Author: ediblereading

City guide: Málaga

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A more up to date city guide to Malaga, from 2024, can be found here.

I first visited Málaga in late 2016, on an unsuccessful holiday with a vegan girlfriend. Going to Spain with a vegan was almost as bad a decision as going out with the vegan in the first place, but even as I returned home, lessons learnt, I had a feeling Málaga and I had unfinished business. The thing I’ve since discovered about Málaga is that there are two kinds of people: people who’ve never thought of visiting it, and people who have been, loved it and are keen that not too many people find out about it.

I should start with an apology to the second kind of people, because it really does deserve to be better known. It’s compact, it has a beautiful historic centre, loads of art galleries (covering traditional and more modern forms), a waterfront with a beach close by, excellent shopping and terrific street art. Returning this month with my other half and some friends, enjoying temperatures of nineteen degrees in March and seeing the sun again, I got the feeling of barely scratching the surface.

It’s almost like they plonked a miniature Barcelona in Andalusia, with all the gastronomic benefits of being in that blessed region. And my goodness, the food! I ate better than I can remember on any holiday – not just the obvious stuff like jamon, queso and churros but beautiful, inventive tapas, fresh, superbly-cooked fish and seafood, stunning burgers (yes, burgers) and so much more. I’ve always thought any day where you get to eat octopus is a good day: on one day in Málaga I managed to eat it for lunch, dinner and an afternoon snack, and that felt pretty unbeatable to me.

My other half is not known for her delicate language, but I lost count of the number of times she tried her first mouthful of a dish and said “fuck!”, almost involuntarily. My friend James, a fellow Málaga fan, has been every year since 2016 and even before heading home I think both of us were mentally planning our next visit. I hope this piece persuades you to consider it next time you’re planning a city break of your own.

Where to eat

1. Taberna Uvedoble

I spent my birthday in Uvedoble this year, and a better place to celebrate is difficult to imagine. It’s a modern tapas restaurant close to the cathedral and the vast majority of the menu is available either as a tapa, media or racion depending on how hungry or inquisitive you are and how many of you there are. On our visit we swooned over baby squid served on a nest of squid ink fideua, a giant lake of aioli on the side. Oxtail albondigas were also phenomenal, the juices soaking into a bed of skinny chips.

But the small dishes were every bit as astounding – individual hamburgers cut with foie gras, lending a powerful punch like nothing I’ve eaten before, or miniature brioches hollowed out and completely crammed with shredded suckling pig. The truffled tortilla was so big we had to take half of it back to the apartment with us, and the red wine (Seis y Seis, from nearby Ronda) was magnificent – and ridiculous value at eighteen Euros. Dinner for three, in fact, came to less than a hundred Euros between the three of us – and if you need any more incentive to go to Málaga, bear in mind that this was easily the most expensive meal of the whole holiday.

Uvedoble was so good that we returned for lunch on our final day, so that Liz (who had arrived late) didn’t miss out on the food. Determined to try other dishes, we devoured stunning grilled asparagus with romesco, clean delicate ensaladilla Rusa, flamenquin all crisp with breadcrumbs and oozing with cheese, and so many other amazing dishes. We got there at 1, when they opened, and within about half an hour the place was rammed. “More 10 out of 10s than anywhere else we’ve been” was James’ verdict. My other half’s verdict? “Fuck.”

Taberna Uvedoble, Calle Cister, 15

2. El Tapeo de Cervantes

Easy to be confused – there’s also La Taberna de Cervantes, Vineria Cervantes and El Meson de Cervantes – but El Tapeo de Cervantes is the one you want, a small, intimate place with high tables, a regularly changing menu and absolutely charming staff where I had one of my very favourite meals of this or any year. You order lots of dishes – easily two per person, more if you’re greedy – and they pace your meal perfectly, bringing them out one at a time like a gastronomic firework display.

This was James’ suggestion, and he evangelised about it from the off before getting nervous that it wouldn’t live up to the hype (a feeling I know better than he realised). But he needn’t have worried – everything was so good that it was difficult to pick out highlights. Duck cooked so expertly that it was more like fillet steak, slow-cooked pig’s cheek in a rich stew topped with fiery guindilla chillies, intense sweetbreads with the crackle of salt crystals served on crisp cubes of potato, soft tender octopus offset with smoked mash, every single dish every bit as good as the last.

But the humdinger, a dish which reduced James to wordless rapture, was secreto iberico: pink and tender, scattered with salt and served with a sweet pineapple relish which shouldn’t work but did. Boy, if only Hawaiian pizzas were like that. We had everything with a couple of bottles of Orben, a magical rioja which, I’m told, you can get on Amazon Prime (what will they think of next?). It was a meal I’ll remember for quite some time, and it cost just shy of thirty Euros per head.

El Tapeo de Cervantes, Calle Carcer, 8

3. Wendy Gamba

Processed with RNI Films. Preset 'Agfa RSX II'

We had lunch at Wendy Gamba, in the heart of the old town, and I could happily have eaten there again for dinner, lunch and dinner again. In a gorgeous, tiled, relatively traditional room we had some of the finest dishes of the entire trip (but for the fact that you could also say that about all the other places on this list). The signature dish here is the bull burger, a miniature burger with slow-cooked oxtail which matched any burger I’ve ever had, but other dishes gave it a run for its money. I especially loved the octopus with plenty of char and salt, prawn and avocado pinchos topped with strands of saffron and gambas pil pil in a brick red oil steeped with sweet slices of garlic. A generous lunch for four came in at under eighty Euros. We walked past the following evening and, unsurprisingly, the place was completely packed: best to reserve a table if you’re going there for dinner.

Wendy Gamba, Calle Fresca, 10

4. Meson Mariano

Meson Mariano is a very traditional, family-run restaurant, all dark wood and beams, a million miles away from the clean contemporary look of Taberna Uvedoble. My holiday companions were a little (well, quite a lot) younger than me and when we went to Meson Mariano they described themselves as “turnt up to the max”, whatever that means. Regrettably, this means we didn’t order the full three courses – but it also means that they were so full that I managed to try a little bit of everybody’s meal and confirm my suspicion that Meson Mariano really was a very good restaurant indeed.

The salt cod was beautiful, either served fried with tons of garlic or cooked in tomato with potato, but the meat was the real high point, whether it was shoulder of lamb on the bone (though so beautifully tender that it didn’t stay there for long) or spot-on sirloin with an astonishingly good goats cheese sauce. When I go back, I’ll try the deep-fried goats cheese starter: I remember it fondly from a previous visit.

Restaurante Meson Mariano, Calle Granados, 2

5. Mercado Atarazanas

Málaga’s food market is simply something else. An impressive structure (very striking stained glass, and a gorgeous arched entrance) housing every kind of delicacy you care to name – fresh fish of every size and shape, cheese, meat, jamon, almonds shiny with oil and studded with salt, wine and sherry, seemingly endless arrays of fruit and veg. That’s all in the middle, and then around the outside are all the places where you can stand at the bar, drink a caña or a vermut, order food and watch the world go by (there are also seated areas outside the market, but I far preferred being in the bustle).

For all I know there may not be that much to choose between them all, but I developed a huge soft spot for Central Bar, in the corner of the market, and went there several times. Over the course of a couple of visits I had baby squid, coated, fried and dished up piping hot with nothing but a spot of aioli and a lemon to squeeze, octopus served in a similar fashion, chorizo pinchos plump and crying out to be eaten with your fingers. Best of all was rosada, a white fish cooked on the plancha and plated simply with a drizzle of oil and herbs, glorious fresh tomatoes and a few spots of that aioli. It was the only other dish to render James speechless (and that’s no mean feat): we had it twice during the holiday.

