You get something a little different this week on the blog as part of ER’s tenth birthday celebrations – I’m delighted to say that my fiancée and number one dining companion Zoë has written something to mark the occasion.

You might know her mainly from her presence in my reviews and impressive grasp of Anglo-Saxon, or you may have met her at one of the ER readers’ lunches, but you might not know that she writes beautifully, that Mine’s A Pint, the Reading CAMRA magazine she edits was recognised nationally earlier this year and a lot of her excellent prose can be found on her own blog.

I’m really honoured to have her words on my blog, so without further ado here they are. All the gorgeous photos in this post are also hers.

* * * * *

We were sitting on the sofa one evening when ER mentioned that 2023 would be the tenth anniversary of the blog. He said he was thinking about how to commemorate the occasion. 

“I’ll write you something” I offered. 

“Would you?”

“Yes, of course. Because you’ve changed my relationship with food for the better.”

I really mean that, too. Meeting ER has been by far the biggest impact on my long-standing – and challenging – relationship with food. How can you go out with somebody who loves food this much and not be into it yourself?

When I moved back to Reading in 2015, I fired up my almost unused Twitter account to discover that Reading was quite a Twitter town. Lots of folk here used it to connect, so I put aside my can’t-be-arsed-to-learn-another-social-network apathy and gave it another go. I followed the #rdguk hashtag, and from there I found and followed accounts relating to two of my key interests, transport and food. Reading Buses and Edible Reading. 

Here’s the crux of my challenging relationship with food: I’ve always loved food, but I’m also wary of it. That may sound odd, but it’s true. Up until five years ago, I was a notoriously fussy eater and any occasion that involved eating out with groups would cause me great anxiety. I don’t think I even realised it was anxiety, back then, because I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain the feeling itself. But eating out always caused me stress, especially if I didn’t know what might be lurking in a dish. I’d generally order the same few things everywhere to make things easier; I seldom experimented. 

I was suspicious of so many foods. Tomatoes, vinegar, tinned food and any pickles were the worst offenders. Even today, the smell of ketchup makes me want to heave. My mother said I was fine with eating until I turned two and then, almost overnight, I changed. From that day forward, there were very few things I’d eat. I remember going on a school trip at the age of seven and getting very worked up about it as it approached – tears at bedtime, the full wobble.

All this was because of food. My mum wouldn’t be there to manage the situation for me and make the adjustments, and so I worried about being forced to eat things I didn’t want to eat. Over the years people tried coercion, encouragement and reassurance to try and get me past this mental block, that was in my head like a lead weight. It took years and years to very gradually fix it. 

Reading ER for the first time was like reading a foreign language, talking about a Reading I just didn’t know. Coffee shops outside of Starbucks? Restaurants other than Wagamama and Pizza Express?

I knew so little and to be honest, I wasn’t even looking. I was a chain restaurant person through and through: I felt safety in the chain. I could always opt for the ‘safe’ dishes at a chain restaurant. I suppose I’m exactly the kind of reader he hoped to bring in from the chains and introduce to the other side of food and dining culture. In the five years we’ve been together, it’s happened.

We certainly didn’t get together because of my Jay Rayner-esque rhetoric (I mean, he really wouldn’t like that anyway: he rolls his eyes at the sight of the man). I made him laugh, though. It’s my Helen Gurley Brown equivalent of “sinking in”, something I learned at school when I was as wide as I was tall, with a gob full of train-track braces.  

ER had to embark on a lot of educating with me and it took time. I needed encouragement not judgement, and I needed gentle persuasion to try new things. What he did so well was to piece together the things he knew I did like, with dishes that included those things but took them up a notch. I love cheese, for instance, and onions. I do love an onion. But had I ever tried paneer? No. Had I tried Bhel Puri House’s chilli paneer? No. Had I tried Sapana Home’s Chili chicken with vegetables? No. Did I then try them? Yes, I did. And did I love them all? Absolutely. 

He knew I was partial to a curry – my family often have it instead of a traditional Christmas dinner, much to the amusement of friends – but had I ever had a curry that wasn’t a korma or a chicken tikka masala? Nope. Well, then welcome to Clay’s Hyderabadi Kitchen. Once he knew I could handle a bit of spice on my chicken, welcome to Geo Cafe’s ajika chicken wrap, the Challoumi wrap by Puree and Bakery House’s boneless baby chicken with spicy rice and salad. Like dialling up a dimmer switch, every mouthful was an experience: it felt like eating in colour for the first time. I don’t think it’s possible to go back to how I ate before. I would never want to. 

ER lives and breathes food, and from the sounds of it that’s a longstanding passion. He told me once about a family holiday to Greece when he was a kid, saying it was a turning point for trying different types of food and that something changed then. One of his favourite things to do when planning where to head next is to review the full menu, going through it line by line. He adores finding great places and discovering brilliant dishes, dissecting what specifically makes them so good. What the magic is. 

He’s also taught me something else about food: empty calories. He loves food, but if a dish even ventures towards the edge of meh, he’ll simply stop eating it.  This was a revelation to me, somebody who had always felt it necessary to clear my plate. It goes to show just how much our behaviours are unconscious and ingrained from childhood. He’d genuinely rather eat nothing than something pants and yes, I do really understand the luxury that this is today, and the privilege that we enjoy. 

ER really believes in the ability we all have to shape the place where we live. If we all made conscious choices to shop and eat and drink independently, wherever possible, it could transform our town. I’m deeply passionate about Reading: I’m a Reading person through and through. I know its history, I see it changing and its potential and try to do my best to shape its future and conserve its heritage (our love of Reading is another thing that brought us together, I think). 

Reading ER regularly taught me that whilst chain restaurants aren’t always all bad, they don’t often do things justice either. The collective bargaining power of those businesses means they get the best spots in the town to trade from, but the output doesn’t set the culinary world alight. The food costs the consumer the same – if not more – than many independents would charge, and the experience and quality are average at best. And where are the profits reinvested? Not back into this town, that’s for sure!

Through ER, I discovered Blue Collar and the very likeable Glen Dinning, whose company I always thoroughly enjoy. I’ve eaten at most of the traders over the years, and attended most of the festivals Blue Collar has run in the Forbury too. I was so excited to see his vision of Blue Collar Corner come to life. I actively think about Wednesdays and Fridays and what I fancy from Blue Collar on any given day. Sharian’s Jamaican? Fink’s wrap or mezze box? Or actually, away from the market, do I really want a Tuna Turner from Shed or one of Picnic’s legendary salads? All independent, all brilliant. None of it lining the pockets of those who don’t need it.

And this is probably the thing he’ll go on about the most. The mantra goes something like this: support the indies around you. Stop spending in Costa (owned by Coca-Cola) when you have better independent options north, south, east and west of you. ER votes with his feet more than anybody else I know. 

And he’s stepped in to defend local businesses, especially when they could have done a better job of defending themselves. Where some indies have dealt with unscrupulous landlords, or badly behaved management, ER has stuck his neck on the line to help and to call things out exactly as he sees them. It might not have always won him fans, but I know he’d do it again tomorrow because he believes in doing the right thing by the right people. Few know this about him, but the businesses he has supported over the years do and they have always been so gracious and thankful. If there is one thing he hates more than shit food, it’s a lack of justice and fairness. I really love him for this.

