Author: ediblereading

Restaurant review: Bébé Bob, Soho

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Sometimes I wonder if I’m still true to the newcomer who started out reviewing neighbourhood Sardinian restaurant Pepe Sale all that time ago. Have I managed to keep my finger on the pulse of what Reading diners really want from a meal out, or has my head been turned by all those great meals, all that fine dining, all those plaudits and mentions in the national press? It was something that crossed my mind from time to time, especially as I was sitting in Soho House – my second Soho House of the afternoon – with my friend James, polishing off a carafe of Viognier, ready to scoot across town to Bébé Bob, a restaurant which sells rotisserie chicken at just under forty pounds a head.

If any of you are still reading after that opening paragraph, I feel I should explain: James suggested going to Soho House as he’d got membership a few weeks ago. And the chance to experience life on the other side of those discreet doors, to see how the other half lives – well, how could I resist? So I accompanied him, feeling quite the bumpkin, as he scanned in using the app on his phone and the woman on reception, ultra polite and polished, greeted us by name and explained the facilities, including various roof terraces and the cinema in the basement where they did regular screenings. I tried not to look too “Home Counties hick up in London for the day”, no doubt failing miserably.

Inside everything was ridiculously tasteful, the place filled with the buzz and clamour of a newborn London weekend. I tried to be insouciant, but of course I was meerkatting every time someone went past. Would I see a celebrity? (The answer, by the way, was no.) If anything, the interior was more stylish than some of the people who wandered past, distinctly nouveau, laden down with carriers bearing the logo or one designer or another. I entertained myself trying to guess their story; tech bro; footballer’s agent; lottery-winning fish out of water. What would people have thought James’ and my story was?

But anyway, if I sound sniffy I don’t mean to; it was a fascinating experience, made more fascinating by the knowledge that it’s unlikely to be repeated any time soon. But the chair was comfy, the sunlight flooding in from the roof terrace was welcome, the people watching was Olympic standard and the Viognier was crisp and peachy. I would be a hypocrite if I tried to claim I hadn’t had a wonderful time.

But in the course of writing this I did a bit of research and there were a couple of stories a few months ago saying that Soho House had lost its exclusivity and cachet – one of them in Tatler, no less, saying effectively that they’re admitting all sorts these days. That was in March, but I would say that even if it hadn’t happened by then, the club letting me through the door in April might have signified the moment it truly jumped the shark. The following week I sent James a meme on Instagram describing Soho House as “the Freemasons for influencers”: he didn’t dignify it with a response.

Anyway, I was the one that had chosen Bébe Bob for our dinner reservation, the second half of a one day chicken festival which commenced with disappointing fried chicken at Coqfighter. I thought I was on safer ground with Bébe Bob, an offshoot of Soho’s famous/infamous Bob Bob Ricard specialising in rotisserie chicken almost to the exclusion of everything else. Their website rather spells it out, Any main course the customer wants, as long as it’s chicken or chicken. It also rather splendidly says that Fashionwear is welcome, activewear is not.

Bébé Bob opened last October and has already attracted a raft of plaudits from the people who know about these things. Grace Dent went there at the start of the year and seemed to enjoy herself, even if she called it a “chicken and chips place that thinks it is ‘it'” and made a tired joke about Margo from The Good Life. And restaurant abacus Andy Hayler – recently seen enjoying Clay’s Kitchen – visited in March, lavishing the chicken with, by his standards, pretty fulsome praise: “it was a joy (16/20)”, he raved, presumably having a lie down in a darkened room afterwards.

All good omens, then. And I have to say, the interior of Bébé Bob was one of the most gorgeous, luxe spaces I’ve eaten in for as long as I could remember. They claim it’s inspired by the Golden Age, and I can kind of see that. Everything is chic, sleek and deco, plush and subtly lit, and you’ll struggle to find a sharp edge anywhere, from the curvy, velvety chairs to the rounded corners of the wood panelling. Impeccably tasteful, too, especially the art on the walls, Kandinsky squiggles in Mondrian colours. I loved the tiled floor too, reminiscent of Clarice Cliff, although research suggests they inherited that from Folie, the previous restaurant at this site.

But overall, the whole thing was enormous fun, grand but not po-faced, and you got a sense of being on a Cunard liner in the Thirties, going from somewhere glamorous to somewhere equally glamorous. I half expected the captain to announce that we would be docking at Biarritz on the hour, or Poirot to assemble everybody in the salon and reveal the identity of the murderer.

Bébé Bob’s menu does indeed live up to that promise of chicken main courses to the exclusion of all other – and just the two kinds, Vendée for nineteen pounds a pop, or Landais for thirty-nine. The former is “raised outside for most of its life”, which does rather make you wonder about the other less enjoyable parts, while the latter is corn and milk-fed, free-range and given more time and space, apparently developing a deeper flavour as a result. Could it be worth thirty-nine pounds, though?

Grace Dent never found out, because they’d run out when she went, while Andy Hayler, always one to throw money at a problem, ordered the Landais and said it was in a completely different league to anything you could get in this country. Our server, one of a brigade of charming and efficient servers, told us they only had one of the Landais left. We reserved it.

“We were always going to go for the expensive chicken, weren’t we?” said James. We’d spent the afternoon in Soho House drinking cocktails and wine after drinks at the French House. Of course we were.

The menu says that although chicken is the only main on offer, starters are “plentiful”. In reality there were six, one of which was a salad, although I guess I wasn’t counting the three varieties of caviar also available. Starters were between twelve and twenty-two quid and I suppose could have been described as timeless or retro, depending on your perspective: that’s why Grace Dent made that crack about Margo Leadbetter.

James decided to try the prawn cocktail, possibly the archetypal starter from days gone by, and seemed to like it but not love it. The Marie Rose apparently had quite a kick to it, although it wasn’t clear where from: the menu said that cognac was involved but that didn’t explain the heat.

I had been torn between egg mayonnaise and smoked salmon, so I asked our server for advice. He immediately came down on the side of the former. “It’s a lighter dish” he went on to explain. Well, happy days, I thought: it’s been a day of excess already and I had a wedding suit to slim into and only two weeks to do it. We even turned down the offer of bread, that’s how well behaved I was trying to be.

Well, I have to congratulate our server for his gift for understatement, because light doesn’t do it justice. It wasn’t egg mayonnaise as I’m used to, instead being a singly impeccable boiled egg, split open, each half adorned with a firm, salty Cantabrian anchovy. Under that, capers and herbs and a smudge of a delicious, punchy mayonnaise with a hefty hit of Dijon mustard. All very nice, but approaching amuse bouche levels for twelve pounds. I found myself wishing I hadn’t spurned the bread after all.

The thing is, whatever the quibbles about the food you couldn’t knock the location, the surroundings or the sense of occasion. We sipped our way through a very decent bottle of sauvignon blanc from the Loire, which was mentioned in Andy Hayler’s review. It was, in his own effusive words, “Forty-three pounds for a bottle that you can find in the high street for fourteen” – which proves that he’s good for something, if nothing else. To give you an idea of the wine list, this was easily one of the cheapest wines on there – it was actually forty-four, but that’s inflation for you – and you could easily spend north of sixty quid without even necessarily meaning to.

Service really was lovely, but there was an interesting moment when the servers approached the table next to us with their chicken, ready to serve it with ceremony and solemnity. Our neighbours were American – I’d already clocked that from the accent – but they’d obviously spent too much time in the U.K. I could tell that from their reaction to the arrival of their main course.

“Goodness, that’s very quick chicken” the woman said. This is the kind of thing an English person would say, when what they meant was why the hell are you bringing this out almost immediately after I’ve ordered? I’d expect that in Nando’s, not somewhere like this. Which is, to be fair, the kind of thing I’d expect an American to say when rushed in a British restaurant. When she instead decided to express passive-aggressive surprise I didn’t know whether to be impressed or disappointed; James and I did lean over, after the server had gone, to express our solidarity.

Maybe you only get the delay if you order the fancy pants chicken. That would explain why ours arrived about quarter of an hour after we’d finished our starters – although even that, come to think of it, felt a little bit quick. From the text on the menu nothing about this chicken’s life had been rushed, so it was a pity this part was. It deserved better. But you had to hand it to them for the ceremony – each of us had a breast and a leg reverently placed on our plate, a poultry yin and yang, with the oyster delicately popped in the middle. And finally, thick jus was drizzled from a little jug, anointing the whole lot: I now declare the most expensive chicken you’ll ever eat in your life, open.

