I used to have a friend – I lost him, like so many unreliable things, in the divorce – who was a keen wearer of hats. And he told me a story about how he got into wearing them that, like so many of his stories, stayed with me. He was on a bus, and so was an elderly chap wearing a splendid hat. It was so splendid, in fact, that my former friend complimented him on it. And the old gentleman turned to him and simply said this: what started as an affectation has become a necessity.
That struck my friend, and when he started wearing hats he said the same thing happened with him. The first few times, it felt like an affectation, but gradually over time it turned into a necessity. And then he told me that story, in a hat shop in Bridport fifteen years ago, when I was umming and aahing about buying a black trilby. His little parable of the dapper man on the top floor of an omnibus was the thing that tipped me over from window shopping to actual shopping.
And it was true: it felt like an affectation for a while, but then something changed. Fake it ’til you make it, I suppose. Many years and several hats followed, although I rarely wear them now. One necessity – the requirement to have music playing in headphones on journeys and commutes – triumphed over another. But I still think about that friend, and that fellow on the bus, from time to time. And lately I’ve realised that this whole affectation-necessity transmutation is also how I feel about eating in a restaurant on my own.
This is the fourth edition of my guide to solo dining in Reading, and every one has tracked my changing relationship with a table for one. The first one was written back in 2015, and is so dated it contains a Jason Derulo reference: all but one of the venues I recommended have now closed. The second, from 2018, tries too hard to convince readers that eating alone is fabulous (spoiler alert: after you get divorced you do tend to do it more often, at home or out and about) and is full of chains.
The reason I’m updating my guide from three years ago is partly because Reading has changed – farewell Buon Appetito, so long the Lyndhurst and Cairo Café – but mostly because I have. This year I’ve had to eat on duty more often on my own, because Zoë needed an operation on her back, and then had it and was in hospital, and then came home and convalesced. I suppose in that sense you could call dining solo a necessity.
But it’s also the year when I’ve learned to truly love eating on my own, on duty or just to treat myself. And it’s probably no coincidence that it’s also the year following an accident when, more than at any time since the pandemic, I realised that you can’t take being able to eat out at all for granted.
So honestly, some of my happiest meals this year have been me on my own with a good table, a half bottle of red, a book I genuinely intend to read but never do and a great view of a dining room and a group of people, what Larkin called a “frail travelling coincidence”, who happen to be sharing that room and that lunchtime with me.
I’m talking about meals like my brilliant two hours of pyrotechnics in the most muted of spaces at Cheltenham’s Le Champignon Sauvage, one of my best meals of this or any year, or – at a very different price point – my equally accomplished three courses at Mignonette in Richmond, a meal I’ve thought about many times since. It’s also, incidentally, why I disliked my lunch at overhyped celeb hangout The Devonshire, because its staff had no understanding whatsoever of what makes a lazy solo lunch so special.
But I’ve had similar experiences all over the place. In Didcot, at Django’s Smokehouse or in Oxford at The Punter or Bigfoot, or closer to home at M’s Smokehouse or Malmaison. I had a really delightful solo dinner at Malmaison, for crying out loud: so different to when I reviewed it as a table for two over a decade ago and was back out on the pavement forty-five minutes after taking my seat.
And even when those meals haven’t been perfect – The Punter is a prime example of this – the experience can still be enchanting. There is something about dining alone, and especially at length, at lunchtime, that is the ultimate gift to yourself. It is every bit as much an exercise in self-care as a day at Nirvana Spa, and if you choose wisely the food is dozens of times better. Every now and again I still talk to people who are really reluctant to go to a restaurant on their own, and I’ve always tried to persuade them that they’re missing out. But now, more than ever, I feel like I can be convincing on this subject, because of the years I have spent convincing myself.
The clearest evidence of that, I think, can be found in the places I have listed here. My previous article about solo dining proudly proclaimed that places had to be comfortable, that the menu should lend itself to dining alone, that the service should welcome the solo diner and that the people-watching should be good. And this is all very well, and true, but the places I listed lacked the courage of those convictions: too many cafés, too many light bites, too many places to wolf something down and move on, an inherent assumption that you’re eating solo for a good time, not a long time.
I think my previous guides were full of places to eat solo, but not necessarily to dine solo. This list tries to redress the balance. It’s why, for instance, you won’t find Blue Collar Corner in this piece: it is indeed a handy place if you want to grab a bite to eat before, say, going to the pub and it has a lot going for it. But grabbing a precarious spot at a table, trying to keep it as you go up to get a pint from the bar, hoping it won’t get nabbed when your beeper goes off and you cross the venue to pick up a burger? That’s not dining: it’s just eating.
