Month: June 2024

Restaurant review: Kolae, Borough

On By ediblereadingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

How many of the U.K.’s 100 best restaurants have you been to? I ask because it’s a thing – the National Restaurant Awards – and it came out last week.

Looking through the list, I couldn’t help but feel I was letting the side down as a restaurant reviewer: my score was a measly 7.  Some of them, like Manteca, ranked among the best meals I’ve eaten in the course of writing this blog. But there were at least a couple in that list where I thought “really?” I was pleased to see Wilsons make the list but COR, which didn’t feature, is definitely better than at least a couple of the top 100 that I’ve been to. Still, as I’ve said in the past, the delight of reading a list like this largely lies in disagreeing with it. 

Anyway, as it happens my total only ticked up to 7 because I happened to visit Kolae, a regional Thai restaurant in Borough, the week before the awards were announced. It was ranked 27th, significantly higher than any of the other places I’ve been to, which is an impressive achievement given that it opened late last year. It’s the second restaurant from the team behind Shoreditch’s Som Saa and has very quickly surpassed it in terms of profile (it probably helps that, unlike Som Saa, it doesn’t have any problematic racist incidents in its history).

What this means is that a significant number of restaurant critics have reviewed the place already: Giles Coren for the Times, Tom Parker Bowles for the Mail On Sunday, Tim Hayward for the FT, Jimi Famurewa for the Evening Standard, and Lilly Subbotin for the Independent. Even a couple of restaurant bloggers have already got in on the act, so I can honestly say I’ve rarely, if ever, read as much about a restaurant before stepping through its front door as I had with Kolae.

And the acclaim was consistent, full-throated, verging on the hyperbolic. I mean, get a load of this: Famurewa said it was a “scintillating shot in the arm”, Parker Bowles that it made “the tastebuds tumescent and the gut giddy”. Hayward, the thinking person’s least favourite broadsheet reviewer, settled for the overblown “This has just reminded me why I eat”.

It wasn’t all like that – Giles Coren spent a large part of his review name-dropping Important People He Knew, as did one distinctly regional restaurant blogger – but the important thing was that there wasn’t a single word of dissent: Kolae, according to the consensus, was magnificent.

So it had been on my radar for a while, and an afternoon off in London ahead of a gig that evening – the exceptional Jessica Pratt at Islington’s Union Chapel – gave me a chance to check it out with Zoë. It’s literally just round the corner from Borough Market, a few doors down from Monmouth Coffee, and a pre-lunchtime stroll round the market made it clear just how much competition there was for Kolae to stand out amongst: not just from traders, but nearby restaurants like Barrafina, Berenjak and Bao.

It’s a handsome site, across three storeys, which apparently used to be a coach house in a previous life. I didn’t see the first or second floors, but the ground floor was lovely, all muted concrete and exposed brick. Everything was nicely proportioned: the tables were generously sized and well spaced, and even the bar stools followed suit, being even better padded than I am. So different from, for example, sitting cheek by jowl at Manteca. The Independent summed it up thus: “there’s no other way to say it, Kolae is cool”.

We arrived for a late lunch but even then the room was full of happy-looking diners. No outside space that I saw, really, but the exterior was quite fetching, to the extent where when we left a couple of people were taking pictures sitting in front of the restaurant and uploading them to the ‘gram. “But they haven’t even eaten here!” was Zoë’s baffled assessment.

The menu, on paper at least, looks like it can’t decide whether it’s a starters and mains or small plates restaurant. All the reviews I’ve read say it’s the latter, but the menu lists three things as “smaller” and the rest as “larger” and our server said we should probably plan on three of the larger plates between two. But it’s sort of structured as starters, mains and sides and so we approached it that way. I would say everything seemed reasonably priced, too, with the smaller plates costing about six pounds and the larger ones going from ten to eighteen.

But really, a lot was fluid: at least some of the larger plates felt more like starters or sides, and at least one of the sides, which we ended up ordering, was far more like a main in its own right. Perhaps all the dishes simply identified as food – if so, all power to them. We took it as an excuse to order pretty much everything we wanted and to risk being full. From what I’ve seen, many people who have reviewed Kolae have taken exactly that approach.

Now, before I tell you about everything we ate, I do have to mention heat. Because another thing my research indicated, time and again, was that the food at Kolae might be hotter than you’re used to. A few reviews don’t really talk about it – presumably because those people are hard as nails. But most go to town on it – in no particular order, the food apparently “jolts the senses like being woken at 4am by a sadistic drill instructor”, “blew my bloody head off”, is “blisteringly hot” or leaves you “teetering between burning pain and pure, unfiltered pleasure”.