I know you want to know what a thirty-nine pound portion of roast chicken tastes like. Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s, err, nice. I didn’t get a stunning moment of clarity where I thought “this is why!” The meat was dense, and I’d like to think I perceived the epic intensity of flavour that the experts had picked up on, but I can’t say I could. These chickens are apparently bigger, from all that time spent living the life of Riley, eating corn and drinking milk in their own sweet time, but I can’t say I felt like there was a huge amount of meat. The skin was rather pleasant, but lacked that crispiness that would have made it top tier. I almost wish I’d been able to try both types of chicken side by side: perhaps then I would have realised what all this money bought you, but as it was I wasn’t sure I had.

By way of comparison, the best rotisserie chicken I’ve ever had – so far, at least – is in a renowned Lisbon restaurant called Bonjardim. There they rub the chicken with salt and lemon until the skin is almost like cracking. It’s outstanding stuff – I once went to Lisbon on holiday and ate there twice in one trip – and as it happens the following weekend James was on a short trip to Lisbon so I told him to check Bonjardim out. True to his word he sent me a photo that induced envy and hunger and made me curse my pre-wedding diet. This shat on Bébé Bob was his pithy review, delivered via iMessage. It cost him ten Euros.

It’s especially a shame because the peripherals were all terrific. The chicken jus almost made it all worthwhile, so deep and sticky and savoury. Which of course means there was nowhere near enough of it to go round: if it had been up to me there would have been a huge bowl of the stuff, and then I might gladly have foregone the chicken. I wondered if the chicken jus was specifically Landais chicken jus, not that it would have justified the thirty-nine quid,

Also excellent was the truffled cauliflower cheese – burnished and brilliantly moreish with a good whiff of truffle without being overpowering. It had to be good for nine quid, but it pretty much was. Although to be fair, by that point after a day in Soho I might have been anaesthetised to the point where the cost of things didn’t properly register with me. It’s only money, after all. And I rather liked the potatoes, which were roasted in chicken fat. They looked when they turned up like they might be a little anaemic, carvery-grade stuff, but feeling the golden shell crack under a knife I realised they were the real deal.

It felt like a little bit of a waste not having dessert, but we both felt like we’d dented our wallets enough and the Elizabeth Line was calling to us. In any event, I wouldn’t have called the dessert menu plentiful either, as out of the seven desserts on offer one was a pair of chocolate truffles, a second was a shot of lemon infused vodka and a third was lemon sorbet with – yes, you’ve guessed – a shot of vodka. That gives you four proper desserts, one of which is a brownie: no wonder we passed.

And that’s when we had that ouch moment that comes in some restaurants, the moment when even though all the prices are clearly displayed throughout and you know exactly what you’re ordering, the bill arrived. Our meal for two – a bottle of wine, two starters, two chickens, two sides and some mineral water – came to just over a hundred and ninety pounds, including service. We knew it would be that much, we ordered the holy grail of chicken, nobody mugged us in an alleyway, but still. We also both mentally tracked back many of the meals we’d ordered and loved over the last few years. The vast majority of them cost less than Bébé Bob.

So that was the end of ChickenFest 2024. We hopped on the train and headed back west full of chicken and equally full of questions. Was Bébé Bob a good restaurant, an average one or a bit of a rip-off? Even as I sit down to tap out the final paragraphs on this review I’m still not entirely sure. It’s a great example of how a restaurant is more than the sum of its parts because as theatre, as an experience, I loved Bébé Bob’s silliness. The starters were decent but small, the chicken was decent but too expensive. What does that amount to? What does it all mean?

Well, search me. I imagine ninety-five per cent of you will look at the mark at the bottom and think it doesn’t reflect the meal I had, but I don’t even know what I think of the meal I had, not even now. I’ve rarely been to a restaurant that so unapologetically makes you take it on its own terms. I’m glad I went once – it’s only money – but I can’t imagine I’d ever go again. If you went and had, in the immortal words of Franck Eggelhoffer, the cheaper chicken, you might emerge having spent less and still had a very creditable meal.

But is that the point, and even then would it be enough when you think of all the excellent restaurants a stone’s throw from Golden Square? Maybe not. Bébé Bob, like Soho House, is a peek into another world, a vision of a life where most of the people there have considerably more money than I do. It was fun to visit: I had a blast. But it was even nicer to come home afterwards.

Bébé Bob – 7.0
37 Golden Square, London, W1F 9LB
020 72421000

https://www.bebebob.com

Restaurant review: Coqfighter, Soho

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Last May, in a bit of a departure for the blog, I reviewed two chicken places in London back to back: Portuguese Casa do Frango, just off Regent Street, and fried chicken specialists Chick ‘N’ Sours in Covent Garden. It was a day of excess with my good friend – and chicken obsessive, naturally – James, in what we dubbed ChickenFest, and we resolved at the start of the year to make it an annual event. That’s how we ended up, on a Friday in April, perched at a table in Soho, ready to do it all over again.

We had wound up in Coqfighter, because my research had suggested that it was very much an equivalent of Chick ‘N’ Sours. It started out in Boxpark, both in Croydon and Shoreditch, before opening a bricks and mortar site five years ago – on Beak Street, which is presumably an accident but a happy accident nonetheless. The reviews I’d seen had been complimentary, although more than one was comped, and they led me to expect a more stripped-down menu than at Chick ‘N’ Sours, but one done very well. Coqfighter also boasts an Instagram feed that would make most people ravenous: it certainly had that effect on me.

In the course of writing this review I went back and looked at quite a few reviews from other people, and it’s strange that literally not a single one told you anything about the room. I wonder why that is, because for me it was the wrong side of the line between functional and dysfunctional. The façade was pitch black, and beyond it the front room was very unprepossessing, One wall was gleaming white metro tiles, the other a vague terra cotta, but everything else was black too.

The furniture was also strange: little black tables, each with a couple of low little black backless stools. There was a second room out back, but it was further from the daylight and far dingier, so we decided against it. From Google image searches the tables used to be longer, communal things: that may or may not be your idea of hell, but I just felt far too old for these kind of seats. Where were you meant to put your coat? I never thought a restaurant would make me feel nostalgic about wedging my well-padded posterior into the ubiquitous Tolix chair, but Coqfighter managed it.

Coqfighter’s menu is more Honest Burgers than Chick ‘N’ Sours, all main courses and sides, no starters. Chicken came in all its permutations: burgers, wings, tenders, fried on the bone and a couple of half roast chicken options. Sides, unless they were also made of chicken – which the best sides might well be, come to think of it – consisted of a couple of types of fries, two different kinds of sweetcorn, coleslaw and a cucumber and sesame salad.

Not inspirational stuff, and I certainly didn’t see anything to rival Chick ‘N’ Sours’ profoundly good chicken toasts. But if you like fried chicken, as James and I surely did, there was plenty here to appreciate. Keenly priced, too: the most expensive dishes were twelve pounds or thereabouts, sides roughly a fiver. Coqfighter’s beer is made by Orbit, so we both had a two-thirds of their house lager and a couple of sodas while we made up our mind. The beer, really, was indistinguishable from a good macro lager like the one I’d had at the Moderation a couple of weeks before. The sodas were a surprise hit – James loved his raspberry lemonade and my sour cherry soda, more sweet than sour, was a real delight.

We ran into headwinds when we placed our order, or rather tried to. I’d earmarked a burger, so I ordered that with no problem. But James fancied the Thai style half roast chicken, Coqfighter’s take on gai yang with soy, ginger and lemongrass, only to be told by our server that it wouldn’t be ready for another forty-five minutes. This was at a quarter to one: were we happy to wait? We weren’t, so James went for his second choice, a two piece of drumstick and thigh on the bone with miso butter gravy.

“Oh, I’m sorry, we don’t do that any more. We’re meant to be taking it off the menu.”

I have to say our server was lovely, friendly and attentive and she later told us, when we were settling up, that it was only her second day in the job. And I did feel for her, sent out to have difficult conversations with customers about how one section of the menu wasn’t available at lunchtime while another dish wasn’t available full stop. Nonplussed, James picked his third and fourth choices instead, and although he was ultra polite, as he always is, I could tell he was a little unimpressed.

Still, you can only order from the menu in front of you on the day and you can only review what you’ve ordered. With that in mind, I think I got the best of things with the chicken burger. The texture was spot on, the coating crunchy and crenellated, and I’m always happy to see a sesame seed bun rather than brioche. The menu doesn’t say whether it was thigh or breast but I think it was the former, which would always be my preference. And the plus of it being fairly compact was that you could actually pick it up and eat it without disgracing yourself or having to resort to the infra dig spectacle of using a knife and fork.