When I go back I’ll try the tortilla de camarones, fritters made with flour and tiny shrimp which kept turning up on the bar for other people: they looked delicious, but I didn’t figure out what they were until it was too late. But then I could happily have spent an afternoon at that bar, drinking and eating, little and often. The most expensive bill we had was forty Euros between three, reinforcing what insanely good value Málaga is.

Mercado Central de Atarazanas, Calle Atarazanas, 10

6. Casa Lola

Casa Lola was the first place I ate at on this trip, and if everything that came after was even better that shouldn’t detract from the fact that it was a lovely place to go for afternoon snacks. The interior looks much more polished and curated than many of the other tapas bars in Málaga (almost, dare I say it, chainlike) but sitting at a high table with a caña and some food, watching the world go by is still an excellent way to spend an afternoon. The high point for me was the extensive range of pinchos, all of which were downright delicious. A spot of smoked bacalao here, some black pudding topped with quail’s egg there, that first taste of holiday octopus: all were present and indisputably correct.

Casa Lola, Calle Granada, 46

Where to drink

1. La Tranca

La Tranca, Málaga’s almost legendary vermouth and wine bar, was firmly on all our lists to visit: I’d been and loved it, and I’d bonded with James and Liz over their devotion to it. I remember going in 2016 and wishing I could stay there all evening, and that’s before Liz told me how good the empanadas were. Walking past it on our first night, something about it didn’t seem right: the inside was somehow different, the bar felt different, the vibe somehow changed. “It’s closed!” said Liz, crestfallen. Later that evening we realised it had relocated to bigger premises just up the road, and when we went in all scepticism was immediately dispelled: it was different, but recognisably La Tranca right from the off.

La Tranca is one of the world’s great bars (and I’ve researched quite a few in my time): lovably scruffy, full of bustle, serving brilliant drinks and full of people who just want to have a good time and enjoy being somewhere magnificent. Put that way, I can’t help but wonder if it shares DNA with Reading’s beloved After Dark. We went back a couple of times during the trip, jostling to find a space to set ours drink down, stand around and talk nonsense. We got into a random conversation with a lovely Italian chap, a musician, who had let his apartment in Berlin out to a woman from New York days ago and just got on a plane to Málaga to take his life in a different direction: well, Málaga is that kind of city and La Tranca is the perfect bar for conversations like that.

The drink to have here is aliñao, vermouth with gin and soda which makes the world, even at times like this, feel like a softer, more comfortable place. The tapas is also well worth trying – you order at the bar and hope you can find your way back up there through the crowd to collect it when they call out your name. The four cheese empanadas, rich with blue cheese, were things of beauty but my personal favourite was the habas con jamon, a little dish of broad beans and ham which was damn near perfect bar (or anywhere else) food.

La Tranca, Calle Carreteria, 92

2. Antigua Casa de Guardia

Another Málaga institution, this long thin bar has barrels of every sweet wine you could possibly hope to drink. You go up, order a copa and they chalk your bill up on the bar. I tried a number of the options, from moscatel to pedro ximenez, from the “Pajarete 1908” (the thing to order here apparently) to the Guinda and the Lagrima Añejo: you may well have a better palate than me but they all tasted dangerously similar and remarkably moreish. A little glass of wine here costs less than two Euros, so if you go you can try them all and tell me what I’m missing. We were there on a lazy Friday afternoon, but I imagine evenings can be quite a free-for-all.

Antigua Casa de Guardia, Alameda Principal, 18

3. La Madriguera

Málaga has a small craft beer scene, and as I was there with some real beer fans it was only fair to check it out. I suspect James preferred Cerveceria Arte & Sana on Plaza de la Merced, but my favourite was La Madriguera, which struck me as reminiscent of Bristol’s tremendous Small Bar. La Madriguera had nine beers on tap when I visited including a few from local microbrewery Bonvivant, and I really enjoyed their fruit IPA El Increible Hombre Menguente (that’s the incredible shrinking man to you and I). I was sad to move on when duty – by which I mean dinner – called, although I also found it difficult to walk past a bar called Jamones next door, which went straight on my “next time” list.

La Madriguera, Calle Carreteria, 73

4. Cafe Central

A lot of people will tell you to go to Casa Aranda, where they do huge churros, giant tubes of batter just waiting to be dunked in thick gloopy chocolate (the same people will recommend El Pimpi, Málaga’s iconic bar which I still haven’t tried). But my heart belongs to Cafe Central, where the churros are piped, have just enough salt and are crying out to be rolled in sugar from the sachet and popped in your mouth. The seating outside is perfect in the sunshine but I have a soft spot for eating inside, where it reminds me of so many grand cafes and where you can always spot some great characters, old ladies and dapper gentlemen, enjoying their “second breakfast” (it’s a thing in Spain, and really should be a thing everywhere else).

Coffee at Cafe Central truly is an art – you may have a cafe con leche elsewhere in Spain, but in Cafe Central you pick from nine different types of coffee depending on just how much milk you want in it, an idea that really could catch on here with tea (I’ve long thought that if we ever do have a national identity card it should have a swatch on it showing the exact colour you like your tea). Mine was always a mitad, half and half, and going to Cafe Central became a thoroughly enjoyable morning ritual.

Cafe Central, Plaza de la Constitucion, 11

5. El Ultimo Mono

El Ultimo Mono (the last monkey, apparently, which I assume makes sense to someone) happened to be right next to our apartment. But even if it hadn’t, I imagine I would have been there quite a lot. The interior was just the right side of the quirky/zany divide, the service was great, and the coffee – for when you want a latte or a mocha rather than the traditional strong black coffee or cafe con leche – was very nice indeed. There was a shop opposite which sold little statues of Jesus: we repeatedly had to talk James out of buying one, for shits and giggles apparently.

El Ultimo Mono, Calle Sta Maria, 9

6. Mia Coffee House

One morning I was up and about earlier than my travelling companions, and keen to go exploring. A little research and some good fortune (and tricky navigation) got me to Mia Coffee House, a wonderful little cafe in a quiet square opposite the very impressive Church of los Santos Martires. I was drawn to the canary-yellow awning, and it was lovely and serene to sit outside, warmed by the sun and watch the city slowly wake up.

Mia’s is top-notch coffee – the best I had in Málaga – made with painstaking love and care in the perfect little spot. Even the cups, little bowls without handles, are pared-down and somehow ascetic. Less pure was the pain au chocolat, the filling made even more indulgent with a spot of something like Nutella. The others joined me about half an hour later, and I did allow myself a moment of “look at this brilliant place I found!” while they very kindly humoured me. Well, I suppose it’s what I do – or try to – and what I’ve just been doing about Málaga on this little gastronomic tour. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

Pan, Wokingham

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I learned in early 2023 that Pan had closed. I’ve left the review up for posterity.

I was beginning to think I was cursed and that you’d never get a new review. My first attempt involved a Reading restaurant which, it turns out, is closed on Mondays. That fact came to my attention on the Monday night I was due to review it, seconds after I arrived at the pub across the road and met my dining companion for the evening. I’ve been doing this for nearly six years, and you’d think I’d know better.