The one thing that’s missing from this list, still, is places like Le Champignon Sauvage or Mignonette – truly lovely, grown-up independent restaurants where a reservation for one on a weekday or Saturday lunchtime feels like evidence that past you loved present you ever more than your parents ever could. But that is Reading’s fault, not anybody else’s.
Maybe we’ll get there one day, or perhaps you just have to love yourself enough to also spring for a taxi out into the countryside, so you can eat at Orwell’s, or the Three Tuns, or another of Berkshire’s or Oxfordshire’s finest pubs. I’m working on that: I suspect it, too, will just have to start as an affectation and somehow wind up as a necessity.
1. Angelo’s
Angelo’s is probably my Reading discovery of the year: one of the few reasons to be cheerful in a 2026 full of closures and stagnation, not to mention the arrival, like one of the horsemen of the apocalypse, of Shake Fucking Shack. It is the kind of grown up, independent restaurant I was beginning to think central Reading could no longer attract, which means that the odds are probably stacked against it. Unless Ebb & Flow turn out to be far more philanthropic landlords than you’d expect, anyway.
That being the case, on some levels I’m loath to suggest that anybody turn up there as a solo diner because I want them to make money and, unquestionably, that’s harder to do on a table that could seat two people and is only half full. But if you do get the chance, and they have the space, you could do a lot worse than go there one evening and enjoy their beef carpaccio, their unimprovable carbonara and their tartufo cioccolato.
While you’re there I suggest you sip a spritz, pick a glass of something good from the wine list and then a smaller glass of boozy nectar to go with dessert, and do your level best to make that table more profitable than a joyless congregation of Mounjaro-powered micro-nibblers. Can you picture me glaring out of a poster, finger pointing, bearing the slogan YOUR EXCELLENT AND AFFORDABLE ITALIAN RESTAURANT NEEDS YOU? No, me neither.
Angelo’s
9 Friar’s Walk, Station Hill Square, Reading, RG1 1HP
https://www.angelosdine.com
2. Honest Burgers
Honest Burgers has been in every edition of this feature I’ve written since it opened, and although it might damage my cred to admit this, it’s probably the restaurant in which I dine solo most often. What can I say? It’s just very reliable. It’s one of the most appealing dining rooms in Reading and with the exception of the one time in twenty when they have a Bad Chips Day, every meal there is wonderful in almost exactly the same way.
There are tables you might argue are well suited to solo diners, those weird little alcoves for two, but I find them a little uncomfortable and precarious: it’s probably more to do with my size than their ergonomics, mind you. But it doesn’t matter, because anywhere else is fine – with a view of the room or not, it is a restaurant which very rarely lets you down.
I have even honed my regular order there, perfected over the course of many visits, and I only deviate from it if they have a really appealing special: double smash burger with bacon, halloumi fries on the side, brown butter mayo for the chips and a cold pint of Lumina. It has been the high point of many evenings.
Service is warm and welcoming – particularly to solo diners – I find, and it’s the perfect spot to stop for a meal after work, on your way home, or just because you’re in town and you’ve had a challenging day. When Zoë had back surgery a couple of months ago, she spent a couple of nights in hospital. I kept her company both days and fussed over her until about 8 o’clock, when visiting hours ended. On her first night in she looked at me, not unkindly, probably looking forward to some peace and quiet, and said something I’ll never forget. “Go on,” she said. “Go to Honest.”
Honest Burgers
1-5 King Street, RG1 2HB
https://www.honestburgers.co.uk/locations/reading/
3. Just Momo
Most editions of this guide have featured somewhere that you can eat momo, because they are the perfect dish for solo dining: ten perfect parcels of pleasure, to be eaten meditatively, one after the other. There’s a haiku in that meal somewhere, probably about the sharp melancholy you experience when you know you only have three momo left. It’s pretty much how I felt when I discovered my first grey chest hair, come to think of it, an event I still think triggered my messy and painful midlife crisis ten years ago.
This time round I’m picking Just Momo, a lovely, unpretentious spot, because of its simplicity: not only momo, although the chilli fried ones are reason enough to eat there, but also chow mein. On a bad night, either will perk you up. On a terrible night, the nuclear option is to order both.
Just Momo
4 Kings Road, Reading, RG1 3AA
https://justmomo.uk/
4. Kungfu Kitchen
In my previous guide to solo dining in Reading I said something which sounds very clever but is in fact extremely stupid. I said Kungfu Kitchen shouldn’t be on the list because “it’s a wonderful place but having to limit yourself to a single dish there is something akin to torture”. Here I am, three years later, discovering that what I said is hogwash.