Does that sound like fun to you? I have to say it didn’t really to me, so I did ask the server which dishes to absolutely steer clear of. There were about three of them. Everything we had was fine, so you won’t get any sub-Fifty Shades Of Grey hogwash in this review.

The first thing we ate was that first step outside the comfort zone. Fried prawn heads with turmeric and garlic were one of those things where you just have to suspend disbelief and give them a go, so we did. Zoë was reluctant approaching the first one but they were crunchy and distinctly moreish and that meant I didn’t have to polish off the rest on my own. I’m not sure how something from the sea could taste quite so earthy, but these did: I can honestly say that I’ve never enjoyed eating brains so much before, and almost certainly never will again. And yes, prawns do have brains. I know, because I Googled it.

Even better were biryani rice crackers, huge slabs of tactile delight with more than a trickle of nam jim, one of those dipping sauces which just has, and effortlessly combines, everything: sweetness, citrus and funky, salty fish sauce, infinitely more than the sum of its parts. This, for me, was the first of many moments at Kolae where I just thought: this isn’t quite like anything I’ve eaten before. Some of that is my own fault for my sheltered gastronomic life, but if anything that made me appreciate how high definition this food was.

The next few dishes, a mixture of small plates, large plates and specials, were variations on a theme and all linked with the name of the restaurant. Kolae is apparently a southern Thai technique which, as far as I can gather, involves marinating in coconut milk and spice, grilling over fire, re-marinating and re-grilling until what you get is glorious, deep and sticky.

The small plate displaying this technique was a couple of skewers with plump – or, if you get your kicks this way, “tumescent” – mussels threaded on them. I liked them, but perhaps having read so much hype about them I expected these eight mussels to be even more magnificent than they were. Worth it, perhaps, just for the novelty of seeing mussels served in such a different, faff-free way.

It was much, much more successfully deployed with chicken – in this case a huge, deboned chicken thigh which came on a skewer which surely could barely have carried its weight. This is where the technique was really at its best, the meat permeated with complexity and delight.

This kind of food makes fools of us reviewers because it exposes our narrow horizons and our limited vocabulary – I’ve seen it compared to yakitori, to laksa, to satay and to massaman. Better to be honest and say you can’t really sum up the smoke, sweetness, spice and comfort and just say that you should maybe order it so one day, you can compare other great dishes to it instead.

The third of our trilogy of skewers was bavette, topped with crispy onions. You get the idea by now, and although I enjoyed it, three different permutations of that concept was probably one too many. It was better value than the mussels, but not quite as good as the chicken.

At this point, the only question in my mind was where in the pantheon of greats Kolae would wind up nestling. The space was fantastic, the food had been eye-opening – just enough challenge, just enough fascination – and it was simply a wonderful place to be on a weekday afternoon. Every now and again flames leapt from a wok in the open kitchen, there was still hubbub even after the lunch rush had passed, and more was to come.

But that’s where things wobbled, if only slightly. Service had been wonderful, and when you got the attention of a server they couldn’t have been more helpful, but it proved increasingly difficult to flag them down. We’d finished a really gorgeous hazy IPA, Juicy Chug, by small London brewery Jiddler’s Tipple, which had gone beautifully with the small plates, but were keen to get some wine.

And we got there eventually, but if the staff had been more on it I daresay we would have drunk more. It’s a decent and interesting wine list, although the vast majority of the options by the glass were north of a tenner. I really loved my choice, a Greek malagousia and assyrtiko blend, but I think Zoë might have shaded it with her New Zealand riesling.

The first of the large plates that came out again demonstrated that this was a fluid menu where things overlapped and echoed other dishes. I’m not saying that the kale fritters were a replica of the biryani rice crackers from earlier in the meal, but they were definitely close siblings, both in terms of the crunch and complexity. This sauce was very different from the nam jim, but I got sweetness and chilli but maybe not the fermentation the menu suggested would be there. It was however another tactile triumph, although I’m not sure it really felt like a side. Perhaps I should have tried the sour mango salad with dried fish, but everything I’d read suggested that eating it would be a fast train to meltdown..

One of the absolute standout dishes of the meal was – surprise surprise – Zoë’s choice. Soy braised pork belly and ribs was outstanding, in a sauce that was far more about the tightrope between sweetness and saltiness, with heat, just this once, taken out of the equation. The sauce was just gorgeous, the meat was that perfect combination of caramelised and yielding, and it was if anything another dish I hadn’t expected – more poise than bombast, in a meal that had mostly been about very forceful flavours.