Those were the pluses. But the downside of it being compact was that it didn’t resemble any pictures of Coqfighter’s burgers I’d seen, either on their social media or other reviews. Usually the chicken offered a huge amount of elevation and poked out untidily from either side of the bun as if the bun simply couldn’t contain it, the extraneous bits practically asking to be nibbled. No such joy here. I’d chosen the honey ginger buffalo burger, thinking that it combined three of my favourite things in one magical sauce, but the end result was out of kilter, more sweetness than bite. And what was it with the sauce oozing out on to the plate like a perforated egg yolk? It just made it soggier than it should have been.

James’ tenders, which are the kind of thing I always order in places like this, also looked the part but couldn’t convincingly play the part. They were nearly there but not quite, and it was all about the texture. “The seasoning of these is actually spot on” said James, “but they don’t have the crunch. They needed a little longer in the fryer.” I thought James was being fair: my instant reaction, to be honest, was that KFC does these every bit as well,

This is also the point to mention the dips because we went crazy with these and again, they promised so much but didn’t live up to it. So we had a Korean hot sauce which tasted neither hot nor Korean, and a Korean barbecue sauce which was about as Korean as I am. Neither had ever been anywhere near any gochujang, as far as I could tell: is it just the fashion now to dub things Korean when they’re nothing of the sort? Neither of these was any better than the contents of a little plastic cuboid tub from KFC or McDonalds. We also had a sambal mayo which I imagine did both sambal and mayo a disservice, and some kind of ranch thing.

“I’m pretty sure I saw them all coming out plastic bottles” was James’ observation: he had a better view of that than I did. None of them livened up the chips, which were bought in and dreary. I spotted a few grey patches on mine, which made me leave a fair amount of them, but I didn’t feel like I was missing out. Apparently they are “tossed in our house shake”, but their house shake appeared to be some kind of acrid combination of paprika and dust.

James had also gone for the wings, because he believes that chicken on the bone is always the best way to check any restaurant’s chicken. He didn’t mind these, and they were tossed not sauced – he has firmly held beliefs that this is The Only Way – but had the same kind of feedback as me about the honey ginger buffalo sauce, It tried to be three things at once and failed at all of them.

We agreed to compare notes properly on our debrief in the pub, but even from the conversation we had in the restaurant, the expressions and raised eyebrows, I had an inkling we were on the same page. Keen to get on with our day and put any disappointment behind us we settled up: it came to sixty pounds, including tip.

After a wander and a shop, we grabbed a table at the French House and a large bottle of Breton cider and carried out the post mortem. It was mid-afternoon, the time I like the French House best, and the pub was starting to fill with the kind of characters who only seem to exist in the French House at three in the afternoon. Where did they live the rest of the time? I’d missed Soho, it had been far too long.

“The funny thing is, they were doing a lot of Deliveroo” said James. “I think I must have seen eight different riders turn up in the time we’ve been having lunch.” He was right, and at least a couple had been the same rider twice – either that, or it was a glitch in the Matrix.

“In fairness, if you could eat one of those burgers at your desk you’d probably feel like you were winning at life.” I said. I had a momentary flashback to a time many years and a lifetime ago when a colleague and I picked up a family bucket from KFC, took it back to work and ate it at our desks. It was worth the funny looks we got from the people in the lift. Perhaps we should have offered them a drumstick.

“I just think about Bristol,” said James, “and the chicken at Wings Diner. It’s miles better than this.”

“And I know you didn’t rate the branch of Eat The Bird that’s opened in Bristol, but the one in Exeter was also a different level to Coqfighter.”

“I think Chick ‘N’ Sours is better than this, too.”

I took a glug of my cider and weighed up the pros and cons. I thought about that sesame chicken toast, and how nearly a year on I still remembered it.

“I think you’re right.”

So there you have it: on a simplistic level this is Bristol 1, London 0 but to bring it back to Reading – where I live – Coqfighter isn’t good enough to justify a trip to London, not even if you’re a chicken-fixated eccentric on an annual pilgrimage like James and me. It does highlight, though, that Reading is still missing someone who does this really well: that’s why, when I did my guide to how to avoid chains last week, I didn’t propose an alternative to KFC.

There’s good fried chicken at Clay’s, at Soju, at The Bap, but there’s nothing in the genre of Southern fried chicken to write home about (and yes, I’ve tried Popeyes). You only get that when Gurt Wings comes to town, which is about once a month. I think the new Siren tap room is missing a trick not specialising in this: instead they’re leading with burgers, which feels more of a 2014 Big Idea than a 2024 one. Still, I’m sure they know what they’re doing.

Never mind. Just as the best way to cope with the post holiday blues is to book the next one, the best way to handle this disappointment was also to look to the future. So James and I talked it over, over a second bottle of Breton cider, and decided: next year we’re going to widen the scope of ChickenFest to include duck. We’ll call it PoultryFest, we’ve got it all figured out. The thing is, as we wandered through Chinatown I saw some fine specimens in the windows of several restaurants, and I figured it was time to diversify. It’s important, after all, not to get too set in your ways.

Coqfighter – 6.5
75 Beak Street, London W1F 9SS
020 77344001

https://www.coqfighter.com

Feature: Go here instead

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The inspiration for this week’s feature came from something that happened to me last week: I had an evening to myself and, fresh off the train, I stopped for a very quick dinner in one of Reading’s two branches of Nando’s (don’t judge, I like a Nando’s: it’s a very occasional treat). I went for my standard order there and it was, as chains always are, a known quantity and perfectly okay: not amazing, very far from terrible and precisely as it is every time I eat in the Nando’s on Friar Street.

As I was eating I found myself thinking about how chains, like everybody else, have hiked their prices over the last few years. My food cost fifteen pounds – hardly a fortune in today’s money, but I kept coming back to the fact that there were better ways to eat similar food, but higher quality, for less money at one of Reading’s great independent restaurants.

I went home, I posted about that on the ER Facebook page and mused that maybe there was a feature in this, running through the most prominent of the town’s many big chains and pointing people in the direction of equivalents, most of them independent, offering better food and better value. I wasn’t sure whether the idea had legs, but quite a few people told me to write it. So it’s mostly my fault, but you can blame them too.

The reason I initially thought there might be no point to a feature like this was good old-fashioned confirmation bias: I assume that if you read this blog you might already know all this stuff. I do review the occasional chain, if it’s new, small or unusual, but I’ve never made any secret of the fact that the focus of this blog is more on the stuff that gives Reading character and makes it different, and in the most part that means independent businesses.

But quite a few people said that, all the same, they thought it would be useful to have all these suggestions in one place. Besides, I’ve become increasingly aware this year of more newcomers happening upon the blog. Some of that might be the demise of Berkshire Live creating a gap in the market, and some of it seems to be the peculiarities of Facebook’s algorithm, but either way it means this may be useful to some of you.

If it helps a single person have a more interesting lunch or dinner it will have done its job. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve ambled through Christchurch Meadows on my way to Geo Café of a Sunday only to pass more than one person gripping a Costa cup. The popularity of Caversham’s Costa is for me, like the electoral success of Tony Page or the survival of Wild Lime, one of Reading’s great unsolved mysteries.

Sitting comfortably? Right, here we go – ten well-known chains and their excellent alternatives.

THE CHAIN: Nando’s
GO HERE INSTEAD: Bakery House

I don’t mind Nando’s, and it definitely has its place. But wading through my butterflied chicken breast, rice and rainbow slaw my mind kept drifting to Bakery House’s boneless baby chicken. They don’t make you choose between breast, thighs or half a chicken, they just give you the whole lot, marinated, skin scorched, bones removed, fighting for space on a plate with a big pile of vegetable rice and a well-dressed salad. And they give you all that for fourteen pounds, which remains one of Reading’s ridiculous food bargains.

Recent tweaks to the chilli sauce have made it a little punchier, while the garlic sauce is toned down to the extent that you won’t repel people at work; I miss the old one, but I understand why they did it. I know that Bakery House isn’t Portuguese (nor, for that matter, is Nando’s) so it isn’t a like for like comparison, but I still think Bakery House’s chargrilled chicken is miles better than the stuff from Nando’s. And if you want some of the other things Nando’s can offer – halloumi, houmous and pita or even a sandwich made with chicken livers – well, Bakery House does those far better too.