ER tapped into my local-centric, people-centric passion, I think. I always felt it would be inevitable that we’d bump into each other one day and have a good natter about Reading. Well, that happened and it’s fair to say that conversation has never stopped. If we have a weekend day off together (not always a given, as I’m a retailer myself), we’ll likely take a stroll into town, have a spot of lunch but most definitely end it with a coffee at CUP or Workhouse. 

He’ll ask whether I fancy joining him for a review this week, or whether I want him to find somebody else to keep him company. It’ll usually depend on how tight my jeans are feeling. We’ll review the list of options, and he’ll pick one. I’ll ask him what his preamble will be. “Well, I think my angle is” he’ll say, and so it begins, another adventure into a (hopefully brilliant) meal, perhaps an unsung hero of the Reading culinary scene just waiting to be discovered. I feel lucky to play a part in that. After all, eating is one of life’s greatest pleasures. You have to do it anyway, so why not do it the best way you can?

This piece is part of Edible Reading at 10. See also:

• The 10 most significant restaurants of the last decade
• The 10 saddest closures of the last decade
• Reading’s 50 best dishes (50-41)
• Reading’s 50 best dishes (40-31)
• Reading’s 50 best dishes (30-21)
• Reading’s 50 best dishes (20-11)
• Reading’s 50 best dishes (10-1)

This week, to mark ten years of Edible Reading, I’m looking back at the ten most significant Reading venues to open over the last decade. Not the “best”, although I think some of Reading’s best restaurants feature in this list. Not my favourites either, although, again, this list has some of my favourites in it. But rather I’m looking at the ones that were most significant, the most influential, the ones that changed hospitality in Reading in some way or put Reading on the map.

I should explain before I get started that, in general, I’m very suspicious of restaurant bloggers using words like “important” or “significant” in terms of restaurants. I think I’m suspicious of those adjectives in general, like critics loftily announcing that something is “the most important film of the year” or dullards on social media saying if you only read one thing today, make it this. But then I’ve never liked being told what to do.

I think restaurant bloggers, though, are very prone to this kind of behaviour. It brings out a certain preachy bossiness in people, or perhaps blogging attracts the preachy and the bossy. I know that to write you do have to at least slightly be comfortable with the sound of your own voice – I’m self-aware enough to know that – but this is a tendency in food writing that I just do not like at all. 

Whether it’s pompous ol’ Jay Rayner telling people, in his dreary macho way, how to eat food (“There are big prawns, heads and shells intact, which is as it should be, this time in a rust-coloured broth heavy with smoky paprika. Give those heads a good suck. Call for more napkins.”) or self-inflated bloggers saying that a restaurant is “exactly what this city needs”, I just can’t be doing with it. Need is always the trigger word in these pronouncements. “This is a restaurant you need to know about” oozes one particularly bad restaurant blogger I know. Of course it is. And you need to get over yourself.

So generally I don’t do this, I just say “this is a restaurant I liked, you might like it too”. But then  – laugh all you like – I’ve never had quite a big enough ego to play in the top division, and my life’s all the better for it. Ordinarily I would write something about my favourite restaurants, but hitting this arbitrary landmark has got me thinking about perspective and the decade just gone, so you get this piece, just the once. If you hate it, or your favourite places aren’t on it, or you think “what gives this guy the right to decide?” I can guarantee you that at least fifty per cent of me agrees with you.

As I said, there are many restaurants I like that don’t feature on this list because they haven’t had that effect. San Sicario is a great example, or Papa Gee: lovely restaurants, well worth a visit, two different examples of how to do Italian food really well, but neither has had a notable impact on Reading’s food and drink scene. And I’ve decided to restrict myself to things that have influenced Reading positively – if I hadn’t, somewhere like Chick-fil-A, the proof of concept that established Reading’s appetite for shoddy American chains, might have made my list. 

But let’s keep it positive: these places changed Reading for the better. They’re loaded more towards the start of my ten years writing this blog, partly because restaurateurs (and landlords) have taken fewer risks since Covid came along and partly because I think you need a little time and perspective to gauge how a restaurant changes a place. 

That said, a fair few of my near misses that almost made this list are more recent. ThaiGrr! and Tasty Greek Souvlaki, for instance: both emerged from the pandemic and both manage the achievement of being a triple threat, a restaurant that can manage eat in, takeaway and delivery with equal skill. You could make a case for either of them qualifying for this list. That’s equally true, in its way, of Blue Collar Corner, although I sense it’s still finding its way and deciding what kind of venue it wants to be, and the move from long-term, high quality traders to a constantly revolving cast is also still settling down.

Finally, a couple of other places that nearly made my list merit a mention. Fidget & Bob, despite its brilliance, is almost too idiosyncratic for a list like this: it cannot be imitated, it very much stands alone out on Kennet Island and so, for all its good points, it just misses out. The same goes for Geo Café. And finally, I did want to single out Siblings Home. It may not have been open all the time – or even regularly – and it couldn’t make a go of its spot on Hemdean Road but it definitely felt like a dress rehearsal for someone like The Collective, which does all that stuff even better, in a more polished way in a lovelier site.

Right, having said all that let’s get started on my preachy, bossy, self-important list. Please disagree violently in the comments field, because – this time of all times – that’s what the comments field is for.

10. Honest Burgers (2017-present)

Generally, this and the other lists I am publishing to mark the blog’s birthday don’t have much space for chains in them. My ten saddest closures won’t include the Pizza Express on St Mary’s Butts (although that was a pity, come to think of it) and it definitely won’t mention Pizza Hut in the Oracle. But it would be remiss not to include Honest Burgers here.

Because as a chain, moving to Reading, it did everything right. We were its first branch outside London, and it picked a beautiful, neglected building and restored it to its former glory – standing up at the top of those stairs, looking down, it’s hard to imagine a more attractive dining room. And it paid respect to Reading, making a burger with some of our finest local ingredients and brewing a house beer with Wild Weather (before they sodded off to Wales).

But also, it ended the non-stop debate over who did central Reading’s best burger. Before Honest there were pretenders: Bluegrass, 7Bone, RYND, Five Guys. After Honest the answer was pretty clear: it’s Honest. Now we can all get on with our lives, knowing that’s settled. And is it my imagination, or has the centre of Reading had fewer burger restaurants opening since as a result?

9. Bakery House (2015-present)

Bakery House really did come out of nowhere and when it opened back in 2015 it offered a kind of casual dining Reading hadn’t really seen. It wasn’t Reading’s first Lebanese restaurant – that was La Courbe, which opened at the end of 2013 – but it was the one that won hearts and minds, VHS to La Courbe’s Betamax.

Part of that was accessibility – no sharp-edged glass tables and fussy square plates, no wine list crammed with Lebanese classics. No wine list at all, actually, just soft drinks and fresh juice, ayran if you felt adventurous. But a lot was about how it made the food easy and fun. Some of their dishes, their shawarma and their boneless baby chicken, went on to be classics but there was always huge strength in depth in that menu, with great falafel, impeccable houmous, punchy little maqaneq and makdous, little aubergines stuffed with walnut.

It became one of those perfect all-purpose restaurants, which are rarer than you think: great for a solo dinner, a catch up with a friend or a big group (and surprisingly good for vegetarians, if you stick to the mezze). About the only thing you couldn’t do there was get drunk, and heaven knows Reading has quite enough places for that already.