And this was where the wobble came in again. We’d ordered this and a second main, a prawn and stone bass curry, and we’d asked for a couple of bowls of rice to accompany them. Our server told us that one bowl of rice would easily be enough for both dishes, and that we could always order more if we wanted to. And maybe that might have been true, but it was very hard to judge when we were waiting something like ten minutes for that second dish to come out.

And this is the drawback of small plates and large plates, starters and mains: because, rightly or wrongly, we had ordered a main each and what this meant in practice was that I sat there like a lemon wondering if they’d forgotten my order. By the time it came out, most of the rice was gone. We ordered another one to go with the fish curry, but didn’t end up using most of it.

I waited so long for my main that I didn’t even get a photo of it, which would frustrate me more if it had been more exciting. It was okay but not extraordinary, and I wonder if the staff have had to manage expectations about the heat levels in the menu following some of those hype-laden reviews, because they told me that this dish was on the hot side and reality it was more restrained than I’d expected.

It was possibly the only thing I ate, up to that point, that tasted unspecial: was that because I’d had to wait so long for it, or just because it didn’t quite match the standard elsewhere? Who knows. All the other reviewers seem to have thought it was out of this world.

Kolae’s menu only had two desserts on it, so naturally we ordered both: how could you resist the possibility that you might just eat the twenty-seventh best dessert in the country? Especially as there was a Coteaux du Layon on the menu, a dessert wine I can never see without ordering which always punches above the likes of a Sauternes (or even a Tokaji, for my money).

Zoë had the worst of it, with a dessert which left her baffled and ambivalent. Mango custard with sweet sticky rice and fresh coconut sounds great, doesn’t it? But the reality was a little odd and neither one thing nor the other. The custard was pleasant enough, if not exactly singing with mango, but the layer of lukewarm rice – more claggy than sticky – left her a little cold. Looking at the reviews I’ve seen, Kolae only did one dessert for some time, and all their desserts have been kind-of permutations of what Zoë had (well, left some of) and what I ordered.

That suggests they might still be searching for the right dishes to end meals at the restaurant. On this evidence, perhaps they should keep looking.

I had the smaller, cheaper and better dessert, and arguably the more conventional one. A single sphere of coconut sorbet, gorgeously smooth, came crowned with a salted tea caramel, peanuts on the side. And again, it felt like a few good ideas in search of better execution: I liked the sorbet, I absolutely loved the caramel, I wanted the ratio of the two to be different. And just dumping peanuts next to it felt like an afterthought, when I’d have liked the whole thing to feel integrated.

As I said, previous reviews I’ve seen suggested that Kolae previously only offered one dessert which combined elements of these two. That process of evolution doesn’t feel like it’s concluded yet.

Still, we were full and happy with much to digest. At this point getting attention was a breeze, and our meal – a lot of food, three drinks apiece and a 12.5% service charge lobbed on – came to a hundred and sixty four pounds. I’ve seen a few reviews say that you could spend less, which you could, but I for one didn’t want to come away from the meal thinking anything along the lines of ‘I wonder what those chicken skewers would have tasted like?’

Hours later, after a hectic traipse round Selfridges and Liberty unsuccessfully trying to identify birthday presents, we sat in the very nice beer garden of a pub in Islington, drank two deeply expensive pints of Steady Rolling Man and talked about our meal. It’s always one of my favourite things about going on duty with Zoë, the post mortem, and few things accompany one as well as sunshine and an al fresco pint of Steady Rolling Man.

Our conclusions were fairly similar – that Kolae was extraordinary, and that we were glad we’d taken a punt on it. That the room was incredible, the location was brilliant and that there were many dishes on there the likes of which neither of us had ever had. If the overwhelming critical reaction did have a feel of mass hysteria about it, it didn’t detract from the fact that it was an excellent restaurant.

And yet, there were a few things that just stopped it from being truly great. The slightly disconnected service, for one, and the homogeneity of some of the menu. And the timing issues with the mains did really bug me: I get that when you bill things as large plates and say people might want to share them you may not guarantee they will all come out seconds apart, but a ten minute lag felt like a gaffe and really did take the sheen off what had otherwise been an excellent meal.

And then there were the desserts, the most underwhelming element of the whole thing. I don’t hold with all the tourists wafting round Borough Market with their naff standard issue strawberries swamped in chocolate, but I seem to remember a stall in the market offering raw milk ice cream. If I’d known what Kolae’s desserts would be like, I’d have gone there instead.

But these are, in the scheme of things, relatively minor quibbles. If you have a list of London restaurants you plan to get round to, and Kolae isn’t on it, I’d definitely recommend adding it. If you have any curiosity about this kind of food and this region, even if like me you might lack the experience or the vocabulary to express it, it’s well worth expanding your consciousness with a visit.