Bakery House
82 London Street, RG1 4SJ
https://bakery-house.co.uk

THE CHAIN: Wendy’s or Five Guys
GO HERE INSTEAD: Monkey Lounge

People complain all the time about Reading having too many burger joints, but actually there are fewer than you might think – since 7Bone left the town centre to cook out of Phantom (and, as a result, give greater priority to Deliveroo) there has been little to challenge the primacy of the big chains – except Honest, which is itself a small chain. Couple that with the closure of Smash N’ Grab earlier in the year and there are probably fewer spots to get a good burger than there have been for a long time. As if to compound that, The Lyndhurst itself does an excellent burger but closes in a couple of weeks’ time.

So my recommendation is the proudly independent Monkey Lounge, a little way out of the town centre on Erleigh Road. Their burger is miles better than it needs to be, given their captive audience of local students drinking the house lager and watching sport on the big screens. Nonetheless it’s a delight and one of the most pleasant surprises I can remember after doing this reviewing lark for a very long time – a very well executed coarse patty, a timeless sesame seed bun rather than modish brioche, bacon and cheese as standard. Even the chips, which are bought in, are thoroughly decent.

Monkey Lounge
30 Erleigh Road, RG1 5NA
https://monkeylounge.uk

THE CHAIN: Pizza Express
GO HERE INSTEAD: Sarv’s Slice at the Biscuit Factory

Again I don’t actually mind Pizza Express at all, although I miss the one on St Mary’s Butts where I had lots of happy occasions: the more soulless one on Oracle Riverside has never done it for me. For that matter, I also have fond memories of many a boozy evening eating Pizza Express’ wares takeaway in the Allied beer garden with a pint of Stowford Press on the go. And again, pizza traders in Reading are fewer than they used to be with the closure of a Pizza Express, Franco Manca and of course Pizza Hut, which had traded in the Oracle since the day it opened. Buon Appetito closing last year reduced the options still further.

It’s too early to judge newcomer Zia Lucia, although it comes highly recommended by hereditary columnist Giles Coren among others. And outside the town centre there are still options, with Papa Gee and the Last Crumb flying the flag north of the river and Vesuvio doing a tidy job out west. But for my money the finest pizza in Reading right now is by Sarv’s Slice at the Biscuit Factory – both the traditional Neapolitan pizza and the comparately recent addition of deep, airy Detroit pizza with its distinctive frico, the crown of cheese that makes it unlike anything else in town.

They also do regular specials, traditional ones like the classic anchovies and capers along with others that push the envelope: I still fondly remember their carbonara pizza, and a never to be repeated Iberian effort with chorizo, confit garlic fried potatoes and smoked paprika aioli which might be the best thing they’ve done. Day to day though, I find it hard to look beyond the diavola with salami and ‘nduja, perfected with a sticky drizzle of hot honey.

Sarv’s Slice
Biscuit Factory, 1 Queens Walk, RG1 7QE
https://www.sarvsslice.com

THE CHAIN: Zizzi, Prezzo or Bella Italia
GO HERE INSTEAD: Mama’s Way

I find Reading’s chain Italian restaurants somewhat interchangeable, a perception which probably isn’t helped by the fact that I haven’t eaten in any of them for the best part of fifteen years: I fondly remember one of the very first Prezzos in Richmond, before private equity bloated and ruined the place. But actually, even with the closure of Coco Di Mama, the chains have won the battle for spend when it comes to Italian restaurants – only Pepe Sale, really, keeps going as a full-on Italian restaurant within the IDR.

That said, my recommendation is to try Mama’s Way in what someone recently described to me as Very Little Italy, that stretch of Duke Street that encompasses Mama’s Way and near neighbours Madoo. It is a tiny place, little more than a hole in the wall with just the three or four seats inside and three stools out on the street. But if you grab one of them you feel like you’ve really hit the jackpot. The Aperol spritz is exemplary, there’s a great selection of wines by the glass and I’ve heard they do a barrel aged negroni too, although I’ve not yet tried it.

There is a small selection of pasta dishes – and pinsa too, if you want something almost as carby. But they also have an incredible array of cheeses and cured meats and will do you a veritable smorgasbord of either or both. With some of these places, like Veeno, I always think it’s a shame to have such a great space but to buy in relatively uninspiring produce. Mama’s Way absolutely gets that when you have the good stuff you just need to serve it up and bask in the reflected glory of your excellent taste and buying power. They do that superbly, and their menu is an excellent shop window for their produce – a shop window which, if you play your cards right, you can eat in, making passers-by jealous.

Mama’s Way
10-14 Duke Street, RG1 4RU
https://mamasway.co.uk

THE CHAIN: Pho
GO HERE INSTEAD: The Moderation

I know this might seem harsh, as Pho is one of the chains many Reading folk like, with good reason. But my standard order there is their fried rice with chicken and dried shrimp, and I was very aware on my visit to the Moderation a couple of weeks back that the Mod’s nasi goreng is far better than Pho’s dish. You get a lot of it, packed with chicken and enormous prawns, with prawn crackers, pickled veg, a fried egg and a chicken satay skewer. If the two dishes were Top Trumps, the Mod’s wins on every category.

Not only that, but for me the pan-Asian menu at the Moderation gives you alternatives to most of Pho’s great dishes and more besides. The rendang is better than Pho’s curry, there are rice and noodle dishes in abundance and there’s even a ramen, if you want an alternative to Pho’s eponymous dish. I would say that I haven’t tried the Moderation’s spring rolls, and it’s hard to imagine that they’re better than either of Pho’s terrific spring rolls, especially the ones crammed with crab, prawns and pork. But given how good the rest of the Moderation’s food is, you might not bet against it.

The Moderation
213 Caversham Road, RG1 8BB
https://www.themodreading.com

OR TRY: Bánh Mì QB

If you think the Moderation isn’t quite a like for like comparison, how about Bánh Mì QB? You have to hand it to this restaurant for having the balls to open a Vietnamese restaurant a couple of doors down from what was previously Reading’s only Vietnamese restaurant. But to me they pull it off and have created an excellent independent alternative. It might not have the polish of Pho, but their spring rolls are also excellent, their crispy roast pork is an utter joy and, unlike their rival, they actually serve bánh mì, one of the great Vietnamese dishes and a genuine lunchtime treat.

Bánh Mì QB
Unit 8, 19-23 King Street, RG1 2HG
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100083120421618

THE CHAIN: Taco Bell
GO HERE INSTEAD: Mission Burrito

Most weeks on a Wednesday or Friday, and most weekends, you can probably go to either Blue Collar’s weekly market or its permanent site on Hosier Street and find someone doing tacos better than Taco Bell’s. Or you could just buy the distinctive yellow packets from Old El Paso, go home and knock something shoddy up in a frying pan: it would still be better, provided everything you used was still in date.

But for a permanent option, I still think Mission Burrito is the right choice. One of the only even vaguely independent restaurants in the Oracle (technically a chain, but there are only four of them), it’s been resolutely doing its thing for many, many years. And it’s still very good and an extremely consistent choice if you want a light meal slap bang in the town centre. I used to love their tacos, but my tastes have graduated to a carnitas burrito with smoky black beans, cheese and chipotle salsa. They’re a handful, and almost impossible to eat tidily but they hit the spot.

I think Mission is always a little forgotten about when people talk about town centre options but even if it’s unshowy it’s very good indeed. It’s seen off many of the restaurants on that bank of the Riverside – Wok To Walk, Franco Manca, The Real Greek – and you wouldn’t rule out it outlasting most of its other neighbours. Except perhaps McDonalds: I suspect that McDonalds, like cockroaches, would even survive a nuclear holocaust. Mission Burrito gets bonus points from me for stocking A&W root beer, possibly my favourite soft drink in the whole wide world.

Mission Burrito
The Oracle Riverside, RG1 2AG
https://www.missionburrito.co.uk

THE CHAIN: Wetherspoons
GO HERE INSTEAD: Oakford Social Club

Have you noticed how Wetherspoons fanboys (they’re always men) are so often awful people? They invariably crop up on social media, the eternal sealions, to defend the pubs, or the way they “rescue” heritage buildings, or stick up for their spiritual king Tim Martin (or “Timbo” as they like to call him). Come off it: Wetherspoons is just Brewdog for penny-pinchers. Personally, I aim never to set foot in one again.

And I know I’m on shaky ground here because although the Oakford positions itself as indie and hipster it is in fact a Mitchells & Butlers pub, part of their “Castle” portfolio which also includes the Hope & Bear. And yet here I am saying you should go here instead of Wetherspoons: why is that? Well, first of all, the benchmark to be better and more palatable than Wetherspoons is not the most exacting standard in the world.

