Category: Reviews

Takeaway review: Thai Table

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Can you believe it’s two months since I announced that I was going to start reviewing takeaways? January properly dragged – even more than most Januaries, and that’s saying a lot – but the weeks feel like they’ve whipped by since I settled into my regular routine of research, ordering, eating, digesting and writing. As we sit on the cusp of the next phase of whatever this year will turn out to be, I realise I’m running out of time to review takeaways before restaurants (or, at least, those restaurants lucky enough to have sufficient outside space to be vaguely profitable) open again. And after that, you might be off eating in those, or you might still want to read about takeaways. Who knows? The future has never felt harder to predict.

My original plan was to try and check out places that had opened since I stopped writing reviews last March, and places that I’d never had a chance to review because they only did takeaway. And it’s been a real journey of discovery since then – square pizzas from the Shinfield Road, beautiful dal from West Reading, stunning grilled meats from suburban Woodley, not to mention woeful burgers from a hotel that ought to know better. And, because they deserve to be shouted about, I also found time to sample delicious and imaginative food from the pub just round the corner from my house. 

But I realise there’s one category of takeaway I’ve not managed to cover so far, and that’s places that have always done takeaway but that, for whatever reason, just never occur to people as an option. Under the radar restaurants.

This time last year, when the restaurants had just been told to close, because I really wanted to do something to help, I started a Twitter thread listing local businesses and how they were adapting. It took off, and I was constantly updating it: this business was doing free delivery, that business had moved to call and collect. Things changed on a daily basis as restaurants, cafés, pubs and breweries were forced to adapt and fight for survival. I bet they all look back, reflect on the fact that was a year ago, and feel incredibly tired.

When I did the thread, I got a reply from Thai Table, the Thai restaurant in Caversham just down from the Griffin. They delivered to a wide range of Reading postcodes, they said. Thai Table does takeaway, I thought. Who knew? So I added them to the thread and they very politely thanked me. They’ve only ever written four Tweets, and half of them were either asking me for help or thanking me for it. 

They stuck out like a sore thumb in the thread – everybody else was pivoting here and there, setting up webshops, looking at new ways of doing business. By contrast, the mention of Thai Table wasn’t about innovation, it was just a quiet reminder. We’re still here, it said. Don’t forget about us. So Thai Table crossed my mind last weekend when I was deciding what to eat and review this week. I’d always enjoyed their food when I ate in the restaurant, and I remembered their awfully nice Tweet from a year ago. 

The other thing that occurred to me is that, with takeaways, geography is key. When I reviewed restaurants where I’d eaten in, the chances are you could probably get to them, but with deliveries it all hinges on whether you’re in the catchment area. And so far I’ve covered central Reading, and south east and west, but I hadn’t reviewed anywhere north of the river. So it was high time I got a delivery from Caversham: it felt like the very least I could do for my many avid readers there.

Thai Table’s menu is a classic Thai menu with few surprises and lots of old favourites, and although a handful of dishes are marked as specialities I didn’t see anything on there I haven’t seen on menus elsewhere. There is a star rating for heat where one star means mild, three stars means hot and so on: a fair few have zero stars, and it wasn’t clear whether that meant extra mild or bland. I suspected it wouldn’t be the kind of scorchingly hot authentic Thai food you might get at Oli’s Thai in Oxford, Som Saa in Spitalfields or The Heron in Paddington, but that didn’t bother me – sometimes menus like this are about comfort and familiarity, rather than trailblazing and sinus razing. There’s also a gluten free and vegetarian menu, which I assume means they omit fish sauce for the latter.

Thai Table handles deliveries itself, covering a relatively wide range of RG postcodes, and isn’t on any delivery apps, so you can either order on their website or go fully old school and ring them up. I decided to phone, mainly because my browser told me that their website wasn’t secure, and because their website warned of potentially long waiting times on Friday and Saturday nights I put my call in just after six o’clock. It was clearly a well-oiled machine, and after I had placed my order I was told someone would call me back in a few minutes to take my payment – no doubt freeing up the hotline for the next takeaway order. 

We ordered two mains, two portions of rice and three starters and the whole thing came to just over fifty pounds, which included a delivery charge. Our food would be about fifty minutes, they said, and everything about the process made me feel like I was in safe hands.