Not only did the place become this brilliant one-size-fits-all restaurant but its influence can be seen in the popularity of other Lebanese restaurants in Reading and other grill houses that have more than a bit of Bakery House in their DNA. Can you imagine Tasty Greek Souvlaki without Bakery House paving the way? A recent acquisition by the owners of House Of Flavours has led to slightly swankier menus (and they’ve finally upped the prices a little) but hopefully it has also secured Bakery House’s future for the next ten years. The food’s still cracking, I’m happy to say.

8. Nibsy’s (2014-2021)

Nibsy’s blazed the trail in Reading in more ways than one. The most obvious, of course, is all about gluten: it’s hard to remember just how revolutionary a gluten-free cafe was back in 2014, whereas now restaurants, especially chains, are far more gluten conscious.

Moreover, few independents have been so spot on with their look and branding on day one. We’re used to plucky independents opening before they’re quite ready, to them not having the level of polish to let them compete with their well-backed, established rivals. Nibsy’s proved that it doesn’t have to be that way, and few independent restaurants – with the arguable exception of Clay’s – have got that quite so right.

None of that would have mattered a jot, naturally, if the food wasn’t up to scratch. But the other element of Nibsy’s genius was that food without gluten simply didn’t feel like going without. Particularly in terms of baking – glorious quiches and cakes, and Nibsy’s mini Bakewell tarts, a phenomenal treat I think about even now.

I even tried their mince pies one Christmas, and despite never being a fan of dried fruit they still came close to winning me over. Nibsy’s managed a feat that eludes many establishments like it: it proved that you could cater to dietary requirements without being worthy or joyless. That alone would justify a place on this list – another establishment, further down, definitely followed in its footsteps.

7. I Love Paella at the Fisherman’s Cottage (2016-2018)

Although they started out in street food and catering, my experience of I Love Paella actually began in 2015, when Workhouse Coffee’s Greg Costello invited them to cook out of his Oxford Road branch in the evenings. I went, I discovered that they didn’t charge corkage and I became hooked. And then they started trading out of the Horn, a surprising development, and became more like a restaurant – with access to a proper kitchen the range got wider, the dishes more imaginative. But they were there less than nine months and then they moved to the place which earned them their spot on this list, the Fisherman’s Cottage.

It was at the Fisherman’s Cottage that they became the place they were always meant to be: an innovative Spanish restaurant, if not one that ever quite reached the status of tapas bar. Their grilled goats cheese with tomato jam, their empanadas and especially their salt cod churros were like nothing the town had ever seen. And, as you’d expect, they served quite magnificent paella for two, studded with chicken thighs or thick with squid. Their talent in the kitchen, coupled with the Fisherman’s Cottage’s great selection of beer and outstanding, sun-drenched outside space, made them a proper destination restaurant in a way few Reading venues have managed to match.

More to the point, they were the blueprint for two different models in terms of Reading’s food scene. The first is pop-ups, so without I Love Paella there would have been no Caucasian Spice Box and Georgian Feast, no Chef Stevie. But also, they were the first business to make that move from street food to pop-ups, to go from cooking in the market to cooking in a bricks and mortar site. Other people followed in their footsteps, but I Love Paella did it first. Few did it better.

6. The Lyndhurst (2019-present)

In the course of running this blog, I have reviewed the Lyndhurst many times because it has changed hands so often. It used to be a Spirit House pub, owned by the same people as the Moderation. Then someone else ran it and took on a chef from London Street Brasserie, and it was good but not great. Then it came under new ownership again and the food got good – seriously good, and quite cheffy in places – and I had somewhere I loved eating just round the corner. And then, in 2019, they left the pub. Oh great, I thought, what are we going to get next? 

Well, what we got next was a couple of unassuming chaps called Sheldon and Dishon. I went to the Lyndhurst on their opening night in 2019 and they seemed a little shellshocked, like they didn’t know what they had taken on. But over the months ahead, they proved again and again that looks can deceive. Because what they’ve built over the past four years is Reading’s only high quality, durable take on the gastropub concept.

And the food has got better and better and better. They never stop being a pub, or catering for people who want to eat in a pub. So they will do you a burger, which happens to be one of Reading’s best burgers, or fish and chips, or sausages and mash. But they’ll also do stunning pulled pork tacos, or black pudding Scotch eggs, or skate wing anointed with brown butter and capers, or rabbit stuffed with liver and wrapped in prosciutto. 

And whatever a dish looks like the first time you order it, it will look and taste different the third, fourth or tenth time. Because they never stop trying to make things better, or perfect. They always hit better, they often hit perfect. They’ll do a burger night on Monday, Korean chicken wings on Wednesday and curry every Thursday, but then they’ll knock your socks off with something classically French. When my brother came over from Australia last year and I had lunch with him, I asked him where in Reading he wanted to eat. He didn’t hesitate before saying the Lyndhurst, and he loved it there. 

They served us monkfish with curried Bombay potatoes and a gorgeous coriander chutney, and now if it ever shows up on their specials menu I order it and think of him. That’s the Lyndhurst for you, as good at making memories as anywhere I know. They are the one restaurant in Reading that never quite gets the credit it deserves, because the only thing they are bad at is blowing their own trumpet. But they are also one of the best restaurants Reading has, or has ever had.

5. Namaste Kitchen (2017-2018)

This particular incarnation of Namaste Kitchen burned more brightly and briefly than anywhere else on this list, but it makes the list for a number of reasons. Before Namaste Kitchen opened at the Hook & Tackle, Nepalese food was mainly represented by Sapana Home, a very solid traditional Nepalese restaurant that is still trading today. But Namaste Kitchen, and its truly exceptional food, was the moment when Nepalese food broke out in Reading and found wider appeal.

Part of that was because the food was just so bloody good – phenomenal paneer pakora, big rugged cubes of battered cheese with a sharp, spicy dip, chilli chicken with a huge punch of sweet, sour heat and potatoes glossy with ghee and peppered with cumin. But more to the point Namaste Kitchen has a good claim to be Reading’s first truly great small plates restaurant. Not only that, but it never entirely stopped being a pub – so you could go there for a meal, or for bar snacks while watching the football on a big screen. 

I went many, many times over eight far too short months and then the adventure was over. The chef left, the owners parted company and one of them – the man in charge of their front of house – cashed out and left the business. But the story doesn’t end there because Namaste Kitchen was also Reading’s first introduction to that man, Kamal Tamrakar, and he had unfinished business with Nepalese food in this town. 

First he moved to Namaste Momo, on the edge of Woodley, before again parting company with his business partners and moving on. But it proved to be third time lucky when he finally had the courage of his convictions and put his name over the door, opening Kamal’s Kitchen on Caversham Road in the spring of 2022. Kamal’s Kitchen is a fantastic restaurant, and it feels like he might finally have stopped wandering and settled down. But you never forget your first love, and that’s why Namaste Kitchen is on this list.

4. Vegivores (2019-present)

If you want a real Reading success story, Vegivores is it. They started out doing street food at Blue Collar but rather than take the well-trodden next step, popping up in a pub somewhere, they thought big. They opened permanent premises in Caversham, on the cusp of Covid. They survived, despite everything stacked against them, and they devoted their ingenuity to having a credible delivery option.