And if you’re slightly worried either by suggestions of apocalyptic chilli heat or the visceral horrors of munching on a plate of prawn heads, don’t worry: the former probably won’t materialise, and the latter isn’t mandatory. That’s just the hype talking – the hype that sells papers, results in reservations and gets a very good restaurant an elevated status as the twenty-seventh best restaurant in the country, less than a year after it opened.

Is it the twenty-seventh best restaurant in the country? I’m not sure about that. I’ve wondered, since eating there, whether it would make my top thirty meals of all time: it’s one of the highest ratings I’ve given out on this blog, but top thirty full stop? Maybe not. But the best is the enemy of the good – and whether or not Kolae is the best, the fact remains that it really is very good indeed. Just leave as many preconceptions as you can at home, and enjoy the ride.

Kolae – 8.7
6 Park Street, London, SE1 9AB

https://kolae.com

Restaurant review: Sartorelli’s, Oxford

On By ediblereadingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

I’m of the firm opinion that everyone has at least one useful life lesson you could learn from them. Someone I used to know, for instance, was convinced that you could never go wrong taking champagne to somebody’s house: we didn’t agree on much, it turned out, but on this she had a point. My stepmother has a rule, a very wise one, that you should never buy her any Christmas or birthday present she has to dust. I sometimes give her champagne, which combines those two rules nicely. 

A married couple I used to know had two excellent customs. One was that using the W word, talking about work, was strictly verboten on Sundays. The other was that, once in a while, one of them could play a joker and opt out of adult life for a whole day. The other one had to make all the decisions – where to go, what to do, what to watch, everything. 

I’ve tried to introduce that latter rule into my own life, but without much success. Most of the time my spouse, tired from working to the core of the bone, doesn’t want to make decisions for anybody else. And when she does, she has a bad habit of making plans for me that I just don’t like. 

“I think you should stay at home and pack for the move” was Zoë’s suggestion last Friday when I was facing another Saturday on my tod and asked her what I should get up to: I didn’t fancy that at all. 

So on a whim, a solo Saturday stretching out in front of me, I thought “fuck it, I’ll go to Oxford”. I headed for the station, and was sitting in C.U.P. having a mocha and making my plans when Zoë texted me. I thought I’d have one last crack at abdicating responsibility. 

“I’m going to Oxford but I’m torn between grabbing a late lunch at the Magdalen Arms or trying Sartorelli’s, that pizza place in the Covered Market. What do you think?”

“Have the pizza. You can review it.”

What happened next was a series of some of the happiest events. First, that moment when your train pulls up and it’s mostly empty, no standing in the aisle holding on to the back of someone’s chair, sitting on the luggage rack or slumped in the vestibule. Instead, a leisurely trundle through Oxfordshire, just me, my phone and the music in my headphones. As Larkin puts it, all sense of being in a hurry gone. 

Getting off at Oxford I was struck that although it wasn’t quiet – it never is – it wasn’t crazily busy, and as I strolled in, up George Street and Ship Street, I thought how curious it was that I’ve never quite escaped this city, just up the train tracks from home, where I spent three years learning a lot about a little but precious little about life. That used to put me off the place, but now I’ve reached some kind of accommodation with it. 

Another glad event followed as I entered the Covered Market. It was that wonderful coincidence that happens when you arrive somewhere very busy literally as somebody else is just leaving, and can jump into their place. So I got a plum spot outside Sartorelli’s at one of the long tables, just by being in the right place at exactly the right time: after that, the queue just grew and grew. If I’d got there five minutes earlier, or later, the day would have had a completely different shape. 

The Covered Market has always been one of my favourite spots in Oxford, even back in the early Nineties when I used to stop there to pick up a lunchtime pie from a trader called Ma Baker (Boney M fans, I presume). But its character has been changing in recent years, with many of the traditional traders driven out by high rents: the butchers and fishmongers have left, and on this visit one of the old-school mens’ outfitters had a closing down sign in the window. The likes of Fasta Pasta, who used to do the best ciabatta in the world, are gone too.

But in their place a very different sort of trader is settling in to the market. Although they recently got a little tap room from Botley’s Tap Social, I first noticed the phenomenon a few years back with Teardrop, a micropub offering beer from Church Hanbrewery, a little brewery based out past Witney. They had half a dozen or so beers on cask and keg, and sold charcuterie and the like, and they had a few barrels and tables outside. And then there was a wine bar, Cellar Door, next to it – again, selling wine by the glass. And finally, there was Sartorelli’s along from that, setting up a little ecosystem – wine, beer and pizza all in one little corner of the market.