Attempt number two was no better: I picked a restaurant out of town to visit with my old friend Al, mainly because every time we’d ever been there it had one amazing dish on the menu which was worth the price of admission alone. A destination dish and a destination restaurant all in one, truly the holy grail of restaurant reviewing. But, of course, on the Friday that we went there for lunch that dish – a glorious, massive pie for two, glossy, deep rich sticky beef lying in wait under a golden bubbling suet crust – was nowhere to be seen. I chalked it up to experience and had the fish, but where on earth was I going to review now?

Salvation came in the unlikely form of my friend Richard. We were due to meet up for a midweek dinner in Reading, and a couple of days before he sent me an apologetic WhatsApp. He could only get a babysitter for part of the evening, it said, and would I mind meeting in Wokingham, halfway between Reading and his place in Sunningdale? I sensed the faint knock of opportunity, and that’s why you’re reading a review of Pan today.

I’ve known Richard for many years, and wanted to bring him along on a review for ages. He’s the campest straight man I’ve ever met, a gleeful drinker, outrageously bitchy and downright good fun. He looks ever so slightly like David Gest might have done if he had (a) avoided all that shocking plastic surgery and, more importantly, (b) not died. He was a huge support to me when I joined Team Divorce a few years back, and I’ve always loved my evenings with him when he can swing a babysitter (his high-powered ex-wife is always away on business, pressing the flesh in Milan).

As for Pan, it looked like the most interesting thing to happen to Wokingham in some time – a pan-Asian restaurant opening in the space vacated by the Teak House (a Thai restaurant) offering a constantly changing monthly menu of small plates from different countries. The pictures on Instagram looked tempting, the word of mouth was promising and the menu online – all octopus, monkfish yakitori, slow braised pork and ramen – made me truly impatient to visit. Richard said it looked perfect, although I wondered if that might be because he has a much smaller appetite than me.

The website, and the pictures I’d seen made me think Pan would be a sleek, black, minimalist space, but going in it looked very much like it was still the Teak House, visually at least. There was a small bar and counter, and a small dining room up a little set of stairs with, surreally, a handrail like a banister separating it off (Richard leaned against it for much of our meal: it looked wobbly). The front room must have accommodated about a dozen diners, although there was a bigger room further into the restaurant: on our visit this had been laid out for a very large group which arrived partway through our meal.

“Have you been here before?” asked the front of house (which, on our visit, was very much a one man show) as he handed over our menus.

“No, this is our first time.”

“We’ve been open for six months, what took you so long?” he said with a smile. I liked that cockiness: it felt quite unlike Wokingham, if nothing else. “Our menu is small plates, like tapas, and two dishes per person should be enough.” I must confess I was sceptical about this, but maybe that’s because I’d been planning to try as many things as I could get away with.

“Do you have a wine list?” said Richard, somewhat betraying his priorities. The chap smiled again.

“I am the wine list.”

Again, a little confident but not jarringly so. In any case, we started with a couple of bottles of Kirin while we looked through the menu. It being March, the menu had changed completely from the one on the website (“this month we’re doing south Indian dishes”, our waiter told us). All the dishes were priced between four and eight pounds, and most of them looked tempting, with the possible exception of “chicory salad” which felt like a fig leaf for killjoys. The really noticeable thing on the menu, though, was the general absence of carbs: I had a feeling four dishes wouldn’t be anywhere near enough.

The first dish was a beautiful start – broccoli with chana dahl houmous, a clever fusion. I’m used to dipping stuff in houmous (after I’ve poured a lake of extra virgin olive oil on top of it, naturally) but having it here as the base for a heap of well-cooked purple sprouting broccoli was a very nice touch. The houmous had brilliant spice and flavour, and as a statement of intent this was hard to beat. But even this dish, with hindsight, was a taste of things to come: I expected the bowl to be slightly deeper and when my fork clanked against the bottom I did have an “is that all there is?” moment. It wasn’t to be the last time.

Shortly afterwards the kitchen sent out our next dish, crab wontons. “Too sweet” was Richard’s verdict, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about me. He was right, though: they weren’t unpleasant but they were hotter than the sun and the crabmeat inside did feel too sweet with nothing to balance it out. Possibly the advertised curry butter might have offset this, but it lurked uselessly at the bottom of the plate and it was too difficult to dredge the wontons through it. Worth six pounds fifty? Probably not, and the glass plate felt like it might also have been inherited from the Teak House rather than bought for Pan, because the presentation felt a little fussy and old-fashioned.

I very much liked what came after that, flatiron steak with “kukurmutta ragu” (I Googled it: it’s mushrooms). The mushrooms lent a beautifully savoury note to the whole thing and any reservations I had about the steak were banished by the pink middle and the perfect texture. I wasn’t convinced it needed all that yoghurt, and serving it with paper underneath was a little odd, but even so it was one of my favourite dishes of the evening. Richard wasn’t so impressed, but by then I’d told him I was going to refer to us in the review as “Pan’s people” and he’d given me the first of many withering stares (“Bitch” was his response).

I found it odd that the dishes had been designed for sharing, but none of them came with spoons for us to dish up onto our plates. I asked and the waiter brought some over, but in a way which suggested that they’d never been asked before. “That was very nice, thank you” I said as he came to take our empty plates away. “You sound surprised” he replied, and again I couldn’t quite decide whether that confidence was charming or grating.

I’d been particularly looking forward to the charred carrot dish, mainly because Pan’s Instagram feed had a stunning image of what I imagined was something similar – a huge vibrant jumble of carrots, blackened on the outside, sesame seeds and coriander. I don’t think I was expecting five pieces of carrot, or for three of them to turn out to be unadvertised sweet potato (one of my least favourite things). Despite that I did enjoy them – the menu said they’d come with pearl barley and parsley, but instead they were accompanied by some kind of thickened yoghurt and tiny slivers of crispy fried chilli. It was an interesting dish, and the textures in particular were lovely, but I couldn’t quite shed the feeling that at five pounds, each piece of carrot or sweet potato had cost a quid all by itself.

Finally our last dish turned up, tandoori chicken legs with bhurani raita. I enjoyed this: the flavours were spot on and the chicken was nicely done, although I didn’t necessarily get much garlic in the pleasingly mint-green raita. Richard was less convinced – “this feels more like a dish you could get in lots of other places” – and either way it was a little difficult to justify two hardly colossal chicken legs at just shy of seven pounds.

“That was lovely” I said as the waiter collected more empty plates.

“I know”, he said. Hmm.

Despite having had more than our regulation two dishes per person, we ordered more. If there had been more carbs on the menu – some noodles or rice or anything that might fill you up – maybe I wouldn’t have needed to but as it was I was still distinctly peckish. We also ordered a couple of glasses of orvieto which was pleasingly crisp but far from bone dry. The waiter wasn’t kidding when he said he was the wine list, so he ran us through the choices – all by the glass, three or four whites if I recall. No prices were given, but I checked at the end and these were six pounds each, which didn’t feel unreasonable. Not having a list and picking after a chat with your waiter felt like the sort of thing I ought to enjoy and endorse in theory, but having done it I found it made me feel somewhat uncomfortable: too English by half, perhaps.

Throughout our meal I saw our waiter coming out of the kitchen with multiple plates of the same dishes, dropping one at our table, one at a neighbouring table and so on, and I realised that even if I was still on the hungry side I could see how this model might work beautifully for Pan. And every table in the front room was full of enthusiastic customers, so maybe it was just me who was beginning to find it a parade of not enough food for a little too much money.