Then they reopened, and they expanded. And although owner Kevin Farrell has been outspoken about the challenges hospitality businesses face, and Vegivores has had to constantly adjust its opening hours accordingly, you wouldn’t bet against them going from strength to strength.

Like Nibsy’s, Vegivores has always been very clear about what it does without descending into worthiness. They don’t use the word vegan, although everything is plant-based. They don’t take the lazy route of processed meat substitutes, and everything they do is innovative and interesting.

I looked at their menu in the course of writing this piece and practically everything on the menu spoke to me: I am long overdue a visit. You could read their menu, plan a trip there, order, eat and only then realise that you’d had no meat. It’s like a magic trick. I know many Reading residents are hugely grateful that there’s one restaurant in Reading where they can eat literally everything on the menu, and that includes members of my family.

I haven’t been to Vegivores in far too long, but I was lucky enough to be at a wedding last month in Caversham Court Gardens where Vegivores was doing the catering. I had their Goan vegetable curry, and it was predictably terrific. Did I wish someone had snuck some chicken into it? Believe it or not, no.

3. House Of Flavours (2013-present)

I’m bending my rules ever so slightly to sneak in House Of Flavours: strictly speaking I think it opened in July 2013, the month before my blog began. But since my rule is that I never review anywhere in the first month I’m including it on a technicality, because it only became reviewable after I’d started.

But House Of Flavours, right from the very start of my decade of reviewing restaurants, marked a sea change in Reading. Before House Of Flavours, Indian restaurants were solid, reliable and almost completely interchangeable. I know many people will disagree with this, and say they had their favourites. And I’m sure they did. I know people raved about the Gulshan, or went to Standard Tandoori every month for their super dry fry and all that jazz. I get it: I used to love the Sardar Palace on Cemetery Junction, which had a completely bonkers interior and sold Châteauneuf du Pape for fifteen quid which I ordered even though it didn’t go with anything.

But I’m not kidding myself that Sardar Palace was magically different from the other places, it was just my favourite variation on that theme. Before then, people’s ideas of a fancy Indian restaurant was the Bina. And if you want to see what people thought was fancy, back then, go to the Bina now, because it hasn’t changed. But House Of Flavours was the moment when Indian food in this town started taking itself seriously.

It was properly swish, genuinely upmarket and interesting. And the chain reaction it set off actually had more consequences than you might think. It didn’t just create a culture where Clay’s – upmarket, swish and interesting – could flourish, but also one where regional Indian food could thrive in this town, rather than just your bog standard dopiazas and jalfrezis. So without House Of Flavours I’m not sure you’d see, for better or for worse, our dosa joints and our biryani places, our street food, the Coconut Tree and Shree Krishna Vada Pav. 

You might think I’m over-egging it, or that this is too high up on the list, but I have to disagree. Cast your mind back and think about Indian food in Reading before House Of Flavours came along. It made it a genuine proposition as a meal out for food lovers as well as lovers of curry, and that rising tide has lifted a lot of boats since then. 

I don’t go anywhere near as often as I’d like, but I was there last year with my family when my brother visited from Australia, and I popped in there recently for dinner after work with Zoë. Both times it was still excellent, properly enjoyable and completely packed. Good for them. They don’t get talked about enough when people discuss Reading’s great restaurants, and I hope this goes some way to redressing the balance.

2. Kungfu Kitchen (2018-present)

You could argue that Kungfu Kitchen wouldn’t qualify for this list for similar reasons to Fidget & Bob, or Geo Café. But Kungfu Kitchen’s inimitability is its greatest strength. It can’t be imitated because Jo and Steve cannot be imitated, as anybody who has ever eaten there will tell you. No Reading restaurant is quite as in the image of its owner as this one, and it’s a huge part of why it attracts such affection.

Reading had authentic Chinese food before KFK, but it was on a separate menu, not in English, the implication being that if you weren’t Chinese you wouldn’t want to order it. I still remember going into a Chinese restaurant on the Wokingham Road called Home Taste, asking if they had an English menu and being laughed out of the place.

By contrast Jo, the great communicator, sees it as her role to demystify authentic Chinese food. And to tell you to order different dishes. And to tell you to order less food. She just likes telling people what to do in general, truth be told. And KFK is still going while Home Taste has long since closed, which tells its own story.

In fact if you think of Chinese food in Reading, you think of KFK: most restaurants in this town would give their eye teeth to be so synonymous with their chosen cuisine. But they’re progressive, too: if you get a table there Steve will inevitably talk you through all of Double-Barrelled’s new releases, stowed away in their very well-stocked beer fridge.

But that’s not all. It’s also worth mentioning that Kungfu Kitchen put Reading well and truly on the map in 2021 when Tom Parker Bowles of the Mail On Sunday paid them a visit and published his review.

Prior that the last Reading restaurant to be reviewed in the papers was Thames Lido. No surprise there, as that group is well-connected and the chef patron has featured in the Guardian many times (although the paper’s hapless description of the Lido as “just off the Reading ring road” suggests a limited knowledge of the place). Before that? You have to go back to 2010, when Mya Lacarte featured in the Telegraph.

But Kungfu Kitchen did it entirely on merit, and that write up made a lot of people very happy, me included. They clearly didn’t have the foggiest who Tom Parker Bowles was, and it’s safe to say from his review that he got the full KFK treatment. Which of course he loved: I imagine he found it either refreshing, or bracing, or both.

1. Clay’s Kitchen (2018-present)

Come on, of course it’s Clay’s. Who did you think it was going to be, Chopstix? Wendy’s? Doner & Gyros?

I would argue that no restaurant is quite as indelibly associated with Reading, and no restaurant has received anywhere near as much national acclaim as Clay’s. In fact, I’d go further and say that doesn’t just hold true for the last ten years, but for as long as I can remember. The roll call of national food writers who have tried and loved Clay’s food is a who’s who of the great and the good (and William Sitwell). Tom Parker Bowles, Grace Dent, Jay Rayner and Fay Maschler have all waxed lyrical about their cooking. You’d just need Giles Coren to complete the set, but every day Giles Coren deigns not to come to Reading is, in my book, a day to celebrate.

Some of those writers tried Clay’s national home delivery service, their terrific idea which got them through lockdown when their small restaurant on London Street just wasn’t up to the job of staying open during the pandemic. But Parker Bowles and Dent have both been to and reviewed Clay’s, one at their old home and one at their new one, and both have seen what Reading has known for a very long time, that Clay’s is very special indeed.

It is astonishing in itself that Nandana is self-taught, that she has reached the standard she has through work, painstaking research and a culinary mind absolutely fizzing with ideas. But Clay’s has reframed so much of what we think of as a superb restaurant in Reading, to the point where you could almost bisect the decade at 2018, as pre-Clay’s and post-Clay’s. To achieve that is one thing, but over the past five years Clay’s has made and remade itself many times – first its cosy spot on London Street, serving dishes unlike anything Reading had seen, then its grander new home in Caversham with a mixture of old and new dishes, favourites and specials.

And then, because they don’t believe in resting on their laurels, a completely separate small plates menu which is somehow India infused with Andalusia, turning those high tables into more of a tapas restaurant than Reading has known before. You may not believe that, but I honestly do: their butter chicken croquettes, their crispy chickpeas, their wild boar sliders have more than a little in common with dishes you would get in one of my favourite Malaga restaurants. Those two separate menus mean that Clay’s is not one of Reading’s best restaurants, but somehow two of them.

