story. But I’m not sure quite what was amiss with Yo Momoz’s momos. It wasn’t the filling, because that was decent – dense and stuffed with chicken, not meanly filled. And actually the spicing of them, punchy and acrid, was rather good.

But I think it was the texture of the momo itself that misfired. All of Yo Momoz’s spicy momo are fried, and a fried momo can be a wonderful thing, a crunchy and indulgent pocket of wonder. I still remember the fried momo at Momo 2 Go, how you’re torn between wanting to eat them straight away and knowing that you’d do yourself a mischief if you didn’t let them cool down. The texture here was more baked than fried, closer to cardboard than I liked. If I went back I would try them pan fried, to see if that was an improvement. But I also still found it weird that they didn’t do lamb or buffalo.

It was a quick, light meal and the end of it was equally quick and light. I got my bill – twenty-three pounds, not including tip – I settled up and I headed out to grab another 17 back home. From beginning to end I’d been there just over half an hour, and in many ways I still felt none the wiser. By this point a family had come in and taken a table and I just knew that soon after I left they’d take that awful music off and replace it with something genuine, take James Martin off the telly and the restaurant would metamorphose back into what it was meant to be, whatever that was.

And for me, that sums up Yo Momoz in general. I don’t know what sort of restaurant it wants to be, and I’m not sure it does either. They picked the name Yo Momoz yet they sell ramen and hanging kebabs, their branding shouts but their service is quiet and unfailingly polite. They play authentic music but they’re happy to change it to dreary Ed Sheeran soundalikes for some guy who’s wandered in off the street, even though that isn’t what he wanted or why he turned up.

It makes me wonder, too, whether they dialled down the heat or the flavour in what I had. Like the service it was nice: inoffensive, pleasant, all those things, but fundamentally I couldn’t help but feel it was holding back in a way that I wish it hadn’t. I think there’s a good restaurant hidden somewhere in Yo Momoz, or the core of one, but it needs to be less scattergun, decide what it is and who it wants to be for, and to fully embrace whatever that turns out to be.

But what do I know? I’m just a non Ed Sheeran fan with an aversion to unnecessary Zs who quite liked Yo Momoz, would love them to do well but thinks, deep down, that they could do better.

Yo Momoz – 6.8
83 Wokingham Road, RG6 1LH
0118 9011882

https://www.yomomoz.co.uk