I’d really fancied “cod shashlick with satay crumb” on the menu, but the waiter told us it had run out so we ordered the replacement dish, smoked trout with ginger and lime. For me, this just didn’t work – the tastes that accompanied the fish were sharp, fresh and interesting but pairing it with smoked trout felt like a strange choice. I’m far from convinced that smoked trout features heavily in South Indian cuisine: it clashed with everything else going on and the whole thing felt like a dish made with ingredients that were lying around (all very Ready Steady Cook) rather than something carefully put together. I guess, of course, that the thing with smoked trout is that you don’t have to cook it, so again convenient for the kitchen but not necessarily great for diners.

I did enjoy our final dish, a mixture of butter beans and chickpeas topped with a baked egg. Finally, a hint of the carbs I’d been craving! But even here I could see how all the dishes felt like riffs on a theme – the green squiggles matching those on the broccoli, probably the same yoghurt as we’d had on the steak, definitely the same little slices of fried chilli as had come with the carrots. Although I quite enjoyed it, and I’d have loved it if it had been the first dish I tried, by this stage I did feel like I could see the joins, as if I’d spotted the Wizard Of Oz behind the curtain. Pan passed itself off as being imaginative and varied, but a lot of work had been put into managing the experience.

I insisted on a dessert – partly because I was still hungry, and partly because the waiter told me that the chocolate brownie came with a sesame seed creme Anglaise. Normally, I don’t hold with brownies being dessert – and again, what I got differed from what was described on the menu – but this really was lovely: three dense, warm cubes of brownie with a beautifully light custard and plenty of sesame (although I thought it could have stood more).

We’d asked what we could drink with dessert and the waiter said “I’ve got some really good Filipino rum: let me bring it over”. He returned with a bottle and two little glasses full of ice and left us to it, an experience which felt faintly continental. Richard practically inhaled a glass and topped himself up.

“Hurry up and try some! This is fantastic.”

It was: ever so slightly honeyed and with a beautiful note of oak. Richard took a photo of the label, shortly before surreptitiously refreshing his glass. (“There’s no line on the side or anything” he said, with the expertise of a man who used to raid his mother’s drinks cabinet.) I loved it, although I did feel guilty about having more. How much did it cost anyway? There was simply no way of knowing, not until the bill arrived.

When it did, our whole meal – seven small plates, four beers, two glasses of wine and that rum – cost eighty-seven pounds, not including tip, and the rum was just under eight pounds in total. I made sure we tipped generously, mainly because I suspect Richard was literally drinking their profits. We then sallied forth into the Wokingham night in search of a place that could serve Richard more wine, although when we got to the pub Richard also ordered a packet of peanuts and a bag of pork scratchings: that probably tells its own story.

It’s interesting, as small plates restaurants start to jump the shark in London, that we get a swathe of them round these parts like Pan and Bench Rest, which I reviewed last year. Pan shares some of the problems that Bench Rest has: however nice the service is, the interior feels like it’s designed for a very different type of establishment and however nice the food is, the dishes are either too small or too pricey or both. But with Pan those problems were amplified – everything felt like not a lot of food for quite a lot of cash, and the interior and the plating lacked the sophistication the menu aspired to. But on the other hand I love the concept, I ate some really interesting food and combinations and I can see what they’re aiming for. It felt like a work in progress, but I do wonder if Wokingham is forgiving enough to give Pan the time it needs to become the restaurant it wants to be. I hope so: definitely if Pan was in Reading I would be following its evolution and going back to see how things progress.

And Richard? According to his Instagram he was in the gym the next morning at seven am, living the dream. His verdict was less nuanced than mine: will go back for free rum though, he told me on WhatsApp. The language of Shakespeare: I must find out when his babysitter fancies doing some more overtime.

Pan – 6.7
47-49 Peach Street, Wokingham RG40 1XJ
0118 9788893

https://www.panrestaurant.co.uk/

Feature: Al fresco dining (2019)

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N.B. A more recent guide to al fresco dining has been published on the blog and can be found here.

The thoroughly unseasonal spell of sunshine we had recently got me thinking about spring, waiting just round the corner. Tea and toast in the garden, the magnolia flowering, having a coffee outside Tamp or in the Workhouse courtyard and watching the world traipse past. That in turn made me remember, further down the line, the harbingers of good times ahead: the beer festival weekend; “just the one pint” after work in the Allied Arms garden morphing into a long, messy evening; Saturday afternoons stretched out in Forbury Gardens with a good book; the glorious golden slide into summer.

It’s nearly four years since I last published a feature on al fresco dining in Reading, believe it or not. But, as with everything else in this town, much has changed in that time. Dolce Vita and the Plowden Arms have closed, robbing us of some of the best food for miles around and one of Reading’s nicest sun-bathed spots. Forbury’s and Picnic – which also made my list four years ago – are not what they were. The market menu at Forbury’s seems to get more expensive and less special with every passing year, and Picnic isn’t even open on Sundays any more.

Finding establishments to replace them has been harder than you might think. Reading has some great outside spaces but generally, the places lucky enough to own them do not serve good food. The roof terrace at the Thirsty Bear, for instance, is a nice spot and a natural sun trap, but the pizza’s iffy. The Hope & Bear, the artist formerly known as the Abbot Cook/Upin Arms/Jack Of Both Sides, has a very pleasant garden – if you can get past the hum of traffic from the London Road – but the food has never been anything to write home about.

Then, of course, you have places that do decent food but where the space isn’t quite up to scratch. Many of these are chains: it would be lovely to eat outside at Carluccio’s, say, but that spot on the edge of Forbury Gardens sadly never catches the sun, so what should be a great opportunity to have an Aperol spritz and some antipasti becomes a chilly affair. Similarly, the space out the front of Franco Manca is okay, but hardly inspiring. I still enjoy eating at the Lyndhurst, but that little terrace looking out on to Watlington Street feels a tad lacking, more for a pint than the full dining experience.

For my money, Reading lost its finest al fresco dining spot last year when the Fisherman’s Cottage decided to dispense with I Love Paella. When that happened we lost the opportunity to eat salt cod churros and empanadas, patatas bravas with chicken thigh and piquant sauce and so many other glorious dishes in the sunshine with a pint of something cold, fizzy and refreshing. The pub now gets one hundred per cent of the food takings – bully for them, but I definitely won’t be back. Even if the dishes didn’t taste bad, eating there would feel in bad taste.

All that preamble is to say that the list you’re about to read might be Reading’s best al fresco dining options (or at least a conversation starter: your mileage may well vary) but I have to add the disclaimer that they are far from Reading’s best dining options. There’s invariably a degree of compromise involved – you can have an almost Meditteranean lunch, you can have fantastic food, but you can’t necessarily have both. But on a hot and sunny day, when everybody is in shorts and you have a glass of something cold in front of you, maybe that doesn’t matter so much.

Oh, and since starting writing this feature the sun has gone in and the heavens have opened. I can’t help but blame myself, but I still hope this will come in handy in the months ahead.

1. Bhel Puri House

Small plates in the sunshine.

The courtyard outside the George Hotel, just off Yield Hall Lane, catches the sun beautifully in the summer. By day most of its clientele are enjoying coffee, cake or quiche from Workhouse, and in the evening you’re more likely to see patrons of the hotel bar sitting outside enjoying a pint and a fag. But the real trick – at lunchtime or dinner – is to pop in to Bhel Puri House and ask them to serve you in the courtyard.