It’s no coincidence that every time I’ve ordered direct from the restaurant delivery has worked like a charm, and this was no exception. Around forty minutes after placing my order, there was a ring on the doorbell and a friendly driver handed over my branded carrier bag. Everything was perfectly hot, and everything came in recyclable plastic tubs. Another sign that Thai Table know what they’re doing with this stuff: they had put clingfilm over the tubs before snapping on the lids, just an extra precaution to prevent any disasters. It sounds like a small thing, but I appreciated the thoughtfulness, just as I loved the little slip in my bag detailing, with little infographics, all the extra steps the restaurant had taken to ensure the safety of its employees and its customers.

I reviewed Thai Table back in 2015, but one of its dishes, the massaman beef, made such an impression on me that three years later, when I published a list of Reading’s 10 must-try dishes, it made the cut. I felt it was incumbent on me to try it again, so I made a beeline for it when I placed my order. It was a ridiculously generous portion of beef, wavy-cut chunks of waxy potato and sweet onion in a glossy sauce, so much that it almost spilled over the high sides of my bowl. 

It had stuck in my memory as an indulgent, cossetting dish but actually, if anything, it was more interesting than I remembered. So of course every forkful of fragrant coconut rice soaked in that silky sauce was gorgeous, but the whole thing was shot through with star anise, giving it an extra dimension that stopped it being cloying. I thought it could do with ever so slightly more chilli heat, but it was so luxurious (and faintly soporific) that I couldn’t complain. I’d been concerned that the colossal hunks of beef bobbing in the sauce might be too tough, but every single one passed the two forks test with flying colours. And I’d forgotten how much I love coconut rice, too, right up until the moment when I took the lid off the container and that wonderful aroma rapidly came into focus.

Zoë had stayed traditional with a green chicken curry, and I was allowed a forkful (“but that’s all, I’m not sharing”). It had considerably more punch from the chilli and crunch from the bamboo shoots, and the chicken was tender, but I didn’t feel like I was missing out by sticking with my choice. It was a decent effort, and probably healthier by virtue of containing more veg (the courgettes had the same crenellations as the potato in my curry), but I would have liked it to have a little more richness and oomph. I was graciously permitted to approach the bowl again with my fork to try some of the rice and sauce – for me, always the best bit of eating Thai food – and that was enjoyable enough to make me think I might have judged it harshly.

The problem with takeaways, as I’ve said before, is that it isn’t that practical to eat two separate courses – you’re bound to have one of them past its best, or kept warm when it should have been eaten there and then – so often starters find themselves promoted to side dishes, as happened here. The first of the starters was ribs, which came in a deep, dark sauce without much chilli heat but with a hint of peanut and what felt like braised lettuce swimming around at the bottom. The meat fell cleanly off the bone with three of the ribs, while the fourth was a distinctly more cartilaginous affair. 

“The ribs definitely win the starters”, said Zoë: I, saddled with that slightly gristly fourth one, was less certain. The ribs were definitely better, though, than the fish cakes. I know their slightly squeaky, rubbery texture isn’t for everyone but they really do need to be eaten piping hot for it not to be disconcerting. I like fishcakes, or at least I seem to remember that I always have, but these didn’t really do it for me.

My pick of the starters was probably the Northern Thai sausage, which was a single sausage (homemade, apparently) cut into diagonal slices. It was more fragrant than hot, with a good whack of lemongrass. I enjoyed it, although three starters definitely turned out to be a starter too many, especially with such generous mains. 

But I couldn’t help comparing it to the Thai sausage cooked up by street food traders Porco at the Blue Collar-hosted final of the UK Street Food Awards last year. That – so aromatic, coarse and perfectly spiced – was one of the most magnificent things I’d ever tasted, whereas this was slightly diminished even by its memory. But that’s Blue Collar for you: they excel at gradually making conventional restaurant food suffer by comparison, cuisine by cuisine and dish by dish. It would be easy to hold it against them, if they weren’t so good.

This week’s meal, as much as any takeaway I’ve had, has been truly educational when it comes to the difference between eating in and eating at home. Because if I had eaten this food on duty in a restaurant, in some parallel world where the pandemic never happened, I might have spent my time looking at what was missing. I might have said that the food wasn’t particularly inventive or revolutionary, or that it didn’t bowl me over. I might say, as I’ve said reviewing many Thai restaurants in and around Reading over the last seven years, that it all felt somewhat much of a muchness. 

