On paper at least, you wouldn’t expect me to think much of Cosy Club.

It’s Reading’s second significant chain opening of the year, following Rosa’s Thai back in January. Like Rosa’s Thai, Cosy Club is a smaller chain: just shy of 40 restaurants in total, the first of which opened all the way back in 2010. Unlike Rosa’s Thai, Cosy Club is a spin-off from a much larger chain – the Loungers group, which has in the region of 250 sites, 2 of which are in Caversham and Woodley.

Cosy Club’s thing is to be a more upmarket cousin of the likes of Alto Lounge, and its aim, at first, was to operate out of historic or listed buildings. So you could picture them pitching up in Reading sites like the one hopelessly wasted on Bill’s, but perhaps less so the spot they eventually chose, premises on the very edge of the Oracle previously occupied by Lakeland and before that, if your memory stretches back far enough, The Pier.

So, a chain which is the sequel to a pretty bang average chain, operating out of a site where I used to buy scented candles and, more recently, carpet cleaner or LocknLocks for my leftovers. It could be more auspicious, couldn’t it? And that’s before we get on to the coverage Cosy Club has received – or, to be more accurate, has paid for – from what you might generously describe as Reading’s media.