There’s very little that can match sitting on one of those benches, soaking up the sun and enjoying Bhel Puri House’s almost-legendary chilli paneer, spearing a cube of cheese on a caramelised strip of pepper before popping it in your mouth. The Punjabi samosas are still as gorgeous as the day I first tried them and the crispy bhajia – thin slices of crispy potato with an almost-sweet bright orange carrot chutney – are equally beautiful.

Last year, as summer was coming to an end, I stopped at Bhel Puri House on my way home after work on Friday and enjoyed the courtyard one last time before the clocks went back. Normally I have a mango lassi, but on that occasion a pint of Estrella from the hotel bar seemed like the only sensible option. I’ll be there again as soon as spring is well under way.

Bhel Puri House, Yield Hall Lane, RG1 2HF

2. Bluegrass BBQ

Reading’s best al fresco brunch.

Another Reading restaurant with a sunny terrace going to waste is bland uber-chain Bill’s. It has a great location next to Reading Minster, but I really couldn’t recommend anybody eats there, not even for brunch. I know it has its fans, but I infinitely prefer crossing the churchyard and going to Bluegrass on Gun Street, which has a terrace by the Holybrook which catches the sun and which few people seem to know about.

Once you’re installed, they do one of the best brunches in Reading. Many like the pancakes, but I’m always drawn to the Smokehouse breakfast there. I’ve enthused about it before but really, it does everything very well: the bacon is smoked, salty, streaky and crispy, the sausages are terrific quality and the hash browns are an absolutely joy, especially smudged with a bit of barbecue sauce before eating. If you’re there in the evening, the brisket chilli is a revelation and I really like the southern fried chicken (although maybe not with the waffles and maple syrup). I can see that dinner in the sunshine with a really good beer could make for a lovely al fresco evening.

Bluegrass BBQ, 15 Gun Street, RG1 2JR
https://www.bluegrass-bbq.com/

3. Côte

Continental, albeit canalside.

There are plenty of Oracle chains with space outside, and come the summer they are frequently rammed. Franco Manca and the Real Greek both have decent outdoor areas, and that’s before we get to the delights of eating outside at Nando’s (chicken thighs, medium, with rice, peas and extra halloumi, garlic peri peri on the side, since you asked), an experience which always feels a little like being on holiday in the UK. Many of the Oracle’s al fresco options – including Nando’s, sadly – can feel a little purgatorial. I do however have a real soft spot for the tables for two right in front of Côte (not, I should add, the ones at the edge of the waterside) where you can sit side by side, drink rosé, eat from the reasonable a la carte or the crazily reasonable set menu, and gaze out on the world.

Côte’s food is consistently good, and you won’t go far wrong there, but the specials are always worth a look (especially if they have skate wing on there, probably the nicest thing I’ve ever eaten at Côte). The charcuterie board is a lovely choice at any time of year, but in warm weather the tuna nicoise salad remains one of the best ways to feel slightly virtuous while eating out. Sitting with a view of the canal (technically a river, but if it looks like a canal and feels like a canal…) watching a parade of frazzled shoppers-to-be wander past shouldn’t really work, but for some reason it does. On a good day, when you have one of those tables and the sun is beaming down, you can feel like one of the luckiest diners in Reading.

Côte, 9 The Oracle Centre, RG1 2AG
https://www.cote.co.uk/brasserie/reading

4. London Street Brasserie

The original and best.

The only restaurant to make my list both in 2015 and today, London Street Brasserie has a nice outside area looking out on the river (and the often less than salubrious goings-on near the manky car park on the opposite bank). But that aside, it’s actually quite an attractive decked area which catches plenty of sun, and as the evening light starts to fade there are blankets to keep you warm. Many years as Reading’s fanciest restaurant (a title which has only really been challenged in the last year or so) means that in some respects the food is secondary to the whole experience. As with Cote there’s a set and an a la carte menu, but the better option is nearly always the set which offers an impressive range at a reasonable price: eat there at lunchtime or before 7pm to take full advantage.

Over the winter I became very attached to their haggis and duck egg on toast with HP jus – Reading’s ideal breakfast, disguised as a starter – and the fish and chips, also from the set menu, remains one of my favourite main courses at any price point. The a la carte always feels like more of a gamble at prices which are beginning to feel a little on the steep side for what you get, but the salt and pepper squid is a reliable dish and it’s hard to go wrong with venison and (yet more) haggis. The only thing that stops me gushing about LSB, apart from the pricing, is the consistency: it’s definitely a place which has the occasional off day, but at its best it’s still one of Reading’s finest places to have a meal in the open air.

London Street Brasserie, 2-4 London Street, RG1 4PN
http://www.londonstbrasserie.co.uk/

5. Thames Lido

For burning calories vicariously.

I have struggled to love Thames Lido, and I haven’t quite managed it yet: on every one of my three visits there’s been something wrong, either in terms of service, food or value for money. On one visit the gin and tonic was spendy and unspecial, on another the set menu was a little bit mingy for the money and on my last visit, the ox cheek (allegedly a signature dish) was claggy and undercooked. The service has always been consistent only in its inconsistency, although with Alex – who used to charm the socks off everyone at Mya Lacarte – now on board, that might have changed.

I know I sound like I’m moaning, but here’s the point: when I had lunch there last summer it was such a lovely spot that I put my reservations about the food to one side. The sun was shining, the surroundings were Instagram-perfect (there’s a reason it shows up there so often), my Spanish cider was cold and crisp and watching people braver than me doing lengths somehow helped me to work up quite an appetite. It simply is a gorgeous place to eat lunch, provided you relax your standards somewhat, and probably the single best view of any restaurant in Reading. I think it succeeds despite, rather than because of, its food, but I seem to be swimming against the tide in that respect. It’s the only swimming I plan to do, anyway: I’d much rather sit in the warm, order something nice and leave all that to people better qualified than me.

Thames Lido, Kings Meadow Park, RG1 8FR
http://www.thameslido.com/

The Miller Of Mansfield, Goring

On By ediblereadingIn Reviews4 Comments

The Miller Of Mansfield closed in January 2022 following an attempt by its landlord, Stonegate, to raise the rent by 90%. I’ve left the review up for posterity.

I decided that, this week of all weeks, I needed to catch a break. I’d been nearly broken by icky glazed duck, by grotty kebab meat hiding under squeezy cheese, by skanky burgers and lukewarm chips, by (admittedly good) food brought out at breakneck pace. There was no denying it: I was long overdue a good meal. I was after a sure thing, or as close to that as you can get in the world of restaurants. So this week I made for Gare Du Ding and I hopped on a train to Goring. I intended to try out the Miller Of Mansfield, the much-lauded not-quite-restaurant-not-quite-pub which won the Good Food Guide’s Restaurant Of The Year a few years back.

My companion this week deserved a good meal even more than I did: I went to the Miller with John Luther, who runs South Street and was first seen on this blog last September enduring a truly iffy Lebanese meal at Alona. I still occasionally have nightmares about the wobbly shawarma there, and my other half sometimes shows people the picture of it on her phone, the equivalent of the contents of Compo’s matchbox, or Alan Partridge’s top drawer at the Linton Travel Tavern. In fact, I think she may have done so at the last ER readers’ lunch, which poor John attended: talk about insensitive. After that horror, I wasn’t sure John would ever want to be invited back, so when he asked to join me again I decided I’d take him somewhere truly promising to make amends.