And their food is extraordinary. A stroll through their finest dishes over the past five years is a stroll through some of the best food Reading has ever experienced. From the kodi chips of their first twelve months to the glorious stuffed squid on the menu when they reopened post-pandemic, from the delight of trying their cut mirchi chat for the first time to their most recent dish, a pulao of rice cooked in bone broth crowned with sticky, savoury lamb, the perfect synthesis of Nandana’s and Sharat’s skills in the kitchen. Even their least excellent dishes are head and shoulders above most things you could try in this town. Or further afield: I’ve eaten Michelin starred Indian food, at Mayfair’s Gymkhana, and I’m telling you now that Clay’s is miles better. 

This is the point where I always say “Take my opinion with a pinch of salt, though, because I would class Nandana and Sharat as friends”. I’ve been saying that since the very start, when I did a competition with them, just after they opened, and explained why I wouldn’t be reviewing them. It’s amazing how many people think I have written a review of Clay’s – I never have, for the reasons I’ve already given, but it’s a source of sadness for me even now that I never got to, that I don’t have a record on my blog, from years ago, telling the world what everyone in Reading now knows full well, that there’s something magical about Clay’s.

But I do feel a bit less like giving that disclaimer today. Not because it’s no longer true – Nandana and Sharat are still friends – but because by any standard Clay’s is so significant that my judgment would be more questionable if they didn’t top this list than if they did. It’s a Hobson’s choice, but there you have it. But more to the point, I think many of Clay’s customers have a similar tale about how Nandana and Sharat have become friends. 

The group of people who booked a table, in secret, in their basement to celebrate Clay’s first birthday. The countless customers with stories of kindness from Clay’s either on their deliveries, back in the bad times, or remembering and recognising them and their stories from visit after visit. The celebrations they have hosted and shared in, and the customers who go far more regularly than me – some of them every week. The fact that their first ever customer is their lucky charm and has to be the first to visit their new sites or try new dishes. The fact that they named a dish on their menu after him.

There are so many of those stories, and it’s not for me to tell them all. But if you want to understand how a restaurant can change and be changed by a place, and how that can be the beginning of a proper love affair, Clay’s is the place to consider. Reading is lucky to have it. But I have a feeling it was lucky to find Reading, too.

This piece is part of Edible Reading at 10. See also:

• The 10 saddest closures of the last decade
• Edible Reading and me
• Reading’s 50 best dishes (50-41)
• Reading’s 50 best dishes (40-31)
• Reading’s 50 best dishes (30-21)
• Reading’s 50 best dishes (20-11)
• Reading’s 50 best dishes (10-1)

As I might have mentioned a couple of times lately, next week marks a significant date: 17th August is the tenth birthday of this blog. The first blog post went up on that day in 2013, setting out my stall and going on a little about Reading and what I hoped to bring to the table. My first Tweet, sent a couple of days before that, elicited a practically instant one word response from the then food editor of the then Reading Post. “Credentials?” it said. Even then, somebody was rattled.

In the beginning, to be honest, I wasn’t sure whether it would take off. Another Reading restaurant blog launched pretty much the same week as I did and, in an experience I would have many times over the next ten years, I kept a friendly eye on the competition just to see if the town was big enough for the both of us. And I’m sure it was, but that blog limped on for just over a year and quit.

It was the first, but by no means the last. Over time Alt Reading, Explore Reading, RdgNow, a blog about roast dinners, a blog about breakfasts and a couple of other blogs whose names escape me right now have come and gone. The most recent of them started up last summer: it managed two months.

By the end of 2014 the Reading Post had also given up the ghost, its website beginning the long process of decay and putrefaction that has led to its current state. And through all that, somehow, this blog has kept going – through divorce, redundancy, Brexit and whatever the other horseman of the apocalypse is calling itself these days. I know: I can’t quite believe it either.

Anyway, I hope you’ll allow me a little bit of trumpet blowing, today of all days, because I’m hugely proud of what my blog has achieved over the past ten years. Here’s a statistic that blows my mind: a few weeks ago, I published my up to date review of Bakery House. The blog got more hits that week than it received in the whole of 2013, when it used to look like this.

I always hoped it would be successful, and I always intended to carry on writing it as long as it was fun and there were people out there to read it. And it turns out there were: all of you, whether you’re new to the blog or long-standing readers, have played a massive role in that, and I can’t thank you enough.

And it’s definitely been fun. When I look back on 10 years of reviewing restaurants there are so many moments that stand out that it’s difficult to narrow it down. That time my review got shot down by a bunch of commenters who happened to work for the restaurant, for example. Or my first hatchet job, the incident with the one-armed lobster. The time I went for dinner with the actual CEO of Reading Buses, or the meal that raised a thousand pounds for Launchpad.

The numbers, in hindsight, are pretty astonishing, to me at least. By my reckoning I’ve written over two hundred and fifty restaurant reviews, covering pretty much every kind of food Reading has to offer and nearly every kind of restaurant. I’ve reviewed the shiny new places and the grand stagers that have been in Reading far longer than my blog.

In some cases I’ve been to the same building again and again, as restaurant after restaurant has tried to make a go of the site, leaving strata of food history behind. I’ve now been doing this so long that, like painting the Forth Bridge, I’ve started going back to the places I reviewed in the early days, to see what’s changed.

I tend to think that following Reading’s food scene, over ten years, has been every bit as much of a rollercoaster as supporting any football club. It has changed beyond recognition in that time, with a plethora of great independent restaurants coming and going, a beer scene and a coffee scene springing up out of nothing and street food unmatched by anyone between here and London to the east and Bristol to the west.

And if you’re anything like me you’ll have experienced euphoria and despair as wonderful new places have come to town and some of Reading’s best restaurants, despite our best efforts, have closed down. In the weeks ahead I’ll be writing some articles about the most significant restaurants of the decade and the saddest closures, so stay tuned for that, but in the meantime I’m struck that it was also a decade of oddballs and strange flashes in the pan.

Here are just a few of them. The Venezuelan cafe near the Jobcentre that nobody ever went to. A shop that only sold pretzels. A homophobic American fried chicken restaurant that was run out of town by protestors, in a moment to make any Reading resident proud. Whatever the fuck Lemoni was about. I could go on, but I won’t.

Is Reading a better place now for food and drink than it was back then? Five years ago, I would unquestionably have said yes but now, after Covid and a cost of living crisis created largely by the government I’m afraid I’m not so sure. We’ve seen the closure of many great independent restaurants, with others moving out of the town centre in search of bigger premises. The stranglehold of dodgy or unimaginative landlords still blights everywhere inside the IDR.

In 2013 I made a big thing of saying that there was more to Reading than chains. And look at us now: Wendy’s, Jollibee, Popeyes and Taco Bell. The struggle is real, and harder than ever before. But let’s not focus on that, because over the last ten years there has always been somewhere wonderful to find, if you were prepared to look.

As part of my birthday celebrations I plan to publish my list of Reading’s top 50 dishes, with which I expect you will all violently disagree, but in the meantime I’ll just say this: I’ve eaten a lot of fantastic food, sometimes in the unlikeliest places. I’ve eaten outstanding jerk chicken in a pub garden off Chatham Street, and excellent burgers on Cemetery Junction. I’ve found surprisingly good coffee in the hospital, and god’s own samosas down the Wokingham Road.