Sartorelli’s also sprung up out of Church Hanbrewery, first offering pizza at the brewery taproom before opening in the Covered Market in March 2022. And since it opened, every time I’ve been to the Covered Market – usually to buy cheese, or grab a latte from the excellent Colombia Coffee Roasters – I’ve gone past, thought the setup looked great, eyed the pizzas being devoured outside with no small degree of envy. And then sighed. because I had a lunch reservation somewhere else. But on this occasion I was in Oxford with no plans, and this space at a table outside had miraculously come free. When opportunity knocks like that, you don’t send it away.

The very kind couple next to me kept an eye on my stuff and I went up to order. The place was a bustle of activity, with a big wood-fired oven and a menu displayed on the wall that was simple almost to a fault. Fundamentally you can have a margherita for £8.50 and load it with whatever you fancy, at a cost of 50p per topping, or you can have one of their suggested combos. The menu explained that sartorelli means small tailor, and that as far as they were concerned you could tailor your pizza however you like.

I spotted one of the suggestions that mentioned anchovies, ordered it, paid £10.50 and scuttled back to my seat and my bag, gratified that they were still there. My tablemates then kindly agreed to keep looking after my bag while I went to Teardrop and ordered two thirds of their Teardrop Citra on keg. It cost just under four pounds and was absolutely gorgeous – cold, crisp and, I hoped, perfect pizza accompaniment. I went back to my table with my winnings, saw the queue beginning to build and felt like coming here for lunch was turning out to be a very smart decision on my part.

My pizza arrived just over ten minutes later, although I was having such a lovely time that I’d quite happily have waited longer. It came on a metal tray, à la The Last Crumb, but they’d sensibly put paper underneath it which also helped it stay warm longer. Sartorelli’s just gives you a pizza cutter, a napkin and some chilli and garlic oil, so if you’re a cutlery user, their pizza might challenge you. And this was the point where I realised I had completely missed the fact that, on the menu, my pizza was billed as coming with a “sprinkle of rocket”. It was a nice idea, but it was more than a sprinkle, and without cutlery it added a layer of complexity to eating the thing with your hands.

Initially I also wondered whether the rocket might have been used to camouflage the toppings, to conceal any caper or (especially) anchovy-related stinginess that was going on. But once I settled down to eating the pizza, I realised nothing could be further from the truth. It was liberally carpeted with tiny, punchy capers, had a respectable number of plump black olives and, most importantly, plenty of glorious, salty anchovies.

Not only that, but the base was excellent – especially the crust, all blistered, puffy and chewy. I was having an absolutely marvellous time: a bite of the pizza, a sip of the gorgeous beer, an unworthy look up at the queue, still growing, and I felt like I was properly winning at lunch.

I should have stayed for a dessert, really – it’s just ice cream, which they say is “hand crafted to a secret Sartorelli recipe” – but I had my eye on something from Swoon on the High later on, and I also felt guilty depriving punters of a seat. So I ambled off to the Oxford Cheese Company to pick something up for the evening, and then wandered out towards North Oxford in search of one of my favourite pubs in the whole wide world, the Rose And Crown.

I have broken one of the unspoken rules of restaurant reviewing by reviewing the same kind of establishment two weeks running. Last week was Zia Lucia, this week it’s Sartorelli’s: it’s the equivalent of putting two consecutive tracks on a mixtape by the same artist. But I think it’s very instructive in some ways because restaurants aren’t only about quality, or value, or service, or even convenience. They’re also about expectations, and whether they can surprise or delight.

So I expected Zia Lucia to be something special, and although you couldn’t fault their tomato sauce, or their Parma ham, the overall experience was a little underwhelming. And yet on a wooden stool, at a trestle table in the middle of the Covered Market I had a pizza from a place that didn’t shout or brag, but just did an absolutely marvellous job. Excellent craft beer from a place two doors down, a little people watching and hubbub, and an excellent lunch that, all told, set me back just under fifteen pounds.

Experiences like that are reason enough, if you find yourself at a loose end on a Saturday, to hop on a train and take your chances. I’m very glad I did. Besides, I’m asked quite often whether there’s anywhere decent to go for an informal, quickish lunch in Oxford, and now I have an answer for you. I may not have any great life lessons to impart to you – although my stepmother’s rule of thumb is a very good one – but you can usually rely on me for a restaurant recommendation.

Sartorelli’s – 7.7
21, Covered Market, Oxford, OX1 3DZ

https://www.sartorellis.com/sartorellisoxford

Restaurant review: Zia Lucia

On By ediblereadingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that as a middle-aged man churning out two and a half thousand words a week about some restaurant or other, I’m about as far from the food and drink zeitgeist as it’s possible to be. Restaurant blogs have been dead for years, local papers too, and even the broadsheets are gradually fading away. Instagram influencers are passé too, even if Reading’s handful are still scrounging the occasional free meal (the latest from the Hilton in Kennet Island). Nope, apart from the occasional increasingly desperate Substack, food reviewing is all about TikTok and Instagram reels these days. 