But secondly, the Oakford has acquired the status of Reading institution over the course of over fifteen years opposite the train station, to the point where I don’t think anybody cares that it’s an M&B establishment. And its food is surprisingly good, I think, especially their fried chicken and crispy onions, which are a bit like an onion bhaji that’s had the crap beaten out of it. They have a good-looking menu, from ‘nduja and pecorino croquettes to poutine, schnitzel and beef dripping tater tots. Exactly the kind of stuff you want with a beer in a buzzy pub, and unlike Wetherspoons you can have some confidence that a microwave oven didn’t play a starring role.

Oakford Social Club
53 Blagrave Street, RG1 1PZ
https://www.oakfordsocialclub.com/

THE CHAIN: Costa, Caffe Nero or Starbucks
GO HERE INSTEAD: Coffee Under Pressure

I might be on to a loser with this one because I know some people are very wedded to their enormo-cups of coffee from the three big coffee chains that dominate Reading. It’s a sign of how things change – we used to have four Burger Kings, now we only have the two, we may have lost a Starbucks on Queen Victoria Street (and the one on Oracle Riverside closed this week) but Reading Station has two branches alone. I’ve lost track of the Costas in Reading, and we still have three Caffe Neros.

That’s a lot of places to drink middling coffee. And yet in the time they have proliferated we’ve lost Tamp, Anonymous, the Grumpy Goat and now the town centre branch of Workhouse. Next time an independent coffee place opens, I hope we don’t have to endure the cries of “not another one” from dullards, but I expect we will.

This is all the more reason to spend your money at Coffee Under Pressure instead. Their big and busy branch is the one off St Mary’s Butts, and the outside space is a great summer spot to see and be seen. But my favourite is the one on Blagrave Street, and I love sitting up at the window there on those stools, looking out on the handsome Victorian brickwork of the Town Hall. C.U.P.’s mocha is a work of art, as I’ve said many times, but they also do an extremely respectable latte and some great spanakopita.

Coffee Under Pressure
53 St Mary’s Butts, RG1 2LG and 7 Blagrave St, RG1 1PJ
https://www.coffeeunderpressure.co.uk

OR TRY: Compound Coffee

Almost as good, and definitely among the best coffee in Reading these days, Compound Coffee does a fantastic job operating out of the ground floor of the Biscuit Factory. You have to hand it to the Biscuit Factory – you can have great coffee in the morning, unbeatable pizza for lunch or dinner and then avail yourself of their admirable selection of local beers. I’ve been there loads of times, and I’ve not even seen a film there yet. That might make me a philistine – but at least I’m a well-fed, well-caffeinated philistine.

Compound Coffee
Biscuit Factory, 1 Queens Walk, RG1 7QE
https://www.instagram.com/compoundcoffeeuk/

THE CHAIN: Pret or Gail’s
GO HERE INSTEAD: Shed

I’m treating Gail’s and Pret interchangeably here, even though everyone knows that Gail’s is to Pret what Pret is to Greggs. But for these purposes I’m lumping them into the single category of lunch places with ideas above their station which are remarkably expensive. Gail’s, to be fair, isn’t terrible, although its chairman Luke Johnson is. I have a harder time liking Pret, whose prices have gone up and up and whose sandwiches are claggy, costly and usually sodden with mayonnaise: their coffee has hit the skids too, since they introduced a subscription scheme.

Anyway, I think Shed wipes the floor with both of them. A recent refurb has made their upstairs dining room an even nicer place to while away time, but in nearly twelve years Shed has turned feeding Reading’s discerning lunchgoers into a fine art. The Top Toastie, a magical combination of chorizo, chicken, jalapeños and cheese, is rightly fêted, as is its sibling the Tuna Turner. But Shed doesn’t rest on its laurels and a more recent addition – the Chaat, with samosa, mango chutney, sev and mint yoghurt – is an absolute riot on a plate.

Shed
8 Merchants Place, RG1 1DT
https://theshedcafe.co.uk

OR TRY: Picnic

The other veteran of Reading’s lunch scene, Picnic, is another venue far more deserving of your money than the chain neighbours on what used to be called Coffee Corner. It’s nearly seventeen years old, and on my recent visits it’s been better than I ever remember. They went through a phase where I didn’t much like the seating arrangements but they’ve clearly given that more thought and make much better use of the room now.

Better still, they’ve restored the stools up at the window which gives you one of Reading’s best people watching opportunities. It’s mad to think that I’ve been doing that for the best part of seventeen years, on and off. The coffee is as good as it’s ever been, too, and credit to Picnic for using heavenly milk from Lacey’s, the only place in Reading to do so.

Their food is going through a purple patch as well. The toasted sandwiches are terrific, especially if they have their coppa, burrata and grilled peppers on offer, but the real draw here is the salads which gradually get better and more imaginative. There are always two salad boxes, one of which is vegetarian, but I have an enormous soft spot for their chicken shawarma salad and find it hard not to order it.

I don’t know if there’s a Couscous Marketing Board but if there is, they really ought to put a plaque up outside acknowledging Picnic’s sterling commitment to shifting bucketloads of the stuff over the years. Oh, and the cakes are also great (although the one Pret product I will defend to the death, come to think of it, is their brownie).

Picnic
5 Butter Market, RG1 2DP
https://www.picnicfoods.co.uk

THE CHAIN: TGI Friday
GO HERE INSTEAD: Literally anywhere else in Reading

No, seriously. Don’t act surprised – you do read this blog, don’t you? TGI Fridays was comfortably one of the very worst places I’ve reviewed in 10 years, with dirty glassware, Legendary Glaze that could strip tooth enamel, staff leaving me a voicemail halfway through my meal asking why I hadn’t turned up and sizzling platters that didn’t. Worst of all, the really mediocre food was at elevated prices. I thought it was very expensive for what it was when I went there five years ago so I dread to think what it’s like now, but even if they’d inflation-proofed their menu and you were still paying 2018 prices it would be shocking value.

I’m not saying I’d rather lick a bin lid, but I find it hard to imagine a restaurant in Reading I wouldn’t pick over TGI Fridays: Cosmo, Taco Bell – which is at least cheap – or anywhere with a hygiene rating of zero from the council. The fact that the Oracle bunged Tampopo, a superb restaurant, over half a million pounds to make way for this dross tells you everything you need to know about how the Oracle, ultimately, is not a force for good in this town. Hopefully this piece, Mission Burrito notably excepted, gives you the inspiration to eat elsewhere.


Pub review: The Moderation

On By ediblereadingIn Reviews2 Comments

In 2013, the first year of this blog, I reviewed the grand total of fourteen Reading restaurants (don’t hold it against me, I only started in August). And there must have been something about those very first venues, because the majority of them are still going strong: Picasso, The Warwick, The Lobster Room, Kyklos and Forbury’s are no longer with us but the other nine are still going over ten years later. I won’t list them all because I don’t want to jinx anything in the here and now – 2024 is hard enough as it is – but you get the idea: for those restaurants still to be trading, a decade on, is truly no mean feat.

But time has passed and those reviews have become increasingly out of date; they might have reflected what a restaurant was like back in those days, when I wasn’t yet forty and mistakenly thought I had the rest of my life figured out, but you couldn’t necessarily use them now with confidence. So over the last couple of years I’ve been gradually revisiting the survivors from the class of 2013 to write new reviews and see how it all went so gloriously right. And generally, with the exception of Zero Degrees, I’ve had some good meals in the process.

Not only that, but I’ve left some of those Reading institutions delighted that they’re still with us. In a world where everything seems to change beyond recognition, more and faster, with every passing day, I was relieved to find that London Street Brasserie, for instance, was still a reliable benchmark in the centre of town. I was pleased that Pepe Sale, at the time freshly under new management, was recognisable as the place I had so loved on my first ever review. And returning to Café Yolk I found that the slightly iffy brunch place I wrote off eleven years ago had blossomed into a polished and Instagrammable performer.

All those places were older and wiser, as you would expect: I, on the other hand, was probably just older, but you can’t win them all. And that brings us to the subject of this week’s review, The Moderation, a place I really should have revisited long before now. When I went there in December 2013 I remember thinking they’d had an off night, because I’d eaten there a few times before that visit and always enjoyed it. I tried to say something to that effect in my review, but ultimately I was a little underwhelmed.