I’ve had superb sushi, epic full Englishes, magnificent fried chicken and inventive regional Indian food that was all kinds of drop-everything-and-rush-to-social-media wonderful. I’ve had the best Chinese food of my life in a former greasy spoon by the university. To paraphrase the great Roy Batty, I’ve eaten things you people wouldn’t believe. Except you probably would, because for ten years I’ve documented a lot of it.

And I’m very fortunate that you lot have read it, and still get in touch with me all the time to tell me that you’ve been somewhere on my recommendation and loved it, or tipped me off about somewhere you love that you think I might like too. That sort of engagement is the lifeblood of a blog like this, and it stops it feeling like screaming into the void.

In fairness, it’s never felt like that, not even on day one. You’ve all played a part in that, and I honestly think that in turn has contributed to developing Reading’s food culture and a perception – a quite valid one – that our beloved town quietly punches far above its weight when it comes to eating and drinking.

I felt proud too when my blog was mentioned in the national press, not once but twice, back in 2021, although it says something about the demise of print media that I didn’t rush out, either time, to buy a copy. It remains one of the highlights of the last ten years – that and the time that professional spine donor and serial opportunist Alok Sharma dubbed me an “anonymous troll” (honestly, so many people came out of the woodwork to say lovely things you would not believe).

But I felt even prouder – not for me, but for the restaurants concerned, and for the whole of Reading – when Reading restaurants started getting the recognition they deserved in the national press as we started to emerge from the pandemic. And the very pinnacle of that, of course, came when Clay’s Kitchen got a glowing review in the Guardian this year, a review that showed a real interest in understanding what made that restaurant and its story so special. Good old Grace Dent: she might have blocked me on Twitter, for reasons which genuinely escape me, but she was spot on about this one.

Another thing I’m enormously proud of, over the last ten years, is the regular ER readers’ lunches. I held the first one in January 2018 at Namaste Kitchen, unsure if anybody would want to come and feeling, in truth, a little apprehensive about stepping out from behind the protective curtain of anonymity. I needn’t have worried: over five years on, I’ve organised fifteen of them across ten different restaurants, and by my reckoning the best part of a hundred and fifty people have come to one or more of them. 

In that time people have gone from being readers to friends, I’ve had some brilliant post-lunch boozy conversations in pubs and taprooms and nursed some corking Sunday morning hangovers. I always find those events a little nervy as everybody turns up, taking a register like I’m organising a school trip, fretting about whether everybody is present and correct and the restaurant knows who the vegans are, who has allergies and intolerances. And then, at some point after everybody is seated, the first dishes come out and I can let myself enjoy the good-natured hubbub: a wonderful serene calm settles over me like a blanket and I realise it’s all going to be all right. Again.

And the food at those events, my goodness. Whether it’s the Lyndhurst cooking up a storm with dishes that haven’t ever quite made it onto their menus (their stuffed courgette flowers were a particular treat), Clay’s putting together a series of showstopping tasting menus, never repeating a dish, never skipping a beat or, in the early days, I Love Paella making a special rabo de toro empanada I still think about some days, the food has always been incredible. Every restaurant raises its game, wanting to make something special and show off what it can do, and my readers and I are a truly lucky bunch. 

The last one, at San Sicario, featured an artichoke flan in a bagna cauda sauce which was the stuff of salty, savoury dreams, along with a faultless duck ragu draped over golden ribbons of pasta and a dish of ox cheek cooked in Barolo until it had given up the fight completely. I thought San Sicario was a good restaurant before that virtual trip to Piedmont, afterwards I was certain of it. The next readers’ lunch, at Clay’s for the first time since the pandemic, is a joint celebration of my ten years and their five, and I already know it will be magical.

But more than that, those events well and truly remind me of something very important about Reading. It is a wonderful place, with so much going on – so much music and drama, so much food and drink, coffee and beer. From Bohemian Night to Readifolk, from Shakespeare in the Abbey Ruins to Reading Rep at the Junction, from Bastille Day to Cheesefeast, from Workhouse to C.U.P., from Double-Barrelled to the Retreat we live in an incredible town, still, despite the best efforts of those American chains, our landlords and the council.

Yet with the demise of local media, and the slow death of hyperlocal websites, people don’t always know that. I see so many people at my lunches who want to love Reading but haven’t yet found their tribe, their place, their favourite spots. I hope my lunches help them do that, and I hope my blog helps people do that too. If it’s helped you at all in that way, at any point over the last ten years, then not a moment of the time I’ve spent writing it has been wasted.

While I’m thanking people, it would be remiss not to mention the unsung heroes of the blog – the people who come and keep me company on reviews, letting me taste their food and, sometimes, letting me drag them to places they’d possibly rather not visit. By my reckoning I’ve had an incredible twenty-seven different dining companions over the course of the blog, which makes me sound like a second-rate Doctor Who. Some just turn up once, some have become regular fixtures.

They all add something completely different to the experience, for me, and always have something to say, whether it’s my mum judging the crockery (or the bins), my friend Jerry eating Japanese food for the first time ever in his sixties or, most recently, Emma showing off an impressive talent for smut. I never did go to Wetherspoons with Matt Rodda, but maybe that’s one for the next ten years.

And of course, I do have to say a particular thank you to one person. To Zoë, my fiancée – I’m still not used to how lovely it feels to use that word – who has been an ever-present for over five years, uncomplainingly joining me at all kinds of restaurants, from the sublime to the ridiculous, for providing me with good photos and even better copy (and the occasional expletive-laden revolt), and of course for upping my own expletive count. I can honestly say that I don’t know if this blog would have kept going without her support and encouragement. Even if it had, it would have been an much poorer place without her playing such an active role in it.

Last but not least, even though this is starting to sound like an overlong speech at an awards ceremony, I do have to thank all of you, again, for giving me some of your time every week to read about a random restaurant, even one you might never go to. I never take it for granted, but it’s been a real privilege to do this week in, week out. Ten years, eh? I bet it must feel like you’ve spent that long just reading this.

Anyway, as I said, for the next few weeks the blog will be given over to some special anniversary content. I’ll be covering the ten most significant restaurants to open in Reading in the last ten years (spoiler alert, Lemoni won’t be on there) and the ten saddest goodbyes of the decade (spoiler alert, Lemoni won’t be on there either) and then, just to give you all something to take exception to, I’ll be listing my entirely subjective view of Reading’s 50 best dishes right now.

But after that, we’ll be right back to business as usual. There’s a new Brazilian café out in Whitley I’ve heard about, and a Portuguese cafe just opened down the Oxford Road. People are telling me the new Lebanese restaurant on the Wokingham Road is well worth trying, and only this week a Korean fried chicken joint opened on Market Place. It never stops. And, as we all know, these places aren’t going to review themselves, are they?

This piece is part of Edible Reading at 10. See also:

• The 10 most significant restaurants of the last decade
• The 10 saddest closures of the last decade
• Edible Reading and me
• Reading’s 50 best dishes (50-41)
• Reading’s 50 best dishes (40-31)
• Reading’s 50 best dishes (30-21)
• Reading’s 50 best dishes (20-11)
• Reading’s 50 best dishes (10-1)

Well, we all made it through Christmas. Presents were wrapped, unwrapped and hopefully loved, fingers crossed receipts were not required. Drink was taken, if that’s your thing, and chocolate and cheese were eaten – not together, let’s not go crazy – and now it’s both sort of Friday and sort of no day at all. This is that final smudge of the calendar when time loses all meaning, whether you’re at work or not, and the only milestone left is New Year’s Eve. 