The most prominent is an account called Topjaw. Topjaw, for the uninitiated, consists of a posh bloke with floppy hair (who used to be a model) in front of the camera and a less photogenic bloke, presumably also posh, behind it. The posh bloke with floppy hair interviews restaurateurs in London getting vox pops about where they think you can find the best pizza, burgers, coffee and so on in the capital. He’s trying to perfect that fake almost-estuary accent posh people do when they’re trying to sound less posh, like Tony Blair used to do. He’s not managed it yet. 

The usual suspects come up in those vox pops time and again – the Dalston bakery Dusty Knuckle, the Dexter burger at The Plimsoll in Finsbury Park, the Soho hype factory that is new pub The Devonshire (a place where nobody can snag a reservation but there are mysteriously always tables available for celebrities, critics and, well, Topjaw). We’re never paid by any restaurant we feature, says their bio, although they’re not averse to doing paid partnerships with the likes of Bicester Village, of all places. They may not be paid a fee, but God knows if they pay for their food.

Still, all power to them: their format is quick and entertaining, and you find yourself watching it whether you like them or not. It’s already spawning imitators – mainly in Bristol, where you see some people trying the vox pop format – and maybe one day it will translate into a TV show for them, or a paid gig or an appearance on Strictly or I’m A Celebrity.

You might wonder what any of this has to do with Reading, so I should explain. A couple of months ago, during a bumper week of tosspots on Topjaw, they interviewed not only Ed Sheeran (who turns out to be as basic as you would expect) but also hereditary columnist and bigoted human bin fire Giles Coren. Coren was clearly desperate to appeal to a new demographic so was doing his usual dreary, sweary trying too hard schtick, only even more manic than usual.

But in the course of dispensing his tiresome opinions he happened to say that he thought the best pizza in London was done by Zia Lucia. “They have this charcoal base which apparently doesn’t make you fart” he added, not as hilariously as he intended. Hang on, I thought, haven’t they just opened in Reading?

Well, yes, they have. Zia Lucia opened at the start of April on St Mary’s Butts, where ASK used to be, their first branch outside London. Their website talks about their origins in Islington over 15 years ago, and they also bandy around the slightly random stat that they are the world’s 38th best pizza chain (before you get too excited, Pizza Pilgrims finished 27 places above them and the Big Mamma Group, which Coren loathes, came third). Even so a first branch outside London, coming to a town that had lost Franco Manca and Buon Appetito, felt like it was worth investigating. 

The clincher was hearing another anecdote about the charcoal base: I was chatting to my friend Reggie over lunch a couple of weeks ago, and he asked where was on my to do list.

“I’d like to see you review Zia Lucia” he said. “I went there just after it opened and had the weirdest experience. My waiter was explaining to me that they have four different kinds of bases and he was telling me about the charcoal one. The great thing about it, he said, is that it goes right through you.” Reggie imitated the waiter doing a mime which was meant to illustrate it doing, well, that.

“He used those exact words?”

“Yeah, he did. I couldn’t believe it.”

I told that story to my friend Jerry as we strolled down Broad Street in the sunshine, just in time for our dinner reservation.

“Oh, I could do with that charcoal base!” he said, before telling me a long story about how he was on some kind of drug trial which had made his trips to the throne room fewer and further between than he was used to. “Honestly, it’s so stressful! I’m going about once every three days at the moment and it’s really not right. Sorry, I shouldn’t be telling you this just before dinner.”

“No, it’s absolutely fine” I said. I don’t know if it was hitting fifty, or just the continued deepening of my friendship with Jerry, but I felt oddly touched that we’d reached the ‘openly discussing bodily functions’ stage. “To be honest, if I don’t go at least once a day I start to worry.”

“Exactly! You can use all of this in your review by the way, I don’t mind you talking about it. Maybe you can get some laughs out of it.”

I decided that I would – an angle’s an angle, and that charcoal base was definitely an angle – and then I told Jerry a couple of stories on a similar theme, which hypocritically I’m not reproducing here.

I think I maybe ate in ASK, which used to be where Zia Lucia is now, just the once, before I wrote a restaurant blog (and possibly, had standards). It was a huge site that got split in two when ASK left, with Biryani Mama on one side and Zia Lucia on the other. It’s a perfectly pleasant room, all white tiles, yellow walls, a spot of terra cotta and marble tables, with a bigger room out back that I didn’t see. We were seated at the front, by the window, and I thought it was a nice spot, neutral and unexceptionable.

