About five years ago, a very nice lady called Elizabeth came to the last ER readers’ lunch of the year, at Clay’s Hyderabadi Kitchen, back when it used to be on London Street. I assumed she must have had a terrible time for some reason, as she never came to another. But then this year she returned, attending one at Clay’s new home in Caversham, and the most recent lunch at Kungfu Kitchen’s new home. She’s brought both her husband and her son to lunches this year, so I guess perhaps she likes them after all.

Elizabeth is American, and her accent has that drawl of somewhere in the southern states, although I’ve never asked exactly where. And at my lunch in the summer I discovered that Elizabeth and I were as good as neighbours. Because, just like Kungfu Kitchen, I moved house this year and it turns out that Elizabeth lives just around the corner from me – in, I might add, a really handsome-looking house. She lives so nearby, in fact, that she told me that if she’d known when I was going on holiday she’d have taken my bins out for me: I was reminded of something the great Barry Crocker sang, nearly forty years ago.

Anyway a couple of weeks back I got an email from Elizabeth, telling me I should review Zotta Deli. It was on my radar already, an institution run by father and son Rocco and Paolo Zottarelli. It made the local news this year when it announced that it was closing its Winnersh premises in July after 10 years trading there, relocating to a new site on the Basingstoke Road, just opposite the holy trinity of Aldi, the Victoria Cross pub and that massive Morrisons. Now Reading residents, they opened their doors in their new spot at the end of September: all the best people seem to be moving house this year.

I knew people who raved about Zotta as a deli, and I have a feeling it used to supply arancini to the likes of Shed, but the move from Winnersh to Whitley was more than an alphabetical one: Zotta was also changing angle somewhat, going from being a pure deli to a spot where you could eat and drink, as well as picking up produce to take home. So a combination of Mama’s Way and Madoo, you could say, just around the corner from Minas Café and Whitley’s legendary New City Fish Bar.

The comparison with Minas Café was an apt one, and part of the reason why I was so keen to get to Zotta before the year was out. Because despite all the money owners have chucked at Siren RG1 and The Rising Sun in the town centre, the gems of the last couple of years in Reading have been far more likely to be found in the less fashionable parts of town, on the Oxford Road or Northumberland Avenue.

And in particular, they were more likely to be discovered in a new breed of cafés like Minas and DeNata Coffee & Co offering proudly regional food, with a crowd-pleasing full English on the side, just to keep the locals happy. After all, that was a model that had worked well in Reading ever since Kungfu Kitchen took over the old Metro Café on Christchurch Green in 2018, keeping the breakfast menu going while cooking up authentic Szechuan dishes into the bargain. And look what happened to them.

So Elizabeth already had my interest, but she also told me that she was a big fan of Zotta’s lasagne. “They’ve just moved, and a good review from you might help”, she added. “I’ll even drop you off there sometime if you want.” I could hear Barry Crocker clearing his throat again. Now, I may not be as motivated by altruism as I should be, but I’m definitely motivated by lasagne. So on a drab and overcast Saturday afternoon I hopped on a number 6 bus and made my way down the Basingstoke Road with carbs and comfort uppermost in my mind.

Apparently Zotta’ new premises used to be something called “Motorists’ Discount Centres”, a place I was about as likely to have visited as Buzz Gym. In its new incarnation the interior was no frills, but by no means unwelcoming. It was split into two rooms, both of which had tables, but the front room also housed the counter, with the deli out back. The latter felt a little bit of a work in progress, but the front room definitely had loads going on with a display cabinet showing cakes and cannoli, another filled with arancini and focaccia. The focaccia in particular are made by Earley-based Pulcinella Focaccia, another local Italian business with a good reputation on delivery apps.

But the thing I really noticed, right from the off, was the welcome. I’m guessing the chap behind the counter was Paolo, and he was immediately warm and friendly. Not only that, but I noticed over the course of my lunch that he seemed to already know everyone coming in, so either these were customers who had followed him from Winnersh or he’d made a good impression on his new neighbours very quickly. Whichever of the two it was, it said good things about the place.