And après ça, le deluge: the diet, the budget, the unrealistic resolutions. So in the immortal words of none other than Peggy Lee, if that’s all there is let’s break out the booze and have a ball. 2022, the year of soaring bills and three prime ministers, like a shit set of Russian dolls where each one, inexplicably, was as bad as the last. Soon it will be gone, but probably not missed.

This is my first annual awards since 2019 and I’d forgotten how enjoyable they are to put together. It’s fun to remember all the great food you’ve eaten over the past twelve months and to celebrate, even if only in your head, just how much Reading has to offer. But it’s agonising too, because picking just the one winner and a couple of honourable mentions makes for extremely hard choices and means you have to leave out lots of really gorgeous plates of food. 

To give you an idea how difficult this was, here’s a selection of the dishes I just couldn’t find space for: Intoku’s unbeatable crispy squid, and the pork ribs at Park House, the perfect beer snack. Kungfu Kitchen’s epic sweet and sour aubergine, ThaiGrr’s divine fried chicken and Smash N Grab’s MacBook Pro burger didn’t get a look in. I had no room for the beautiful fried lamb momo at Momo 2 Go or their siblings at Sapana Home, couldn’t squeeze in Monkey Lounge’s excellent burger or Clay’s Kitchen’s village lamb. I nearly put in a Best Breakfast category too, just so I could mention Dee Caf.

So if you think I got these wrong, and on the law of averages you probably do, just bear in mind that it isn’t easy. In every category bar one my decision was exceptionally tough, and on another day each could have gone another way. So by all means disagree, but let’s celebrate the fact that there’s so much scope to disagree. We have a lot of strength in depth here in the biggest town in the U.K., and if nothing else I hope we can say the same when 2023 also draws to an end.

After this I shall take a couple of weeks off, but I’ll be back in the New Year with more of the same. 2023 will be a significant milestone in the blog as in August I’ll mark ten – yes, ten – years of doing this. Any ideas how I should celebrate? Anyway, without further ado, let’s get in to the nitty gritty of the particular ways in which I’ve called these categories wrong and who’s been robbed this year. Make sure you’re sitting comfortably, and let the dissenting begin!

STARTER OF THE YEAR: Thhicheko aalu, Kamal’s Kitchen

It was, in fairness, love at first sight; the first time I tried this potato dish at Kamal’s Kitchen in the spring I knew that I’d never eaten anything quite like it and that I would do so again many times before the year was out. These are discs of fried, pressed potato, textural perfection, covered in a potent but anaesthetising spice mix and I have evangelised about them to pretty much anyone and everyone all year. They’re actually simple and unadorned – no dip, no chutney, just a little extraneous salad – and yet this variation on the humble spud has a seemingly infinite variety.

Kamal served them at my readers’ lunch at Kamal’s Kitchen in the summer and they weren’t at their very best – having to cook a giant batch of them for nearly 40 people probably has that effect – and I started to worry that I’d got it wrong, like when you recommend your favourite novel to a friend and they hate it (Louise Williams, Excellent Women, circa 2010, since you asked). But it was a blip, and every time I’ve had them since has felt like coming home. In a year full of wonderful new gastronomic experiences, when I was starting to get jaded enough to feel I’d seen everything, this was one of my favourites.

Honourable mentions go to the Lyndhurst’s karaage chicken, another dish I have eaten far more times this year than I’d admit to my GP, and the unbelievable gobi Manchurian at Clay’s Kitchen. It’s a dish you think you’ve had and loved, and then you eat Clay’s version and realise all the others were pale imitations.

CHAIN OF THE YEAR: Shree Krishna Vada Pav

In a year when chains seemed better positioned to ride out the coming storm I was delighted when Shree Krishna Vada Pav opened on the Kings Road. It came with plenty of hype from the London food media, but this was a world apart from our other London arrivistes like Pho and Honest. I went and although it was a bit scruffy and crowded I thought it was an absolute riot. So it gets the award from me this year, for being every bit as enjoyable as The Coconut Tree, which opened the previous year, was disappointing. Next year we’re getting Popeyes and who knows what other horrors, but places like SKVP are vital for showing that there are chains and chains.

Honourable mentions go to the two arrivistes I mentioned earlier. Because say what you like about Pho and Honest, but if all chains were like them Reading in particular would be a much better place – although one in which it would be a lot harder to support independent businesses.

LUNCH VENUE OF THE YEAR: Madoo

It was a happy day when I went to Madoo on duty, but my love for the place was a slow burner that grew as the year went by. Their toasted foccacia are lovely, their cannoli are great but most importantly, something about the place feels special. You honestly don’t feel like you’re in Reading, helped no doubt by the amount of Italian being spoken in there, the Eurohits on the radio and the general feeling of otherness. I popped in on Boxing Day for lunch and was just absolutely delighted to find they were open. Madoo isn’t perfect – the coffee could be better, the occasional toastie feels rushed and they still do that greasy napkin under the sandwich thing that drives me crackers – but sometimes you love something for its imperfections. For my sake I hope so, anyway.

Honourable mentions go to the gorgeous Cairo Café, which I loved but haven’t visited anywhere near enough this year, and Blue Collar. The original and best, rather than their fancy new place, because I’m a sentimental soul.

MAIN COURSE OF THE YEAR: Monkfish with Bombay potatoes, the Lyndhurst

My brother visited from Australia in the spring, after a badly-timed visit in March 2020 was curtailed by the pandemic. And when I asked him if there was anywhere he wanted to eat while he was here, he had one request: the Lyndhurst. “Your photos always make it look amazing” he said, and so we booked a long leisurely midweek lunch there. And this dish, tender monkfish on a flattened cake of crushed, spiced potatoes with a bright green coriander and mint chutney, made me both ecstatic and proud of my local. We both ordered it, we both loved it. Like everything that the Lyndhurst does, it was a perfect plate – everything you needed was there, nothing more and nothing less. I had it a couple more times before they took it off the menu and every time it looked slightly different, was slightly better, because they never stop improving things. But I never forgot my first.

Honourable mentions go to Papa Gee’s pizza Sofia Loren, every bit as much a legend as the woman herself, and to Kungfu Kitchen’s deep fried fish in spicy hot pot. The latter is possibly Zoë’s favourite dish in the whole of Reading, but she usually lets me have some. My brother also wanted to eat at KFK so we went there on his last day in the country. He left full, deliriously happy and thoroughly bedazzled by Jo: the gold standard full KFK experience.

OUT OF TOWN RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR (BERKSHIRE): Seasonality, Maidenhead

I so loved Seasonality. Having been to lots of restaurants a little like it nowhere near Reading, and constantly asking the question “why doesn’t Reading have anywhere like this?” it was a huge relief to find that at least there was somewhere like it, fifteen minutes down the Elizabeth Line. A compact, clever menu with plenty going on, prices that weren’t crazy – especially if you go at lunchtime – and some dishes that were just unlike anything I’d tried. I still think about the lardo dish in the picture below, and that was just in the nibbles section. I’ll be back there before too long.