Goring is a lovely place, and the train there was full of well-to-do folk who seemed disgusted by John’s and my conversation about – yes, I’m afraid so – Brexit. The Miller is a short walk from the station and even on a dim and drizzly winter evening I was reminded of what a beautiful, prosperous village it is. It’s a big handsome building, warm and welcoming, and on arrival we were given the option of eating in the pub or the restaurant. The pub was cosier, although some of the tables felt more suitable for drinking than eating, but I actually decided to sit in the restaurant because I felt that restaurant prices felt more well-matched to sitting in a restaurant. Funny how the mind works, sometimes.

I did wonder, later on, if I’d made the wrong decision: the dining room was nice enough, if a little nondescript, and a big table was laid for about a dozen people. We were sat near the back – well, almost, as we were sat next to a screen which had been put there to make the room seem smaller (I could make out another two tables beyond it). That meant that John had a view of pretty much the whole room (and all the people-watching opportunities that came with it) and I was sat looking at a screen. It felt a little unspecial, but perhaps Goring was the kind of village so prosperous that the Miller wasn’t seen as a special occasion restaurant, the kind of place where people were happy to sit in the pub and pay twenty-five pounds for a main course.

Looking at the menu, when it eventually arrived (“I just realised these might enhance your dining experience” said the waitress who brought them over ten minutes later, quite winningly actually) made me think that if the food lived up to its promise then I’d also have been perfectly happy to pay twenty-five pounds for a main. All sorts of good stuff jumped off the page – smoked almonds and Comté as a nibble, gravadlax with crispy quail’s egg, soy glazed monkfish with confit pork, the list went on and on. Just as well, as I’d told John he could choose first (atoning for that shawarma again) so I also had to work out my plan B: I didn’t need it for the mains, but I had to rely on it for the starters.

Before that, we had to choose a wine. We both fancied a white, and the list had lots of appealing choices well before silly money. We were torn between a Grüner Veltliner (“my wife’s favourite”, John told me) and an Albarino, but ended up opting for the latter so it wouldn’t feel too much like rubbing it in when John got home and told Mrs Luther all about it. John then started telling me a story about drinking Albarino in Spain – “they pretty much hand it out for free over there” he said, and I pointed out that the wait staff probably wouldn’t fall for that. Goring, after all, is very much not the continent. Anyway, the wine was superb – fresh, lively, almost-sharp – and felt decent value at just under forty pounds.

We were nursing it for a while because, again, it felt like some time before anybody returned to take our order – a shame, as we could gladly have been picking at some nibbles by then. The couple at the table next to us wandered off out front leaving half of their starters still there on the table, and I unworthily wondered to myself if they’d notice a smidge of it going missing. This was well before the boisterous table for twelve turned up, so it wasn’t as if the restaurant was rushed off its feet, but the whole thing felt a little odd.

Anyway, enough quibbles: let’s move on to the food, because it was easily special enough to make you turn a blind eye to any glitches in service or being seated facing a screen. A little loaf of sourdough came to the table with churned butter and whipped bacon butter – all of these were fantastic but the taste of smoked streaky sneaking through in the whipped butter was nothing short of sorcery. The gougeres, a pair of little savoury profiteroles packing a real punch of blue cheese, were an absolute delight.

We’d also ordered a venison sausage roll, which came with home-made brown sauce. It was just under a fiver and really quite generously sized: I can be a very greedy diner, but even I would struggle to describe it as a nibble. “We have a rule in my house that whoever cuts has to choose last” said John, before dividing the sausage roll into two such unequal halves that I almost felt guilty scoffing the bigger one, until I remembered that he was having the oxtail croquette and I wasn’t. It was phenomenal, the venison lean and dense and again with a beautiful whiff of wintry woodsmoke. The brown sauce was heavenly, although the sausage roll really didn’t need it. “It almost has too much sausagemeat” said John; I managed to avoid doing an obvious double take.

The second nibble was less successful. The rabbit rillette itself was delicious, full of rich strands, the whole thing topped with a truly beautiful sweet jelly that felt like it had a touch of something like Sauternes in it. But the “lavroche crackers” were long, thin, impractical and just not worth the bother. We put some of the rillette (not an easy thing to spread on a brittle, narrow rectangle of cracker) on them before giving up and sticking the rest on the sourdough, which is possibly where it should have been all along.

The starters, if anything, were even better. John had the oxtail croquette, which meant that I had a side portion of envy. It was a single, beautiful thing which came on a bed of parsnip puree, served on a dish which looked alarmingly like a section of tree trunk. By this point the lighting in the Miller had reached a level which would defeat all attempts at photography, and my picture of this dish was so bad (disturbingly so) that you’ll have to take my word for it. It was dotted with little blobs of dill and shallots, and the taste I had was properly fantastic, deep in flavour with shreds of magnificent beef. “This is like a really middle class Findus Crispy Pancake”, I said: John nodded, probably humouring me.

I had chosen the cauliflower lasagne, and although it didn’t live up to the croquette it was an intriguing dish. More of an open lasagne, really, but I wish there had been more of the cauliflower and less of the hazelnut, which was billed as a “hazelnut crumble” but felt coarser than that and took over the whole thing more than I’d have liked. It was saved by a truly astounding caper and raisin puree which simultaneously managed to taste of both and neither, a mind-bending sort of agrodolce which transformed the dish into something rather special. I don’t even like raisins, but I could have eaten this until the cows came home.

Somewhere between the last mouthful of the starters and the arrival of our main courses, John and I ran out of wine. So we asked nicely if somebody could bring us the wine list again. It didn’t arrive, and I seem to remember we asked again, but even as our main courses were brought to the table we had to ask again and a very apologetic waitress returned with the list. We ordered straight away – a glass of New Zealand pinot noir for me, some Picpoul de Pinet for John – mainly because I was worried that if we didn’t we might never see wine again (both, incidentally, were cracking).

In fairness, by this time the large table nearby was in full swing and I can see that would take up a lot of time and attention. But even having said that, the service throughout – although never less than lovely – was a little more slapdash than I’d expect from food at this level. When we were served by Mary (who, along with her husband Nick, owns the restaurant and who runs the front of house) everything was brilliant, but when she wasn’t there the rest of the wait staff somehow went missing in action.

But anyway, let’s return to the food (again) – because it redeemed a multitude of sins and because my main course, one of the best things I’ve eaten in a long time, was specifically recommended by Mary. Breast of wild duck came served on a heap of sauerkraut (one of my very favourite things) with thin discs of sweet beetroot sitting under the whole thing. The duck was as tender as any I can remember, and perfect on a wintry night. I could eat sauerkraut until it came out of my ears, and this was joyous, as was the glossy sauce (made with duck heart, according to the menu) that brought it all together.

I might have liked the accompanying croquette to have a little more duck leg and a little less spud (I’d been spoiled by my taste of John’s starter) but that might have been just me. But no matter, because even better was the little pan of “duck crackers” brought to the table – they looked like prawn crackers, they had their texture too but the taste, all duck and smoke, was a little miracle. I let John try some, and tried not to be too smug. Again, I’ve not put my crappy photograph up because, however badly I may have written this, my words are still better.

John’s main course, in any event, was no slouch. His sea bream came with greens, crispy capers (one of the finest things in the world, if you ask me), a very good tartare sauce and something called “salty fingers” which is a sea vegetable a little like samphire. I did a Google image search of salty fingers as part of the research for this review and was relieved that it didn’t throw up anything dodgy (the infamous Leslie Grantham webcam still, for instance): perhaps it was just my dirty mind that led me to fear the worst.

