Believe it or not, some restaurants have opened in Reading this year that aren’t pizza restaurants. Granted, so far the culinary landscape has been dominated by Paesinos, Amò, Zi’Tore and Peppito’s (the latter last seen rounding up Reading’s influencers to gush away on Instagram), but there are still other things happening in town. Not masses, because it’s 2025, hospitality is on a knife edge and everybody is struggling to make money, but some nonetheless.

So we have national chain Rosa’s Thai on Jackson’s Corner, and Blue Collar Corner has taken on two permanent tenants in the form of Burger Society and Gurt Wings. Later in the year we are promised London coffee chain Notes, Japanese restaurant Kawaii from the people behind Osaka, a new café from the owners of Café Yolk and an Italian sister restaurant to Wokingham’s Ruchetta, all on Station Hill.

And of course, how could anybody forget our other big money arrival Cosy Club, which opened last month on the edge of the Oracle in the old Lakeland site? The Reading Chronicle went there, without paying of course, and admired it so much that they wrote an ‘honest food review’ that waited until the very end to admit that their food was gratis. “Before anyone starts moaning yes, this was a gifted experience,” concluded the article, “and like many other journalists who work for numerous publications, I was invited to try the food at a new restaurant.” Elton John was wrong: #AD seems to be the hardest word.

All that is going on in the centre, but there isn’t much of note out in the suburbs: Woodley has welcomed somewhere called “Woodley Food Stasian”, which specialises in dishes from Hong Kong and Vietnam and, at a guess, misspelling the word ‘station’.

More randomly still, Winnersh is about to welcome something called Club India where the Pheasant pub used to be, run by a chef who formerly worked at Wokingham’s Bombay Story and Sultan. It also boasts some kind of consultancy role for another chef who apparently held two Michelin stars in San Francisco and had another restaurant in Palo Alto. How involved he’ll be is anybody’s guess: San Francisco/Palo Alto/Winnersh isn’t a triumvirate you find on many websites.

Of course, both Woodley Food Stasian and Club India might be good, and at some point I might check them out. But so far, this year, it’s slim pickings: restaurateurs are not feeling like taking the plunge, and you can hardly blame them.

Last but not least, that brings us to the subject of this week’s review: Dolphin’s Caribbean Kitchen, which opened two months ago in the old 7Bone site on St Mary’s Butts. It takes its name from the nickname of owner Randolph Bancroft, who has run a catering business for about twenty years: I’m pretty sure I saw Dolphin’s with a gazebo at the street food markets in Bracknell, when I worked there what feels like a lifetime ago.

This restaurant in the town centre, though, is his first ever permanent site, and when he spoke to the local press about it you could sense his excitement. Reading had never had anything like Dolphin’s, he said, and although the climate was tough in hospitality, he added that he hoped good old-fashioned community spirit would help his restaurant to thrive. “By the grace of god, I will make it” he concluded.

Well, he’s right about one thing if nothing else – Reading hasn’t had a proper, sit-down Caribbean restaurant in as long as I can remember. We had Chef Stevie cooking out of the Butler for a glorious year or so, we have a place called Da Spottt – yes, three Ts, don’t act like it’s my fault – on the Oxford Road which apparently has erratic opening times, and we have Seasons doing takeaway nearby, their Cemetery Junction site having closed long ago.

And of course we have the OG – Perry’s, which has been trading next to Market Place for eons. It clearly has its fans, because when I re-reviewed it earlier in the year they all came out of the woodwork to say it was my fault for turning up an hour before it closed. Whatever you think of the rights and wrongs of that, it tells its own story: Perry’s shuts at 7 and is unlicensed, so although it is a restaurant, it’s not a full on evening restaurant.

It’s weird, really: Reading has one of the biggest Bajan communities outside Barbados. When Sharian’s Jamaican Cuisine used to cook at Blue Collar Corner the queue stretched almost to Chancellors Estate Agents every Friday. People would wait over half an hour for that jerk chicken: I know, I was one of them. And most of the time, I almost didn’t begrudge those thirty minutes in line. Their food was that good.

So the demand is there, but for some reason nobody has ever really tried to capitalise on it, before Dolphin’s came along. It felt well worth investigating, so I met Zoë off the train on Monday night and we went along to see if Bancroft had managed to fill that gap in the market.