Because yes, there’s a lot to be said for going to KFK with someone else, or a big group, so that you can try some of the lamb with cumin, and some of the fish fragrant pork, and some of the deep fried fish, and some of the salt and pepper snow mushrooms. That’s stating the obvious: everyone knows that.
What’s less obvious is the sheer joy of ordering something brilliant from the menu, a portion of egg fried rice and a refreshing pint of Parka, Reading’s house beer, and knowing that every single mouthful of it is yours. When does that ever happen, when you go to Kungfu Kitchen in a group? Precisely.
So recently, on the second night that Zoë was kept in hospital post-surgery (can you tell I really didn’t want to go home and/or cook?) I got an Uber from the hospital to KFK, and I got a lovely table where I could see most of the room. I drank that Parka and I slowly and methodically destroyed all evidence that the plate in front of me had ever had Jo’s boneless Shandong chicken on it: a dish of such savoury and spicy complexity that when I had it for the first time this year I kicked myself for the seven intervening years when I’d somehow never ordered it.
If for whatever reason you want to feel less lonely on your own, more connected to the world, there are few better ways to do it than to eat solo in a bustling restaurant. KFK was doing a very nice trade, and Jo and Steve both stopped by my table to chat and to fill me in on their various projects and hustles (it was not one of those nights when Jo regaled me with tales of people she’s thrown out of her restaurant and why: she should write a book). They had no idea of this, but it was exactly what I needed.
Kungfu Kitchen
62 Christchurch Road, Reading, RG2 7AZ
https://kungfureading.co.uk
5. Mama’s Way
Not only is Mama’s Way excellent for solo dining but, as I’ve said before, it’s so tiny that it barely lends itself to any other kind. If you’re lucky you and a dining companion can grab seats side by side up at the window, looking out onto Duke Street, and if you do you’ll feel like you’ve hit the jackpot. But I really love it for a solo meal, sharing that experience with whoever happens to have had the same excellent idea as you.
It feels enormously European in a way that so many places in Reading and beyond swing at and miss (yes, I do mean Vino Vita, thanks for asking). And it helps that the service is so immensely likeable, that the wine by the glass and the spritzes are so very drinkable and that the menu is compact, interesting and lends itself to exploration and experimentation. They may buy their pinsa bases in, but their pinsa is still the equal of anything you could eat across most of the rest of Reading, including a certain wine bar I’ve already mentioned once more than it deserves.
The picture above is of one of their sharing boards for two but – please don’t judge – I’m pretty sure I’ve ordered something similar for myself at least once and spent a very happy hour picking my way through it with wine to keep it company. Don’t knock it til you’ve tried it.
Mama’s Way
10-14 Duke Street, Reading, RG1 4RU
https://mamasway.co.uk
6. Me Kong
Dining solo you can sometimes feel as if you stick out like a sore thumb, and the best restaurants are brilliant at dispelling those misgivings. I particularly love Me Kong because they are so superbly hospitable – and dining there as an overweight, very white, middle-aged man, I would be incongruous at Me Kong whether I was unaccompanied or not.
One of the nicest feelings when you dine solo is to be completely transported. It’s harder to do in some ways when you’re there without company, and in others being solo, without the distraction of the familiar, makes it a more achievable feat. At Me Kong, the sensation of being teleported is total and unwavering: there, amid that bustle and clamour, seeing a clientele happily reminded of home, something magical happens.
The other magical thing that happens, for me anyway, is that chicken in black bean sauce: sticky and savoury, dotted with huge cubes of ginger and garlic. One day I will go there without ordering it, but I would never deprive myself of it were I to eat at Me Kong on my own.
Me Kong
St Lawrence House, Abbey Square, Reading, RG1 3AG
https://www.facebook.com/MeKongReadingUK/
7. The Moderation
For the joy of having your own table and your own view and two or three courses of sublime food all to yourself, Reading has few places to match The Moderation, and I’m not sure it ever did. I feel like I never really gave it a fair crack of the whip back when I lived next door to the Lyndhurst and would fall into the Lyndhurst all the time, including solo, with the slightest excuse.
Well, fate rewarded me with a mixed blessing. Because the closest thing I can think of to that is The Moderation, and I now live much further away from it than I did and want to eat there far more often than I can. But I’m not going to damn the Mod with faint praise by comparing it to anywhere: it has been doing this so well, and for so long – with the same chef since day one, nearly twenty years ago – that it has earned the right that you compare other places to it.
It really is almost the complete venue: great food, tasteful spaces, a menu with an embarrassment of riches and a wine list with some magnificent surprises squirrelled away. If you go on your own you can’t have the mixed starters – not unless you’re even more brazen than me – but the chicken satay skewers with a chaser of sai oui, The Moderation’s outrageously good Thai sausage, will more than make up for that.