John was a big fan of this dish, and from my forkful I could completely see why. “It has just enough greens,” he said, “although if I’m being fussy I wish the skin had been properly crispy”. We also ordered some chips – because Mary had told us they were good – and she wasn’t wrong, although under the circumstances they were probably excessive. They defeated John anyway, leaving him too full for dessert. But since I saw one on the menu that I just had to try, I ordered it all the same and told the waitress that she could bring two spoons. “We’re not a couple though” I told her, almost certainly unnecessarily.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from “chocolate custard” – I was hoping the emphasis would be more on the chocolate and less on the custard – but what arrived was far more beautiful than I can describe and hundreds of times more appealing than the photo below makes it look. The texture was like crème brulee, or a mousse with no bubbles, not as dense as a ganache but no less rich and intense for that. On top was a sheet of tuile rich with salt and sesame and the whole thing was dotted with little spheres of bright sweet orange.

John is an awfully well-mannered dining companion – he took the smaller half of the sausage roll, he let me finish the rillette, he practically apologised to the wait staff for them not having brought us the wine list yet – but even so I was relieved when he put down his spoon and gave me a clear run on the rest of the dessert. It was properly magnificent.

While we were waiting for our bill to arrive (and finishing off some beautiful, chewy macarons with vanilla custard which had been brought as an extra treat) we compared notes. John told me he was mentally already planning a trip back with his wife, and in truth I had also been trying to work out a good excuse to return. John knows his restaurants – we swapped stories of great meals we’d had, talked about places on our hit list and talked about how we should beetle off to London one weekday when we were both free and have lunch at Medlar, my favourite London spot, right at the unfashionable end of Chelsea.

“That’s always a sign of a really good restaurant”, I said, “that before you’ve finished meal one you’re planning meal two.” And although John and I both ordered well, the menu was littered with roads not taken – not only that, but I knew perfectly well that by the time I visited the Miller again the menu would probably look completely different. Dinner came to one hundred and forty pounds, not including tip, and personally I didn’t resent a single penny of it.

I often complain that Reading is lacking a true special occasion restaurant, and that even the options nearby are either too unspecial, too fussy, too full of themselves or just too difficult to get to. The Bottle & Glass in Binfield Heath, The Royal Oak at Paley Street, The Crown at Burchetts Green even: somehow they all fall short, to the extent where my family often congregate at the Crooked Billet in Stoke Row when they want to celebrate a birthday.

For me, the Miller Of Mansfield comes closest to filling that gap. I know the service was a little haphazard, and I struggled to warm to the room, but it’s so genuine and likeable that none of that seems to matter. More importantly, the food reaches heights that render all of that somewhat of a moot point. I went expecting to like it a great deal but maybe not love it and, based on other reports I’ve had, I wondered if I would leave slightly hungry. Well, none of that came to pass, and instead I have a new place to go for celebrations, blow-outs or even just decadent midweek dinners with a new friend. All that and it’s only thirteen minutes from Reading by train. What more could you ask?

The Miller Of Mansfield – 8.5
High Street, Goring, RG8 9AW
01491 872829

https://millerofmansfield.com/

Wau, Newbury

On By ediblereadingIn Reviews2 Comments

Wau closed in September 2019. I’ve left the review up for posterity.

One thing I’ve often pondered, writing this blog, is the holy trinity you always have to bear in mind when eating in – and assessing – a restaurant: the food, the service and the room. They all have the power to transform your experience. Take Dolce Vita, for example, which closed last year: some of the food was great, some of it (the pizzas and pasta, in particular) could be distinctly middling. But the service was so brilliant that I found I never really minded – a night there could feel like having friends cook for you, in a home from home, in the same way that some pubs (The Retreat, in my case) feel like having a second living room.

I’ve also thought for a long time that if the food is good enough, you can overlook blips in service. I’ve made no secret of my love of the food at Clay’s Hyderabadi Kitchen, but it can’t be denied that the service has never attained the same heights, with some churn in staff and some elementary mistakes here and there (no, I haven’t quite finished that mango beer, for example, so please stop trying to take it away). When they first opened, it was easy to pass it off as teething troubles or growing pains, but once a restaurant has been trading longer you expect a little more.

The room I’m not so fussed about – I agree with Marco Marchetti, the dapper and wise waiter at Pepe Sale (who’s now hung up his Larry Grayson-style spectacles and moved to Kent, I’m sorry to say) who once told me “we Italians don’t care about the room”. It’s nice to eat in a beautiful room. It’s nice to look at, say, Coppa Club and think “haven’t they done a great job fitting this out?” but when the service is comically bad and the food is indifferent (as it is at, say, Coppa Club) it really doesn’t redeem things. That might be my age, or the fact that I’m not in London: I’m sure some people are dazzled enough by eating somewhere Instagrammable like Sketch or Bob Bob Ricard, but it’s not for me.

But first and foremost, I’ve always believed that food is what matters. If the food is good enough, everything else is secondary. It stands to reason, doesn’t it? Except that this week the review is of Wau, the Malaysian street food restaurant a stone’s throw from Newbury station, and following my visit there I’m no longer so sure.

I found myself in Newbury one weekday evening with my regular dining companion (and close personal friend) Zoë, and after a couple of drinks in the Catherine Wheel I reckoned Wau was the obvious candidate for an evening meal. I’d been once last year and had a terrific meal, and when I put pictures on Instagram loads of people came out of the woodwork to tell me how great Wau was. You don’t see Malaysian food in many places round Reading (although the Moderation often does a few dishes, including nasi goreng), and it was less than five minutes from the station, and I happened to be in Newbury after all, so I decided to go back on duty and try it out again.

Speaking of the room, Wau’s is pretty unprepossessing. At the front are high tables with high stools, and further back are lower tables with still-ubiquitous Tollix chairs. The bar runs along one side of the room, with the kitchen at the back: not an open kitchen per se, but from some tables you get a pretty good view of what’s going on through the glass door. I think there are more tables round the corner, past the bar, although I wasn’t seated there.

The first problem happened when we arrived and the waiter tried to seat us at one of the precarious-looking high tables nearest the door, for two people. They didn’t feel at all like a relaxing place to eat. Could we sit at one of the bigger, lower tables further back, I asked? He looked at me like I’d asked for his date of birth and his mother’s maiden name, or enquired about whether he’d ever considered letting the love of Jesus into his life. It was a Tuesday evening at 8pm, and only one other table was occupied: they burnt a fair bit of goodwill umming and aahing before reluctantly letting us sit at a table for four.

The menu at Wau looks good, and has been recently updated. It’s divided into “Steamed and Grilled”, small plates costing between four and eight pounds, “Rice and Noodles” and “Curry”, which are larger plates costing between ten and thirteen pounds. I took this to be the dividing line between starters and mains – and the menu definitely encourages you to think that way but, as I was to find out, the reality is a bit more haphazard. But all that was yet to come at the point when we ordered three starters (a combination of greed and hunger), two mains and a couple of side dishes.

“The dishes will all come out when they come out, is that okay?” said the waiter.

It wasn’t, really, and I should have made more of this because it’s a real bugbear of mine and I’ve disliked it ever since Wagamama decided to make it a selling point. That approach feels like it’s geared entirely towards the convenience of the kitchen rather than the experience of customers. How presumptuous, I’ve always thought: we’ll make your food in the order we feel like it, and you’ll take what you’re given. Who’s paying who in this scenario? I often wonder.