Back then the Moderation was part of a little chain, under the name Spirit House, along with the Warwick Arms on Kings Road, now closed. I’m pretty sure that at one time or another that group also included The Queens Head up on Christchurch Green and even the Lyndhurst, in a far earlier incarnation. The theme with those places was that they did pub food with a sideline in Thai food, as was the fashion ten years ago, and when I went to the Moderation on duty I found it a little unspecial, not bad by any means perhaps not quite as good as the Warwick in the centre of town.

In the intervening ten years I’ve been back a few times, but only really for drinks. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Moderation’s garden, a natural suntrap that never seems to get the plaudits it deserves, but the location has always been a little tricky for me: if I’m in that area I’m probably at Phantom instead, and if I was crossing into Caversham I’d wind up at the Last Crumb. So despite being fond of the Moderation I’ve made it there rarely.

I’m also not sure I’d have been entirely welcome there anyway, because I blotted my copy book with them a few years ago. It was in the run up to the 2019 General Election, when the Tories had selected car crash candidate Craig Morley to fight Reading East and he turned up in the constituency, not a place he knew well by the sounds of it, with Sajid Javid for a spot of campaigning. They were photographed pulling pints behind the bar at the Mod before scooting over to the Caversham Butcher, presumably to massage some gammon, and I’m afraid I might have been less than my usual diplomatic self about that on social media.

Anyway, there’s been a lot of water under Caversham Bridge since then. Craig Morley is now just a surreal footnote in Reading’s history, I’ve been known to purchase the occasional sausage at the Caversham Butcher and I reckoned it was about time I reassessed the Moderation. After all, Alok Sharma visited But Is It Art in the summer of 2020, maskless, less than a week after displaying Covid symptoms in the House Of Commons, and I still buy all my birthday cards there. So last Saturday I headed there with my old friend Dave, visiting from sunny Swindon, to honour a reservation we’d made – in his name, just to be on the safe side.

I had forgotten just how big the Moderation is, and how well-proportioned. The main room is large and tasteful, and when we were there the tables were already filling up with people ready to watch sport. But there are also two other dining rooms, and we took a table at the one just off from the garden. I liked it a lot, and it was nice to be near the sunshine and a draught, although some of the chairs were showing their age and the ones we had were a tad makeshift. But even so the back dining room, with wall art depicting a school of fish and exposed bricks, was a really lovely spot.

Last Saturday, as you might remember, was the first day that’s felt even remotely like summer in over six months, and it was too sunny to sit outside. But I went and had a nosy and the Moderation’s outside space is as good as I remember. They’ve put astroturf down à la the Nag’s Head and some of the tables are under an awning, and it’s another decent spot in a pub blessed with very pleasant places to sit, eat and drink. I also made out heaters and a wooden bar with what looked like a pizza oven behind it: the Moderation has clearly planned for all seasons.

Another thing I wasn’t quite expecting was just how well the Moderation’s menu would read. That’s not faint praise or me being patronising, but they shared their spring menu on Instagram at the start of the month and the one I was handed had far more dishes on it. Not only that but it had a lot of dishes on it I really wanted to try, along with some I’ve never seen anywhere in Reading.

The blurb explained that the Moderation’s chef is Indonesian and the menu featured a lot of Indonesian classics along with dishes from Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and beyond. I’m pretty sure that that chain of pubs run by Spirit House has now contracted to just the one, and it felt like the Moderation had used that opportunity to really hone and specialise.

There was still a section of traditional pub food, but it was a much smaller proportion of the menu than I remembered from previous visits. I found that very reassuring. At the risk of sounding like Jim Bowen unveiling a speedboat to an unsuccessful couple from Leicester, here are some of the dishes I could have ordered and written about: Hainanese chicken rice (a dish I’ve never seen on menus in Reading); short rib Panang curry; coconut curry with roti canai; and a beef rendang burger inspired by a disappointing McRendang burger at a branch of McDonalds in Kuala Lumpur. Over ten years of trading has taught the Moderation how to write a killer menu.

Our starters arrived as we’d just begun making inroads into a crisp pint of Cruzcampo: sometimes, on a hot day, there’s no drink quite like a European macro lager, especially when you can kid yourself that it’s almost your first al fresco beer of the year. I have a bad habit in Thai restaurants of ordering the sharing platter, and I can see I did that last time I reviewed the Moderation, but this time we were greedy and ordered three dishes to share instead.

First up was an absolutely magnificent chicken satay which put all other versions I’d tried in Reading to shame. Sticky marinated chicken, darkened, charred and irregular, was itching to be eased off a skewer and dipped in an astonishingly good peanut sauce with depth and coarse texture. This had technically been Dave’s choice, and I was very lucky that he was affable enough to share it.

I remember trying the Moderation’s chicken satay back in 2013, but this was night and day compared to that. A little lettuce cup containing acar awak, pickled vegetables, completed the picture: impressive attention to detail. I didn’t know when I would eat this dish again, but it was more likely to be in ten weeks than ten years.

The piece of bet hedging was starter number two, the salt and pepper squid. Dave had reservations about ordering this, because squid and calamari are so often disappointing in pubs and restaurants, so we agreed to order one to share. And of course it was outstanding – squid, not calamari, fresh, spiced and fried, like an upmarket reimagining of NikNaks, and hugely moreish.

Dave is more civilised than me and used cutlery, but I dived in with my fingers and dipped in the sweet chilli sauce. Maybe on some level I thought they really were next level NikNaks. I’d order these again, and it occurred to me that as a bona fide pub there would be nothing stopping you from coming here for beers with a friend and just ordering small plate after small plate, bar snack after bar snack.

One thing I really loved about the Moderation wasn’t just that they listed where each dish comes from, it was that sometimes the description said it all. So for instance, although the salt and pepper squid came from Singapore, and the chicken satay from Indonesia, the vegetable spring rolls are described as coming from Everywhere and the chilli crab and fish cakes as simply from The Moderation.

This is a smart way of saying that they were more like traditional fishcakes than spongy Thai fish cakes, although it maybe doesn’t fully do justice to how great they were – a fabulous brittle shell giving way to crumbly crabbiness.

“You really get the crab in this” said Dave. “And I bet they’ve used brown meat rather than white meat, for the flavour.”

I nodded in agreement, and decided I didn’t resent him having the other fishcake on account of him having been so generous with his satay. Over thirty years of friendship lets you reach that kind of equilibrium. Besides, he’d brought down some of his home-made honey, thyme and brie focaccia, so I owed him.

By this point I was at the stage I sometimes reach when I’m having a really fantastic meal, especially somewhere in Reading, where I was smiling beatifically, wondering when I could come here next and saying “this is really good, isn’t it?” over and over.

So it’s a shame to have to point out that my main course was the only thing we ate all day with shortcomings.

I’d chosen the beef rendang, which purely coincidentally is what I had at the Moderation all those years ago. And again, I have to say this was night and day compared to that. The sauce was really beautiful, sweet and warming: Dave said, rightly, that it could have done with a little more heat but I was prepared to overlook that.

I also tend to like the meat in this dish slow-cooked until it’s broken down, and the Moderation’s version isn’t like that with discrete chunks of beef. But that said, they were all soft, all obediently fell apart and there was no bounce or dodginess. I also loved the roti canai, so flaky you scattered shrapnel over the table and your fingers gleamed with oil as you ate.

So what went wrong? It was the little things, because the dish was slightly out of kilter. You got a lot of rice, and a lot of roti canai, and this dish needed more than that shallow pool of sauce to properly make the most of both. I’d rather have had more sauce and foregone the beansprouts and green beans, cold and crunchy on the side, nice though they were, just to have made the most of both those carbs. But I do have to say that these are minor quibbles. It was still an excellent dish.

Dave picked a dish I know well from my Moderation-going days gone by, the nasi goreng, a dish it turned out he was rather partial to. I remember it being great, but I don’t remember it being quite this good, or this enviable. A huge mound of rice was shot through with chicken, veg and huge, plump prawns, and the forkful I had was marvellous. Again, it was a little light on the chilli heat but if anything that made it more comforting. But what really set this apart were the whistles and bells – prawn crackers, another little pile of acar awak, a fried egg and, lurking beneath it, another satay skewer.

“Mate, you get bonus satay!” was Dave’s reaction. Bonus satay indeed: Dave’s only criticism of this dish was that he’d have liked the yolk to be runny, but like my reservations about the rendang it was piffling in the scheme of things. The nasi goreng cost fifteen pounds: in the past I’ve described Bakery House’s boneless baby chicken as the perfect single plate of food in Reading, but in this I think it might have some serious competition.