I asked him how long they’d been there and he said it was just over a month. I was surprised to hear that he’d moved because of high rents in Winnersh: who knew that Winnersh was such a desirable part of town?

“It was crazy, I’d have paid less rent in the centre of Reading” he said. “But I needed more space anyway to open the café as well as the deli. I was waiting for the site next to us to come free in Winnersh, but it never quite happened.”

“Do you get lots of people coming here from Winnersh?”

He smiled.

“Yeah, we do actually. We’re very lucky with our customers.”

I grabbed a table at the front, in what little daylight there was, and had a look at the menu. It’s a shame I was there solo because Zotta offers several different things, and in an ideal world I’d be able to tell you about more than one of them. There was a compact range of pizzas pretty much with the toppings you’d expect – a quattro formaggi, a quattro stagioni, a pepperoni and ‘nduja pizza and another with sausage and friarelli. Most were a fraction over ten pounds, so pretty keenly priced; I don’t know whether Zotta make their own bases or buy them in, but their Instagram has shown pictures of bags of Caputo flour in the past, so I very much hope it’s the former.

Then there were sandwiches – again, a reassuringly small range which would seem to take advantage of the produce they have in store. These mostly came in at less than a fiver and despite being compact, the selection was interesting – one with Parma ham, mozzarella and pesto, another with mortadella, provolone and three other types of cured meat. The gentleman at the table next to me ordered the “Don Rocco”, a simpler affair with breaded chicken, lettuce and mayo and I have to say it looked decent, although he missed a trick not having it in one of those focaccia.

But I was on a quest for lasagne, so I had to forego all of those options. Again, the pasta choices were compact – half a dozen options, all distinct pasta shapes with distinct pasta sauces rather than the sort of mix and match horror I associate with the now departed Wolf Italian Street Food. But I did suspect that these all relied on dried pasta, and there were no filled pasta dishes on the menu. And finally there were two al forno options, the lasagne and a ricotta and spinach cannelloni number.

There’s also a section with breakfast items on it, so I ought to mention that for completeness’ sake. But I’m guessing that if you read this blog you’re probably not deeply interested in all that. For that matter, you’d probably think a little less of me if I went to a place called Zotta Italian Deli to review it and then ordered a fry-up. I should hope so, anyway: I’d think less of me too. I went up to the counter with my can of chinotto in hand, like a right wanker, ready to order.

“I hear that your lasagne is really good. Is there anything else I should consider?”

“Thank you! Lots of people say good things about our spaghetti with meatballs too” he said. (JUST LIKE MAMA’S! said the menu in brackets after that particular dish).

“Your lasagne is made with sausage, is that right? What kind of sausage?” I said, expecting it to be some kind of crumbled sausage meat.

“It’s made with a kind of dried sausage” he said. That was a new one on me, but I was sold. I placed my order for all that and a latte, then realised it was daft to have a latte at the same time a hot dish and a can, so I asked him to hold that until I’d finished eating. I sat back down with my chinotto and made myself comfortable.

And, as an aside, I was so delighted to find chinotto in the fridge. It’s the soft drink that always, to me, feels a little louche and disreputable, partly I suspect because it’s more bitter than sweet. It’s the Brian Ferry of soft drinks – or, more accurately, the Marcello Mastroianni of pop. It’s also just the tonic if you’re nursing a mild hangover, which on this occasion I was.

My lasagne came along fifteen minutes later, by which point I was rather enjoying sitting, straw-slurping and people watching, really hoping that it would be magnificent and I could end my year with a discovery to match Minas Cafe, just around the corner. And the signs were good – it came in an enamel dish that had clearly gone nowhere near a microwave. I wasn’t sure whether it had been layered and cooked as an individual dish, or heated up from a bigger portion, but ultimately it didn’t matter. And to me, at first sight, it looked the part.

And it sort of almost was, but I need to pick through the things here that are a matter of personal taste and things I just think could have been better full stop, to help you make your own decisions. So personally, I wasn’t entirely sure about Zotta’s ragu, but that could have been me. It was heavy on the tomato, with no béchamel offering light and shade, and the tomato was a little sharp and acidic, unleavened with sweetness. And I didn’t mind the slices of dried sausage in it – they might have been unexpected, but they worked. But I found the bits of ham in the mix strange and jarring – not prosciutto crudo, not pancetta, not pork mince, but pink prosciutto cotto.