“What does that mean exactly?”

“Oh. In this case you’ll probably get the squid first, then the pork belly, then the satay, then the beef rendang and nasi goreng and the other bits” he said. This didn’t really inspire confidence, because it was exactly the sequence in which we’d ordered everything, but never mind. What’s the worst that can happen? I reckoned.

Well, here’s what happened – and I’m sorry if this makes for a dull paragraph, but it’s taken from the time stamps of actual photos taken on my and Zoë’s phones: we sat down just after 8 o’clock. At 8.10 we poured our bottles of Tiger beer and placed our order. At 8.19 the salt and pepper squid (a starter) arrived, followed at 8.20 by my nasi goreng (a main). At 8.21 the pork belly starter and the sambal beans (a side dish) were brought to the table. At 8.24 Zoë’s beef rendang turned up, and at 8.25 our final starter, the satay lamb skewers, materialised. So within fifteen minutes of ordering they had brought almost everything we had ordered, all in the space of five minutes. Quite how it would have all fitted on the table for two they originally tried to fob us off with I have no idea, but it turns out that “the dishes will come out when they come out” actually means “they will all come out at once”.

I got that it was a slow night, but that didn’t seem like much of an excuse for the kitchen staff throwing the kitchen sink at trying to get us out quickly. And that’s when I realised – you can say it’s all about the food, but eating out isn’t about eating food, it’s about having a meal. A nicely paced meal, where you can take your time over what you eat and look forward to what you’ve ordered next without worrying about everything going cold before you get to enjoy it. It was utterly ridiculous, and all I could think was: why aren’t the serving staff a little embarrassed by all this?

I say that we had nearly everything we’d ordered. Zoe ordered roti canai to use to scoop up the rendang. That never arrived, so we asked for it again. It still didn’t arrive, so we asked for it again, again. It reached us ten minutes after the rest, too quick for your main courses to follow your starter but not quick enough for your side dish to follow literally everything else you had ordered. I’ve never known, and I’m choosing my words carefully, a clusterfuck like it.

The saddest thing of all is that the food was, almost without exception, gorgeous. The salt and pepper squid had so much freshness and texture, and was dusted with tons of good stuff. The pork belly – a really generous portion, precisely balanced between the crispy crunch of roasting and the tenderness of the meat under the skin – was a beautiful dish, perfected by dipping it in the sticky, savoury soy sauce. The satay lamb was my least favourite of the three, but even that was cooked beautifully and the satay sauce was as deep and rich as any I could remember. Would that I had got to enjoy those three dishes as a trio, without worrying about my nasi goreng going cold, but it was not to be.

Actually, the nasi goreng was my least favourite dish of the evening and, sorry to say, I don’t think it was anywhere near as good as the one served at the Moderation and the Queen’s Head. At those places you get chicken and prawn, but at Wau you have to choose and my choice, the chicken, was oddly bouncy in texture. Weird plating, too – the sunny side up egg should be on top so it can ooze its yolk into the rice but this – probably a little overcooked – was stuck on the side like an afterthought. I left some of this dish, although that was probably more because it didn’t stay hot enough for long enough, not with so many other things to try. I left the prawn crackers, although I’m told they were a reasonable substitute for the roti which nearly never came.

One of the nicest things we ate was the side dish I’d ordered to come with the nasi goreng (although, in reality, everything came with the nasi goreng). Sambal green beans had a beautiful amount of crunch, having been no more than blanched, and coated in Malaysian shrimp paste, perfectly brick-red and savoury, with just enough heat and lots of complexity: I could easily have eaten more than one plate of these.

I was familiar with the beef rendang, Zoë’s choice, from a previous visit but really it was every bit as delicious as I remembered – so much so that I regretted my nasi goreng from the first forkful to the last. The sauce was glossy and sweet with coconut, but with more than enough edge to save it from being even remotely saccharine, but more importantly the beef had been properly slow-cooked so every piece surrendered into strands. It would almost be worth going to Wau and just ordering this dish, which come to think of it might also be the only way to ensure that you get to eat it at a time of your choosing.

I also really liked the roti, when it eventually came out – lovely and buttery, and just right to wrap around that beef, even if it made for a slightly messy experience. It came with a little dish of dipping sauce which was pleasant enough, but not really needed under the circumstances.

I’ve already talked about the service, but of course the real test of service is how they handle it when matters are less than perfect. So when we were asked how our food had been, we said that it was very nice but that really, we hadn’t wanted it to all come out at once and that if we’d known we would have insisted that it didn’t, or perhaps ordered our starters first and then our mains. It’s fair to say that this rather fell on stony ground. That’s just how people eat in Malaysia, the chap told us – all the food comes at once and everyone pitches in, sharing everything.

It’s fair to say that I wasn’t entirely convinced by this argument, and I said so: I could possibly understand it with a big group of people, but there were two of us. Why did they divide their menu into starters and mains, I asked? He pointed out, again in a manner best described as unapologetic, that they weren’t called starters and mains (which, having looked at the menu, is true: but if you have the small dishes at the start and the bigger items partway through you definitely give that impression). Then, finally, came the non-apology so popular in the post-truth times we live in.

“I’m sorry if you feel that way”, he said. Well, that makes everything better then.

After that a lady came over who I think was the owner or manager, and we had exactly the same conversation, only more pleasantly. She promised that they weren’t trying to rush us or move us along or turn the table. That’s all very well, we said, but if so why bring all the food in the space of five minutes? We were then told again about how people all share food in Malaysia, which was doubtless true but, in Newbury, wouldn’t it make sense to put something on the menu explaining the concept or at least get the waiting staff to clearly explain how it worked? Normally they did, she said, which didn’t explain why the chap who took our order – the same man who had served me on a previous visit – had failed to do so either time (on a previous visit we got our starters, then we had our mains, and everything went as you might expect).

The thing we were at pains to point out, again and again, was that the food had been so good, but the way it had been brought out robbed us of the opportunity to properly enjoy it, and ourselves for that matter. But by this point I was beginning to feel like one of those TripAdvisor reviews in human form, and found myself eagerly wanting the conversation, and the experience, to end. The manageress was also sorry we felt that way, and agreed to take something off the bill. That turned out to be ten per cent, which to me didn’t quite feel like enough, and our meal – with that discount – came to fifty-four pounds, not including tip. That was for three small dishes, two big dishes, two sides and two beers – and we still tipped ten per cent, though with hindsight I don’t really know why.

You could indisputably eat well at Wau – if you happened to be in Newbury, close to the station, and preferably in a hurry. Even then, I would advise you to be unambiguous about what you want to eat and the order in which you want to eat it. But those are a lot of caveats, a lot of hoops to jump through, and I could hardly blame you if you read all this and thought thanks but no thanks.

The real shame of it is that so much of the food was terrific, but the overall experience left a nasty taste that no amount of skill in the kitchen can cancel out; food might be the most important element of any visit to a restaurant, but it turns out that it’s service that transforms it from mere food into a meal. All that makes this almost impossible to rate but, to give you an idea, I reckon the experience at Wau must have easily cost it a mark. I hope they iron those problems out, but I doubt I’ll be back to find out. If you decide it sounds like your sort of thing, you’ll have to let me know.

Wau – 6.8
49 Cheap Street, Newbury, RG14 5BX
01635 528877

http://www.waumalaysian.co.uk/