Earlier this year, the legendary London restaurant St John celebrated its 30th birthday, and to mark the occasion it went back in time, offering its 1994 menu on weekdays at, and perhaps this is the crucial part, 1994 prices. Reservations were snapped up in no time, no doubt by people who could easily afford the 2024 prices.

A similar thing happened closer to home in September when the Nag’s Head, mindful that it was about to increase its prices for the first time in a while, decided to take its customers back to 2007, when it first opened. For one night, ale, lager and cider were £2.50 a pint: I imagine they shifted a lot of booze that night, even if punters mostly paid for it the next day.

So the whole retro thing is very on trend, I thought to myself. How could I jump on this bandwagon? And then I realised – I could do something to mark the inception of my blog too, and combat rising inflation into the bargain. 

I don’t mean money, because nobody was going to charge me 2013 prices. The only people paying the same amount for food now as they were eleven years ago are influencers, or “content creators” as they now like to call themselves. You know, the ones who ought to be using the hashtag #grifted. “I didn’t see a bill”, they frequently brag.

No, the inflation I’m talking about is word count: it’s no secret that my reviews nowadays are significantly longer and more detailed than they once were. I’m reminded of the quote attributed to Mark Twain, when he said that if he’d had more time he’d have written a shorter letter. There’s worse company to be in, as a writer. So how could I take you back to 2013 when this blog first began?

And then I decided: this week I would review Perry’s, one of the final 2013 venues I’m yet to revisit for the blog. And I’d ensure my review was no more than 1634 words, the magic number I used back in 2013. So I’d better get started, hadn’t I, because I’ve used 363 of them already. 

Perry’s had been there a fair old while when I first visited, and eleven years later it shows no signs of letting up. It occupies a spot on Reading’s High Street – yes, it has one, and it’s minuscule – next to the sadly departed Oxfam bookshop. I remember its previous incarnation as a kebab place, one I used to stop in drunk after Bohemian Night at the 3Bs every week, totally unaware that, most Wednesdays, the woman I’d end up marrying twenty years later was in there too, grabbing chips to eat on the last bus back to Woodley.

The interior, to my untrained eye, looked almost completely unchanged from my previous visit. It had fourteen covers, at plain wooden tables, and the walls were half-panelled with knotty pine. The bent plywood chairs – Arne Jacobsen on a budget – had been treated with some kind of muddy effect that made them look like they’d spent thirty years in a chainsmoker’s dining room. 

To be honest, I’m not sure it looked much different from when it was the kebab shop, with the possible exception of the poster of Muhammad Ali on the wall. The only real evidence of the intervening years were the Covid-era stickers on the floor telling you to stand two meters clear of the next person in the queue. Even those are practically vintage now, and although Perry’s might well have a queue at lunchtime when I turned up just after 6pm, an hour before it was due to close, I was almost the only person there.

The board up at the counter lists what they serve, with a green sticker next to the dishes they are still offering at any given time. If you want proof that I’ve learned the square root of fuck all in eleven years, here it is: last time I reviewed Perry’s I said you’d be better off going at lunchtime when the selection is probably wider. And yet here I was, three houses, one job and one marriage later, doing exactly the same thing again: what a bonehead.

So I can’t tell you whether the jerk chicken could match the likes of Chef Stevie or Sharian’s Jamaican Cuisine, I can’t wax lyrical about the ackee and saltfish and I didn’t get the option to brave the cow foot (which, let’s be honest, I would never have eaten in a million years). My choices were simple: fried chicken, stewed chicken, curried mutton or fried fish. 

When I ascertained that the latter was boneless, I plumped for that – large, with rice and peas on the side. Again, I would have tried Perry’s macaroni pie, had that green sticker been next to it, but no such luck. I don’t know whether the selection is much wider at lunchtime: a better restaurant reviewer could probably tell you. I also had a can of grape soda, because that’s one thing I did learn from my previous review.

It arrived very quickly, at which point I realised I’d be on my way in no time. And actually, it made me wonder how I managed to get over 1500 words out of Perry’s last time. The fish was pleasant enough, but I wasn’t sure which was more of an achievement: frying fish in a way that left absolutely no crunch or texture, or giving it a seasoned coating decent enough that I nearly didn’t mind. But I tend to think fried fish should shatter, not bend, so I remained unconvinced.

The rice and peas, again, weren’t unpleasant and had a nice lurking heat that gathered over time. They were a lot more rice than peas, with a few rogue kidney beans scattered throughout. I’d have liked it drier. But it was the other kind of heat I found disconcerting: this was really, really piping hot. The kind of sudden, centralised heat that made me think it had been brought about by a microwave, not a saucepan.

There was also a sort of medley of veg, cabbage and carrots, which I didn’t mind. But I wondered, perhaps unworthily, if it had lived in a tin before winding up on my plate. The whole thing was on the bland side, despite pops of flavour from the ribbons of onion and sweet peppers piled on to the fish.

It wasn’t all bad, and I don’t mean to sound like it was. But a large portion seemed to mean that you got not quite enough fish and too much rice, and I left some of it. I finished my grape soda while slightly worrying, in the back of my mind, that Perry’s mightn’t take cards. It did: my bill came to thirteen pounds. 

You didn’t have the option to tip, which was a shame because service was lovely. I got the impression they didn’t get many customers at that time in the evening, although a few people turned up to take food away. My meal done, I scurried off in the direction of a supermarket to pick up some chocolate prior to hopping on the bus. This is why I’ll never be thin: I should have been full from the meal, but I felt like something was missing. Food I enormously enjoyed, probably.

In some ways, eating at Perry’s was a strange timewarp experience. I’ve no doubt that it’s doing what it’s always done – the room’s the same, the menu is the same,  and looking back at my old review even some of my comments about the fried fish are the same. Perhaps the only evidence of the passage of time is this – what cost me £13 in 2024 would have set me back £8 in 2013. And yet the rating at the bottom is lower than it was before. So, in the immortal words of Morrissey, has the world changed or have I changed?

A bit of both, I suspect. When I reviewed Perry’s all those years ago it was only the seventh restaurant I’d ever reviewed. I was so young – not yet forty! – and I knew nothing about Caribbean food. But since then, at Chef Stevie’s Caribbean Kitchen, or Sharian’s Jamaican Cuisine, or even at Oxford’s Spiced Roots, I’ve discovered just how magnificent that food can be. All those places, for me at least, make Perry’s look distinctly entry level. And it doesn’t have to be that way – the enormous queues you used to see at Blue Collar are evidence of that.

But also, the world outside their little spot on High Street has changed beyond recognition in the last decade. Perry’s may still be on the affordable side, but for that money you can go round the corner to Honest and get a smashed burger, freshly cooked chips and a soft drink for almost the same money. Or go to Bakery House, or The Bap, or Shree Krishna Vada Pav, or Tasty Greek Souvlaki. All those places, for better or for worse, reflect how Reading eats in 2024. I’m not entirely sure that Perry’s does. 

And that, believe it or not, makes me feel downcast. I hope Perry’s continues to do well, and I imagine it may; it has its clientele, it’s had them for a very long time and it doesn’t need an injection of new customers from a rave review by yours truly. But I wanted to love it, so I’m sad that I didn’t. And yet the funny thing is this: it turns out that when you feel like that, even though it might stir up complicated emotions in you, 1634 words is more than enough.

Perry’s – 6.1
7 High Street, Reading, RG1 2EA
0118 9594001