The menu focused almost exclusively on pizza – a handful of starters and sharing plates and then into the main event. Mostly traditional, with some notable omissions – no pepperoni, which might disappoint some of you, and no anchovies and capers, which disappointed me. They started at eleven quid and maxed out just over fifteen, although most of their expensive pizzas were boxed off in a section marked Le Leggenderie and given names like “Leonardo da Vin-Cheese”: it’s what the great man might have wanted. We grabbed a negroni sbagliato each and sipped away, menu deliberations on the back burner as we had a good old natter.

When our server came to take our order, we had The Conversation about the variety of bases on offer. He explained that they had four different doughs – traditional, gluten free, wholemeal and the legendary charcoal base.

“The thing about it is…” he said, as Jerry and I shifted forward in our seats. How was he going to describe this phenomenon? “…you eat it, and it doesn’t leave you feeling bloated the way some pizzas can.”

So delicately put, and he didn’t do the mime: I was disappointed.

“But although it looks black, if you had it in a blind taste you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between it and the traditional base.” I did think, possibly churlishly, that given that it was two quid extra I’d have liked it to taste different, but I guess some people are really worried, like £2 worried, about breaking wind. Jerry was sold, anyway, on the basis that anything that helped sort his backlog, so to speak, was money well spent.

I felt guilty about ordering lots of food with a man who’d told me he was having digestive setbacks, but I managed to persuade him to share an appetiser with me. Bruschetta verde was a pleasant little thing, a piece of toast halved and topped with fresh, light ricotta with a hint of citrus, zigzagged with a pesto that, for me, was a little lacking in oomph. The bread was also a little nondescript, considering they were so proud of their pizza bases and their focaccia. But all that sounds sniffier than I mean to be: it was a pleasant thing to share. It cost seven pounds fifty.

Our pizzas came hot on the heels of us polishing that off, with a speed verging on too brisk. The restaurant wasn’t busy and they didn’t need to turn our table, so I don’t understand why they didn’t let us settle in for a little longer: I reckon they’d have got at least a couple of drinks out of us. The feeling of time being unnecessarily concertinaed was, if anything, exacerbated by their decision to drop by our table mid-pizza and offer us a shot glass of limoncello each. A lovely gesture, don’t get me wrong, and not one we were going to turn down, but shouldn’t it have come towards the end of the meal?

Anyway, on to the pizzas. With my first choice – anything with anchovies – not on the menu I defaulted to my second choice, the trusty ‘nduja. Zia Lucia serves theirs simply – just tomato, mozzarella and ‘nduja, no pepperoni, hot honey, basil or other distractions. And actually it had a lot to like about it: the mozzarella was plentiful and good quality and the ‘nduja was freely and indiscriminately applied. You got a lot of it, more than you might at Sarv’s Slice, although it wasn’t quite as winningly pokey as the stuff at Mama’s Way. The tomato sauce was deeper and fruitier than Donald Sinden’s voice (check me out, topical as ever).

And I couldn’t fault the base – enough structure, enough floppiness, a satisfying chew. It didn’t have performative blistering or leopard-spotting, but it was a very creditable effort. It was, in short, a very competently done pizza. Just a few ingredients, all really well put together, no gilding the lily at all. So why wasn’t I more excited about it, and why aren’t I more excited telling you about it? Is that pizza fatigue – mine, or the nation’s – or was it something else?

Jerry’s pizza told a similar story. He had chosen the Parma ham and burrata, on that methane-absorbing black base, and you again couldn’t argue with the quality. The Parma ham was really top-notch – coarse, dry and salty, without the sheen that comes when you exhume it from a plastic coffin. There was a slicer behind the counter, with mortadella on it, so I’m assuming they slice their ham on the premises, but either way it was very good. The burrata was decent, too – I wouldn’t personally have a big ball of cold cheese slap bang in the middle of a hot pizza, but it was Jerry’s order, not mine.

Otherwise it had all the same pluses as my pizza: a cracking tomato sauce, a good mozzarella – not fior di latte, I assume, because only one pizza on the menu specifically mentions that – and a base that was sturdy where you wanted it to be but with give in the middle. That brings us on to that much vaunted charcoal base. Jerry let me try some, and it tasted unremarkable; the server was right, I think, about the blind taste.

I also ordered a Gorgonzola dip for my crust. Jerry and I both tried it and couldn’t work out whether they’d brought us the garlic one by mistake, or if it was just criminally light on the blue cheese.