After that you’re in safe hands, whatever you pick from the mains. The nasi goreng is a stalwart, the short rib green curry is so good I gave it an award and the crispy fried sea bass will make you think about sea bass very differently. Looking at their menu at the moment I see they have a salad on there with minced duck and confit duck leg, and I’m already wondering how soon I can concoct an excuse to drop back in.
The Moderation
213 Caversham Road, RG1 8BB
https://www.themodreading.com/
8. Oishi
This time last year I broke my arm, as regular readers will know, and the last place I reviewed before that fateful accident was Oishi, the back-from-the-dead Japanese restaurant on the Oxford Road.
I absolutely loved it, and I decided that it would play a significant role in my future: when I was taking the train back from work, I would get off a stop early at Reading West some nights, walk to Oishi and have dinner there on my own. I daydreamed about a cold Asahi and a bowl of their yaki soba on an unforgiving winter evening. I decided it would make the world an infinitely better place.
And then I royally fucked my arm, and for months I was eating with one hand and not going anywhere. Takeaways were carefully planned to be things I could eat without looking like an idiot, and being back in the office was out of the question.
Eventually, my arm began to heal, and restaurants began to beckon, and then in time I found myself going back into the office. Sporadically at first, because there were meetings I couldn’t get out of, and then more often to spend the day brainstorming with my manager and doing the meetings that had to be a meeting, rather than ones that could have been a Teams call or even an email.
You’d be surprised how happy I was to be back doing that, to be in a meeting room with my manager again comparing notes on good records we’d listened to lately, traipsing to the little cafe outside for a mocha and then saying “right, I suppose we’d better do some work then”. Nothing said that nature was healing quite like that.
And on one of those days, on a sunny evening in May, I got off the train at Reading West and walked to Oishi. I grabbed a little table with a view of the room, and I ordered sashimi and karaage chicken and a bowl of yaki soba. My glass of Asahi glowed amber in the sunshine beaming through the window, and I felt very strongly that despite six hellish months I was exactly where I was meant to be. I’m not right about everything – I’m not even right as often as you might think I am – but I was right that dining solo at Oishi does indeed make the world a better place.
Oishi
314 Oxford Road, Reading, RG30 1AD
https://www.oishi-reading.co.uk/
9. Paesinos
Last year I did something that I’ve not done in a very long time. I locked myself out. I’d rushed out of the house in a hurry to meet my friend Sheldon at the top of Kendrick Road, because he had a package of his homemade chorizo for me to try (everyone should have a friend like Sheldon), and I’d forgotten to take my house keys with me. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Zoë was at work, in London, many miles away and about three hours from finishing her shift. The only redeeming feature was that I had my phone and a power bank, so I wouldn’t run out of battery, but I had to find some way to occupy myself. And the first thing I did, after swearing a lot, was walk down the hill and have dinner at Paesinos.
It’s another of those small rooms looking out on the world that I think lend themselves so well to solo dining, a lovely vantage point to see the great and the good of Reading wandering down Kings Road, presumably back to their houses and flats – which they could get into, because they weren’t idiots like me. But I didn’t care, because I had Paesinos’ pizza with capers, anchovies and olives and a bottle of chinotto, and even if I had to find a way to kill another three hours after that, my period of exile had begun swimmingly.
After that I caught a train to Maidenhead, just for something to do, really, and I snaffled some beers at the wonderful Hoppy Place. It was good, but the best bit of my evening – far and away – was the pizza. A few days later I cooked some of the chorizo. It was worth getting locked out for.
Paesinos
Unit 4, 2 Kings Road, Reading, RG1 3AA
0118 3047578
10. Tasty Greek Souvlaki
Tasty Greek Souvlaki is the second survivor from the previous edition of this feature, and is another unbeatable casual spot to treat yourself to a good, unhurried meal, because you’re worth it (it’s interesting, looking back on this list, at how many of the restaurants on it are clustered together, like a group hug for singletons).
It’s decent in winter but summer, on that little terrace, is when it comes into its own. The thing to have here in a group is the mixed grill, sure. Yet if you dine here on your own you can treat yourself to a miniature version of that by having the mixed gyros merida, nicely rustling chips buried under a landslide of crispy pork and chicken. Some days the chicken is better, other days it’s the pork, but the only way to know for sure is to order something with both. Besides, they’re both good, always.
Preface the whole lot with a cold Fix or Mythos, ideally with a frosted glass, and some of their downright bloody lovely courgette fritters and you have the makings of a thoroughly agreeable date with yourself. I have a feeling you’ve earned it.
Tasty Greek Souvlaki
20 Market Place, RG1 2EG
https://tastygreeksouvlaki.com/
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