But just to stress, all those things are matters of personal taste, and your taste may be different. I’m not saying that it wasn’t authentic, it might well have been, but it wasn’t quite my bag. But the other things about the lasagne, I think, were a little more universally in need of tweaking. First, although it was hot at the edges and corners it was lukewarm in the middle, and that felt like it wasn’t quite right. I wonder if this is also about Zotta’s transition from deli to café, because ordinarily in the Winnersh days they’d have portioned it up and left finishing it off in the oven to you, and you wouldn’t make that mistake. But it did feel like a mistake.

And that led to the second problem, which is that for me the very best bit of a lasagne, apart from a blinding ragu, is the crispy, almost-chewy caramelised edges where a long sojourn in the oven has worked its magic. And again, that was where this lasagne was a little wide of the mark. And I feel bad saying this, just as I felt bad at the time thinking that, although the room was great, the service was brilliant and the endeavour was to be applauded, the main thing I noticed was what could have been better. My glass of chinotto, by this point, was half empty.

The second act of my meal, though, was lovely. My latte was beautiful – an old-school coffee, not a third wave statement, but tasty and lacking in bitterness. And my cannolo, because I ordered one of those to go with it, was a joy. I should have had a couple, really, but the lasagne was nothing if not substantial so I limited myself to just the one, in this case salted caramel. The shell was dense, and slightly lacking in lightness, but I didn’t mind that, because it made it a perfect vehicle for a gorgeous, glossy filling. Sometimes salted caramel is just code for “this tastes a little like butterscotch”, but no such problem here – this was a proper treat.

All in all my lunch cost less than fourteen pounds and left me with plenty to digest, in more ways than one. I wandered back out to the deli and had another look, but couldn’t quite find anything I fancied taking home with me. As I said, that felt not quite the finished article yet, with some way to go before it felt an embarrassment of riches in the way that Mama’s Way does.

But I wouldn’t bet against them getting there. Because one thing I’ve noticed about Zotta from their Facebook page is the rhythms of when their stock comes in, announcing the arrival of fresh focaccia, fresh arancini, brand new mozzarella or cornetti like they’re returning friends. And this, to me, is the kind of thing Zotta do really well, that makes you root for them. In my case, it made my experience there more as a whole than it might have seemed on paper. It helped me understand why Elizabeth had been moved to send me that email, to try and make sure more people knew about them.

And I do feel much more generously inclined towards Zotta because even if they’ve been trading for ten years, going from being a deli to being a café is not easy. Doing that while also trying to keep your old customers, attract new ones, promote what you do, extend your hours, take on staff and keep your previous business as a deli going, all at once? I can’t even imagine how difficult that is.

Perhaps I feel particular empathy for Zotta because we both moved house this year. And that’s not easy. I still don’t know where some of my stuff is, I still have boxes I haven’t unpacked and whole rooms that don’t feel like rooms yet. I still don’t completely know my neighbourhood, which is so different from my old one. It’s scary and exciting and sometimes it pisses me off and makes me feel defeated. And I don’t have people coming round to my house, paying for goods and services and expecting everything to be perfect. If Zotta has had a year anything like mine, all I can do is take my hat off to them.

So no, I didn’t absolutely adore my lasagne the way Elizabeth loved hers, but I saw enough to make me think that Zotta will iron out whatever wrinkles they have and go on to be a real force for good on the Basingstoke Road. And I will be back to have another latte, try their focaccia, catch up on their deli, buy some coppa and support them in their efforts to bring a little of la dolce vita to Whitley. And I’ll have another chinotto too, because once a pretentious wanker, always a pretentious wanker. It’s what Marcello Mastroianni would have wanted.

Zotta Deli – 7.0
279 Basingstoke Road, Reading, RG2 0JA
0118 9776222

https://www.facebook.com/zottadeli