Maidenhead also has the gorgeous Miyazaki, one of my favourite discoveries of the year and a true understated, classy little place. And another honourable mention, on the other side of Berkshire, has to go to Goat On The Roof where I had a terrific and eminently boozy dinner earlier in the year. My friend Graeme still goes on about the chocolate mousse I allegedly didn’t let him have.

CAFE OF THE YEAR: C.U.P.

I found this really difficult because I frequent two cafés in town, C.U.P. and Workhouse. But going to the C.U.P. on Blagrave Street, having their unbeatable dark chocolate mocha and gazing out of the window, or sitting outside in warmer weather, is one of my favourite contemplative things to do. It is, and I can tell you this from personal experience, a great place to watch people running the Reading Half Marathon. And it just about wins out over Workhouse by virtue of being a bit comfier, having better outside space and actual mobile phone reception. 

I do still love Workhouse though, and their latte has a special place in my heart (literally, I fear). An honourable mention also goes to Compound Coffee who not only do beautiful coffee but, uniquely in Reading, are open past six on account of being part of the Biscuit Factory.

OUT OF TOWN RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR (OUTSIDE BERKSHIRE): Wilsons, Bristol

I mean, it got the best rating I’ve ever given out for a reason. More than usual it feels a bit reductive to talk about it rather than just to say read the review but you’ve all got busy lives and maybe you’ve read the review already. Wilsons served me one of the best meals I can remember in my restaurant-going life, with so many elements and components, so much cleverness but no wanky trickery and no stinginess either. Other restaurant reviewers might bleat on about how it deserves a Michelin star, I’d just say that those accolades are nearly as worthless as the award I’m giving out now. But if you’re ever in Bristol at lunchtime or of an evening, I cannot imagine a world in which you’d regret going there.

Sadly there can only be one winner, but in any other year Bristol’s Caper & Cure would romp home with this title. Them’s the breaks. An honourable mention also goes to Oxford’s Magdalen Arms – I was there for a properly magnificent boozy lunch the weekend before Christmas Eve and can confirm that their chicken and mushroom pie is every bit as heavenly as the steak and ale one they do.

SERVICE OF THE YEAR: Buon Appetito

Buon Appetito was a happy place for me this year. If the sun was even remotely out when we’d finished work on a Friday or Saturday and if one of us could even remotely persuade the other that we couldn’t be arsed to cook, you would find us on the terrace there – me with an Aperol spritz, Zoë with a negroni and both of us with a big grin. I bumped into other ER readers there more than once and once, in a surreal turn of events, my nextdoor neighbours. 

And the food there is great – more on that in a second – and it does have a certain Balearic feel when you’re bathed in sunlight listening to music on the speakers, but what really makes it for me is the service. Zoë said to me that they work hard for every single cover and every single pound they get, and I think that’s true. But there’s more to it than that. The ease, the charm and the ensemble there is at the top of its game in a way I don’t remember experiencing since the golden age of Dolce Vita. Praise doesn’t come much higher.

Speaking of high praise, an honourable mention has to go to Kamal’s Kitchen, where Kamal is thoroughly affable and his daughter Kritika (who works there alongside studying for her degree) is an absolute natural at front of house. And I also have to mention Kungfu Kitchen, another family business. Nobody who’s had Jo looking after them forgets it in a hurry, but in her husband Steve and her two boys she has a formidable – and effortlessly charming – brigade.

DESSERT OF THE YEAR: Pistachio tiramisu, Buon Appetito

When I first tried this it was a special, just something they were trying. A tiramisu with pistachio cream and pistachio crumb crumbled on top. And I thought, well, it sounds interesting. But it wasn’t interesting, it was compelling. I love pistachio, I love tiramisu, it had never occurred to me to combine the two. Every time I went I asked if it was still on the specials, gladly every time I went it was and eventually it graduated to the main menu. And in all the times I’ve eaten it, or taken friends and said “you have to try this” it has never disappointed.

No honourable mentions in this category. I had some fantastic desserts on my travels but when it came to Reading, I only had eyes for the pistachio tiramisu.

NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR: Kamal’s Kitchen

When I first ate at Kamal’s Kitchen, I said something to him that might have sounded a little harsh. I said that Namaste Kitchen, his first restaurant, had been amazing but that he took too long to pop up again at Namaste Momo. And Namaste Momo, though its best dishes were great, was too inconsistent, too much of a mixed bag of Nepalese food and bog standard dishes you could pick up in Royal Tandoori. And then he left Namaste Momo and again, was dormant too long.

This is your big chance, I said to him, to make your mark and have the kind of restaurant you’ve always threatened to run. I’m glad you have your name above the door this time, I told him. I told him not to blow it, because this was his chance to be the fourth restaurant people talk about outside Reading. For all that we love our little bubble and the array of tempting options here there are three restaurants with reach outside our town: Clay’s, Kungfu Kitchen and the Lyndhurst. Your job, I told Kamal – he’d probably tuned me out by then – is to become the fourth place on that list.

Has he done it? Put it this way: he’s made an excellent start. Kamal’s Kitchen is a modest, unassuming room and nobody would describe it as a plum location but he is slowly, quietly and modestly building something rather brilliant. I’ve eaten there several times this year and each time the food is a little bit more assured, more superb. There are things I always order, because they’re unmissable, but slowly and surely I’m trying the rest of the menu and so far it has that breadth of excellence I remember from the Eureka moment when I first ate at Namaste Kitchen, over five years ago. I can’t think of a more deserving winner this year, even if he does know who I am.

Honourable mentions go to the excellent Cairo Café, which has the misfortune to be good enough to contend for all of these awards without quite winning any of them, and Intoku. If they sort the service, and based on my visit they really need to, they could redefine Japanese food in Reading.

RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR: The Lyndhurst

This is a neat symmetry – back in 2019 I gave the Lyndhurst Newcomer Of The Year, three years on they win Best Picture, so to speak. I have eaten out so much more this year than I did in the previous two, and it’s been like waking up from a terrible dream remembering how much I love food and restaurants, eating, drinking, company and people watching. 

But so many of my most treasured moments this year have been made by the Lyndhurst – whether that’s lunch with my long-lost brother, over from the other side of the world, or lunch with my dad, or just a post-work dinner with Zoë because it’s curry night and our designated meal in the fridge suddenly looks nowhere near good enough. I’ve eaten there with good friends the night before setting off on holiday, I’ve even gone there and had lunch on my own on a random Saturday when Zoë’s working.

And I’ve had so many beautiful dishes – from their legendary nachos and Korean chicken wings to specials like confit duck, or rabbit stuffed with liver and wrapped in prosciutto. People who just look at their burgers, their curry nights and their Sunday roasts could easily miss the truth about the Lyndhurst: it’s an extremely accomplished kitchen which is always innovating. If they don’t have the reputation they should, for some of the best, most interesting and best value food Reading has ever had, it’s because they are so damned modest about it. And the times I’ve been there and they’ve said those magic words – we have the skate wing on specials – have made my month, without fail, every single time.

The first ER readers’ lunch of 2023 will take place at the Lyndhurst, just after payday at the end of the longest, drabbest month of the year, a month synonymous with self-improvement and privation (and, mostly, attempted self-improvement through the medium of privation). I can’t think of a better place to have it. It will only be the end of January, but from that meal onwards I’ll know that spring is on its way.