By this point the pub was in full swing in what promised to be the busiest day of the year so far. The sun was blazing, it was shorts weather, people were beginning to gather outside and the front room was almost completely full. And I was sorely tempted to say fuck it to our other plans, migrate to the garden and have a Cruzcampo as nature intended, glowing in the sunshine. It so nearly happened that way, and there’s no doubt a parallel universe where it did.

But we were set on trying some beers at Phantom (perhaps after having a coffee at The Collective, because we aren’t getting any younger and need to pace ourselves) so we paid our bill and went on our way. Service was as friendly and charming at that point as it had been throughout, and the whole thing cost us sixty-seven pounds, not including tip.

I have to stress that I think the Moderation feels like one of Reading’s real bargains right now: none of the starters tops eight pounds, none of the mains costs more than eighteen. The desserts are all seven fifty and mostly stay traditional, so they didn’t tempt me on this occasion but I’d be surprised if they weren’t good.

Of all of the places I’ve revisited in the last couple of years, I think the Moderation might be my favourite of all. I was absolutely thrilled to see it thriving, to see such a broad and interesting menu and to find it executed so well. I expect all of you know this already and are wondering what took me so long, and I rather am too, but better late than never. Even so it feels like I don’t see people talking about the Moderation enough and I don’t know why, because my visit left me feeling quite converted to the place. Perhaps it has very loyal locals and regulars who are quite happy not to share it with knobbers like me: if so, I can hardly blame them.

But regardless of all that, their achievement feels significant. Without fuss or faff they have found their place in the fabric of Reading turning out excellent food and offering the kind of skilful, clever pan-Asian menu I haven’t really seen since the golden age of Tampopo. But I do have to say that much as I missed the Tampopo of 2015 when it closed, The Moderation of 2024 is better. I don’t know whether this review makes amends for my moaning about that photo op over four years ago, but even if I’m still persona non grata I will definitely be back. I might book a table under an assumed name though, just in case.

The Moderation – 8.2
213 Caversham Road, RG1 8BB
0118 9595577

https://www.themodreading.com

Pub review: The Plough, Shiplake

On By ediblereadingIn Reviews, Uncategorized6 Comments

I still remember the first time I gave out a really good rating on this blog. It was towards the end of 2013, when we were all a lot younger and more carefree, and my blog had been running for just over three months. I wasn’t drunk on the power (next to nobody read the blog in those days) but even so giving out a rating in the high 8s felt like a proper stake in the ground. This is my kind of thing, that rating was saying. Go here on my recommendation and I promise you won’t regret it.

Ten years on, unlike a lot of restaurant reviewers who think their pronouncements should be on tablets of stone – why do so many of them write like they’re on coke? – it still feels like a big thing to say. And a presumptuous one, too: for me, that trepidation about writing a rave review has never quite gone away. Nor has the euphoric relief when anybody visits a restaurant on the back of one of my reviews and tells me they didn’t hate it, let alone loved it. I know the blog’s free, so nobody can ask for a refund, but I can’t give anybody back the money they’ve wasted on a bad meal.

The recipient of that first rave rating, a rating that wasn’t beaten for two whole years, was a gorgeous pub called the Plowden Arms in Shiplake. Run by married couple Matt and Ruth Woodley, it was the most beautiful spot – snug in the winter, with a fantastic garden in a little corner of South Oxfordshire for the summer. The crockery was vintage before everyone jumped on the chintz and retro bandwagon, the menu revived classics from the pages of Mrs Beeton and there was 20s jazz playing all the time. I adored it, and I went there often – with friends, with my partner, with my family, with anybody I could persuade to head to Shiplake.

Just over three years later, the Woodleys left the pub. It reopened under new management, but it wasn’t the same. You looked at the menu and thought that food was just something the management thought it should offer, all function and no passion. It was the first in a long string of disappointments, of places that had the temerity to close despite my loving them. Since then there’s been Dolce Vita and Buon Appetito, and soon there will be the Lyndhurst, but that first one stung. I wish I’d gone more often. As Andy Bernard says in The Office – the funnier version – I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.

When it closed two years later, I wasn’t surprised. It sat vacant by the side of the road, and for a while it looked like it would just be the latest pub to turn into accommodation, the latest community to lose a hub and gain a handful of extra residents with nowhere to drink. It was empty throughout Covid, but then in summer 2021 there was an interesting development: the owners of nearby Orwells announced that they had saved it from near-certain demolition and were going to open it as The Plough in early 2022.

That news was welcomed beyond the narrow confines of Shiplake: Orwells has a lot of fans, and I’m sure they liked the idea of a more affordable, more casual venture from the same people. But then something strange happened in 2022. The Plough didn’t open early that year and at some point – I suspect we’ll never know exactly why – Orwells dropped out of the picture. But the Plough did open, just before Christmas 2022, owned instead by Canadian-born Jill Sikkert, her first hospitality business after a career in interior design. Last month she appointed a new chef, Charlotte Vincent, who has been on Great British Menu and got one of her previous venues into the prestigious Top 50 Gastropubs list four years ago.

All very impressive: who needs Orwells anyway? But I would be the first to admit that the revitalised Plough isn’t the kind of venue I would normally review. A lot of that’s down to accessibility: I know that the countryside around Reading has plenty of food pubs which ordinarily would interest people, like the Dew Drop Inn at Hurley, the Crown at Burchett’s Green or even the Wellington Arms at Baughurst. But as a non-driver who relies on public transport they don’t generally fit my catchment area, so you’re more likely to hear about restaurants near a train station, like Seasonality.

Besides, you don’t need me for those kind of places because they’re the province of the website Muddy Stilettos, which you may know. They love rural gastropubs, and they gush about them in their weirdly infantilised language where things are “yummy” or “scrumptious” and go in their “tummies”, where food and drink are summed up as “scoff and quaff”. Apparently if you like this kind of restaurant you also like twee: I even read one review which referred to something called a “Michelin twinkler”, presumably this is awarded when your scoff and quaff are particularly yummy and scrumptious. Goody gumdrops!

If I say more about Muddy Stilettos – especially that their annual awards are an exercise in epic grift where they get small businesses slogging away to promote their website while giving back nothing in return – I’ll probably get in trouble, so let’s move on. I found myself reviewing the Plough because a very good friend got me one of their vouchers for my birthday last year, so Zoë and I finally found an opportunity to get there on Good Friday, at the end of our holiday, literally days before it expired. So I suppose, technically, I only paid for part of my bill: I wonder if that gives me something in common with Muddy Stilettos?

The makeover the Plough has received is quite something. In its previous incarnation it looked like a pub, like a beloved local that also happened to serve food. Now it is a really gorgeous series of rooms – you can tell Sikkert has a background in interiors – that take advantage of the pub’s good bones, its bricks and beams and parquet floors, but create something much more luxe. That said, the chairs looked better suited to lounging than dining, but that’s probably just me being a bit old-fashioned.

We were seated in a room I remembered well, having eaten in it many times when it was the Plowden Arms, and yet it felt completely familiar and totally different all at once. Even though it was the end of March there was still a nip in the air and the fire was burning, and it felt properly comforting: I can’t wait for summer to come, but I’ll miss the smell of woodsmoke.

The menu is written in that way that was modish a few years back, listing ingredients but nothing else: sea trout pastrami, mussel, apple gremolata, that kind of thing. I know this annoys some people but it didn’t bother me – it was more detailed than other examples I’ve seen and, besides, a little element of surprise when you order dishes can add to the experience. Perhaps I’m just getting soft.

As is the fashion there were snacks, starters, mains and desserts – most of the snacks just over a fiver, the starters just over a tenner, the mains between twenty and twenty six pounds, desserts a tenner. You’ll have your own views about whether that’s steep, but I compared it to what things cost at London Street Brasserie these days and decided to judge it at the end, not the outset.

There’s also a no-choice set lunch menu, twenty-seven fifty for three courses, which didn’t overlap with the main menu. But in honesty I think if you’re going to only offer one option on a menu it has to be more interesting than the likes of swede and carrot soup, so I gave it a miss. The Plough could learn from the likes of Quality Chop House, whose set lunch costs about the same and seriously makes you consider swerving the à la carte. Besides, that voucher was burning a hole in my satchel – in for a penny, in for a pounding, as my fiancée likes to delicately put it.

We got some snacks while we made up our mind about everything else, and they were the first indicator that it wouldn’t all be plain sailing. Homemade focaccia/blue cheese butter was the first thing we tried. Now, I don’t object to minimalist wording provided there isn’t anything significant in the dish it neglects to mention, and so long as what you’re told will be there is actually present and correct.