By the time our pizzas were done – I had to help Jerry out with his, but I’m good like that – we’d been in there just over half an hour. And again I thought what a shame it was that the restaurant didn’t have two gears, that it didn’t have the know-how or emotional intelligence to switch from swift to leisurely. We were offered dessert menus and told that the cannolo, the thing I fancied, was not on the menu that night.

They came back a little while later and we ordered desserts and digestivi, an Amaro Montenegro apiece. Like the two of us, they were mostly sweet, slightly bitter and rather complex. But, also like the two of us, they were arguably not at their best: I expected my amaro to come luxuriating in an oversized glass, chinking with ice and rounded out with orange. To have it room temperature, sticky and filled to the brim of a shot glass, felt like such a waste. I half expected people to form a ring around me and chant “DOWN IT!” until I’d polished it off, which is about as far from the experience of drinking amaro as you can possibly get.

My dessert had been recommended by my server – who I do have to say was excellent all evening, if far too efficient – and, surprise surprise, it was tiramisu. I know I order this a lot, but in my defence my first choice was off the menu. I’ve had tiramisu many times in the course of writing this blog, and like Goldilocks I’ve often had ones that are too boozy or not boozy enough, too creamy or not creamy enough. They rarely seem to be just right, and Zia Lucia’s was no exception. I loved how thoroughly it had been carpeted in cocoa, and the booze levels were just right, but it had a little too much sponge and slightly too little cream. I liked it, I finished it – I’m not a monster – but it could have been better.

Jerry’s choice was far superior. Gelato – although it was more like ice cream as far as I could tell – came in a handful of flavours and Jerry had chosen a solitary scoop of pistachio. I had an introductory spoonful and that was enough for me to be very impressed. The texture was smooth and glossy, no wayward ice crystals, and the flavour was spot on. I’d like to think Zia Lucia makes its own ice cream, but if they don’t I’d love to know where they get it from. It was the perfect way to end the meal, and infinitely preferable to the more expensive dish I had ordered.

Our meal came to ninety-four pounds, including the service charge, and all told we were out in just over an hour. That’s not a huge amount of time to spend that kind of money, and it sums up to me the real problem with Zia Lucia. It all felt more functional than I’m sure they intended it to be, a restaurant where you were too hurried to enjoy la dolce vita. They didn’t need our table, and I wish they’d seemed in slightly less of a hurry to part us from it.

I suspect it was carelessness more than calculation, but it’s still a blunder. A restaurant that brings out the limoncello before you’ve finished your main course – that brings your digestivo in a shot glass – has forgotten that meals aren’t just food. They are experiences too. They’ve been open for two months, and our server told us they’ve been steadily busy since they opened, but I hope they learn that lesson. It made me miss Buon Appetito, who never, ever, got that wrong.

But never mind. Jerry and I beetled off to the Nag’s for a post dinner drink, but it was rammed with people watching the football. So instead we wandered up Russell Street and ended up in the Castle Tap. There was a loud, entertaining band in the front room with a touch of surf guitar about them, the garden was packed with people who had wrapped up warmer than us.

But we found a little space in the back room where a couple of big, raucous groups were having a wonderful time, and had a proper chinwag – about Jerry’s holiday in Scarborough, about my honeymoon, about the weird set of circumstances that led to us becoming friends and what a glad happenstance that was. Jerry loved the Castle Tap – “it’s like having a drink in someone’s garage!” – and my night there reminded me what a special, eclectic and chaotic place it was. The evening started reasonably well, but it ended better. A couple of days later I messaged Jerry to ask if he had experienced any noteworthy after effects from that charcoal base. Thankfully no! was the response.

I’ve thought a lot about Zia Lucia in the course of writing this, trying to work out why I didn’t like it more. Their end product is unquestionably good, even if the experience left a little to be desired. But it didn’t feel like it had soul, in the way that Mama’s Way or Sarv’s Slice do, and I’m not sure it even replicated the buzz of Franco Manca when it first hit Reading. Zia Lucia felt more like the likes of ASK, or Strada, or even Pizza Express, and given its backstory and its small footprint I just expected a little more. I’m not saying this just to disagree with Giles Coren, although to be fair he is wrong about almost everything all of the time, but: best pizza in London? It’s not even the best pizza in Reading.

That’s not to say it’s bad, because it’s absolutely not. I might even go there again at some point, to try other things on the pizza menu, to have some antipasti, to try their focaccia or finally snaffle that cannolo. But I don’t know when that will be, because it didn’t make that kind of impression. I hate to paraphrase the waiter who so impressed Reggie when Zia Lucia first opened, but the experience of eating there, well, it sort of goes right through you.

Zia Lucia – 6.8
65 St Mary’s Butts, RG1 2LG
0118 2250011

https://zialucia.com/reading/