So the menu really should have said homemade bread/garlic butter, because that, weirdly, is what I got. The picture below is one of the dullest ever to grace my blog, but I put it there for a reason, to demonstrate that this bread wasn’t springy or spongy or aerated. It wasn’t open-crumbed at all. It wasn’t permeated with olive oil, it didn’t have salt or rosemary or anything else to zhuzh it up. The reason it was none of those things is that it wasn’t focaccia.

It was, instead, perfectly serviceable bread. And as for the butter – well, we went from the blue cheese in this must be very subtle to there’s no blue cheese at all in this, is there? before ending up at isn’t this garlic butter? The menu wasn’t just economical with words, it was a little economical with the truth too.

The second snack was a lot more enjoyable. I’ll do away with the stripped down wording from here on in, but this was a clump of battered, fried enoki mushrooms, strewn with shoots, more mushrooms (pickled, I think, but my mind might be playing tricks) and a little Walnut Whip of mushroom ketchup. This was far more like it – wild mushrooms cropped up in a few places on the Plough’s menu, and the mushroom ketchup, lending gorgeous depth, was the star of the show.

But at the risk of nit picking again, the ratio of the enoki to batter was so out of kilter that I felt like I was eating a savoury churro that just happened to have a tiny bit of mushroom in the middle. That said, if it had been described as that on the menu I might still have ordered it. Anyway, it was only a fiver.

The starters proper were more successful, and started to give me an idea of what the kitchen could do. My pork terrine wasn’t bad – a slab of pork, bound up with jamon iberico and strewn with gubbins – cups of onion with thyme crumb nestling in them, and more of those little shoots. I would have preferred some acidity in the mix – a piccalilli, or some caperberries – and without them it was nice but a little well behaved for my liking. A tad too fridge-cold, clean and pristine where it needed to be gutsy.

This came with what was billed as sourdough bread – I wasn’t sure it was sourdough but if anything, it was more open-textured than the focaccia had been. This dish felt sanitised, but it would probably have been a hit with the Muddy Stilettos crowd – every time I read a review by them, the reviewer practically apologises for having three courses and makes a tired joke about undoing the top button of her trousers. I never feel like I have to apologise to you lot for ordering too much food: it’s one of the reasons I’m so fond of you all.

Zoë had chosen scallops, a couple of plump specimens in a puddle of dashi beurre blanc, topped with some kind of sea vegetable whose name I’m sure I used to know but have since forgotten. I wouldn’t have ordered this – I’m not sure beurre blanc is improved by cross-pollinating it with dashi – but Zoë really enjoyed it. Unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to try any, and when I asked her for a more detailed critique she said “I fucking loved it, I’d order it again, what more do you want from me?”.

This will please fans of her expletives, and I know there are a few of you out there, but probably isn’t of practical help. She did eventually tell me under cross-examination that the scallops were beautifully cooked, the contrasting textures managed just right, but that’s all I have for you.

At this point I was feeling slightly underwhelmed, but the Plough rescued things with two exemplary and very different main courses. Fish and chips – just described as “day boat fish”, so I have no idea what it was – was outstanding. A thick cylinder of pearlescent, just-cooked fish was hugged by brilliant, almost ethereal batter. I was allowed to try a bit and it was miles better than I’d been expecting, and weirdly it made me think of my dad. He has a bit of a habit of ordering fish and chips in fancy restaurants, so I’ve seen him try it at Rick Stein’s place in Padstow, at the Beehive in White Waltham and in my opinion, the Plough’s rendition was better than either of those.

The accompaniments were bang on too – excellent peas which were crushed rather than mushy, and a tartare sauce Zoë could tolerate, which meant that it wasn’t quite vinegary enough for me. Having it with fries, although that was clearly communicated on the menu, felt a little strange to me. They were very good fries but, in an inversion of how I feel every time I look in the mirror these days, I’d sooner they had been chunky rather than skinny.

If that covers the pub classics end of the menu, my choice was cheffier and one of the best plates of food I’ve eaten this year. Lamb rump was just stellar – thick and tender, accurately seasoned, the perfect shade of pink with just the most beautiful stripe of fat, the kind of thing I could eat all day. It came with a little of everything wonderful – more onion, this time smoked, chewy and delectable nubbins of Jerusalem artichoke, a sweet and glossy puree, a little jus and, by the looks of this picture, some extra virgin olive oil thrown in for good measure.

Oh, and I neglected to mention my other favourite part of this dish – described as hash browns, they were a couple of golden pyramids of pressed and fried potato that were worth the price of admission by themselves. I truly loved this dish, and it single-handedly justified the trip to Shiplake. A few forkfuls in and that dense non-focaccia and the slightly timid terrine were completely forgotten. All was forgiven: this dish was twenty-six pounds and, I reckon, worth every penny. Even looking down at the picture I can remember how happy it made me.

As it was a little light on the veg I’d ordered some green beans on the side with pickled chilli and soy sauce. They were well enough executed, the beans with a little bite, but I didn’t think they quite worked: the sauce didn’t adhere, so you ended up with a pool of the stuff at the bottom. I’ll go for the ubiquitous hispi cabbage next time.

We both wanted dessert, which is a good sign, and we both wanted the same dessert. So we had it, unrepentantly and without loosening any garments. Again, it was good but not perfect and again, it wasn’t quite as billed. It was allegedly a dark chocolate cheesecake but, for my money, it wasn’t in any way dark. And texturally I didn’t think it entirely worked – that huge layer of chocolate was a tad gelatinous, the base so heavy and thick that you couldn’t get a spoon through it without risking injury to passers-by.

And again, it was a pity because the minor details were all excellent, from the chocolate soil on top to the blobs of yuzu gel and – especially – the warming, boozy cherries. I finished it, because it’s rude not to, but I would have liked something slimmer and more refined. That is something I often say when I look in the mirror, come to think of it.

Replete and satisfied, we asked for our bill and prepared for the trip home. And it would be remiss of me not to mention at this point that – more than once on my visit to the Plough – Zoë had raved about the bathrooms. “Seriously, you have to go to the loo before we leave” she said. “I think they’re some of the best restaurant toilets I’ve ever seen.” So I did, and they were indeed very chic and the handwash smelled magnificent. But, just as with Zoë and those effing scallops, that’s all I can remember. I wish I’d taken a picture.

Our bill for all that food, a non-alcoholic cocktail called a tropical something or other which Zoë found too sweet (and at nine pounds, a little too rich) and a couple of bottles of sparkling mineral water – because I was on antibiotics – came to a hundred and thirty-eight pounds, including a 12.5% service charge. And it feels like an insult to shoehorn the service in here, between the loos and the conclusion, because it was faultless from start to finish. We had just the right level of attention, enthusiasm and smiles from the moment we were greeted to the point where we said goodbye and went out the front door. It made me think what a boon this place must be to genuine locals, although if you live in Shiplake I imagine you had enough to be smug about even before the Plough came along.

I’ve ummed and aahed since about what I made of the Plough, on balance. In the debit column, some of the dishes were underpowered or didn’t work, and the feng shui menu didn’t always reflect what turned up on the plate. I suppose I compare it in some ways to the robust, magical cooking of somewhere like the Bell at Waltham St Lawrence, and it doesn’t quite match that standard. But on the other hand, some of the dishes were exceptional, especially the mains, and the little touches with much of the food show an imagination which quite won me over. And then there’s the room, the welcome, that open fire and – yes, let’s mention them again – those bathrooms.

But the main thing I took from my trip to the Plough was a feeling of being in really capable hands, of a menu that could please almost anybody and managed to walk that very fine line where it was accessible and clever. That’s not an easy balance to strike, and many chefs or restaurants, despite their best intentions, end up falling clumsily on one side or the other. That the Plough has avoided that pitfall, and that the team have created somewhere so universal but sophisticated is a more skilful trick than you might think.

“This is the kind of place we could take your dad and stepmum” said Zoë in the car on the way back to Reading, and that’s as good a summary of its appeal as I can think of: it might mean more if you’d met them, but hopefully you get the drift. I think you could take anybody here for a meal – either for a special occasion or for no reason – and have a properly charming time.

This might not read like an out and out rave, I may not have talked about tummies or the fact that they might be awarded a Michelin twinkler at some point, but regular readers will know that this is me saying I was quietly impressed. This is my kind of thing. Hopefully, if you go here on my recommendation, you won’t regret it.

Nope, still feels presumptuous.

The Plough – 8.0
Plough Lane, Shiplake, RG9 4BX
0118 9403999

https://www.theploughshiplake.co.uk