But here’s the thing: in this world, in March 2021, I found it all really quite lovely. It’s nice, sometimes, to play it safe. It’s fun to enjoy a meal without surprises, good or bad, and to know exactly what you’re getting. In a world where so much has changed, some of it beyond recognition, it can be hugely reassuring to be reminded that not everything has. And on that Saturday night, I felt grateful that Thai Table were there, still doing what they’d always done, working their socks off (and taking all those extra precautions) so I could sit there in my comfies and be transported by the alchemy of coconut, beef and star anise. 

So there you have it – they’re not on Deliveroo or Uber Eats, they’re not gurning away on Instagram Stories, they’re not doing anything but cooking very pleasant food and driving it round to your house. If you live in their catchment area, and you fancy taking a night off juggling what’s in the fridge and the cupboards, checking your best before dates, you could do an awful lot worse than giving them a call. They probably won’t ever see this review, and they may never Tweet again, but I’m strangely delighted that they contacted me a year ago with that simple message: We’re still here. Please don’t forget about us. I’m glad, too, that I didn’t.

Thai Table
8 Church Road, Reading, RG4 7AD
0118 9471500

https://www.thaitable.co.uk
Order via: Direct with the restaurant, online or by phone

Takeaway review: Osaka

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The sort-of roadmap back to normality was announced last month and you could almost hear, online and among friends, a cautious but relieved exhalation. Pubs and restaurants announced their plans, the days got longer, my parents were both vaccinated, my barber booked me in for a haircut on a date some months away. There were some sunny days, at long last, and when I walked through Forbury Gardens I could see people sitting on the grass, as if you could wish summer into existence by force of will alone.

And yet now we’re in March I see a lot of people looking back; the earth has completed its orbit around the sun, and everybody seems in a reflective mood. So we remember the last time we went to a pub with friends, the last time we hugged our loved ones, the last time we took a train to London or a bus to Kennet Island; someone I follow on Twitter posted recently that it was the anniversary of the date on which he is pretty confident that he contracted Covid-19.

We’ve had a year largely in stasis and it gives all the little historic moments, all those Facebook memories, enormous power. This weekend a year ago I held my last pre-Covid readers’ lunch at the Lyndhurst. Even at the time, it was an event that felt slightly more of a gamble than I might have liked – but we knew so little, back then. In any event the tables were spread out, there was hand sanitiser at every table and everybody had a pretty good idea that this was probably the last big social event they would attend for the foreseeable future. 

I am hugely fortunate: if I had to pick a day to recall over and over across twelve relatively barren months, I couldn’t have chosen a better one. My birthday is in the not too distant future, and it will probably be even more of a non-event than the last one. At least I had some kind of party last year, even if I didn’t understand that at the time.

That delicious lunch at the Lyndhurst, nearly a year ago, was my first encounter with what I’ve since termed the clock of terror: that anxious seven day wait after you do something that involves an element of risk. Seven days of scanning and anxiety: is it a sore throat, or just allergies, or the arrival of the Big Bad? My own personal clock of terror has been reset dozens of times this year, and it never gets much easier. The prospect of a humdrum, quotidian life absent of risk or fear (or, at least, with a lot less risk and fear) can’t arrive soon enough.

The last meal I had on duty before the restaurants closed, a year ago today, was at Osaka, the Japanese restaurant in the Oracle that took over the spot that used to be Café Rouge. I liked a lot of my food, and I loved the way they’d made over a tired and unloved site. When I went, I thought I can fit in one more review on the blog without fully grasping, at the time, just how pointless that would be. I should have known, really: lockdowns aside, when you’re looking at a restaurant hoping it won’t get busy, when you find yourself in a hurry to pay up and leave instead of enjoying a leisurely midweek lunch, you aren’t in the right frame of mind to review it. 

The week of lockdown I wrote a piece about it, but you couldn’t really call it a review. It was more of a diary piece, and it started an enjoyable few months of writing posts on the blog that weren’t just about restaurants, to keep myself occupied and give people something to read. People were very kind about them, and I kept going until just after the first big lockdown came to an end. Then I took a break, then in our third national lockdown I said I’d have a go at reviewing takeaway restaurants, and here we are.

I also said that when I went back to eating in restaurants, Osaka would be the first restaurant I reviewed. But a year has passed and we aren’t quite there yet, so to mark the occasion I thought I would review their takeaway this week instead. And flicking through the menu on a Monday night, I found myself wishing I hadn’t left it so long; I adore sushi and sashimi, and I couldn’t quite believe I haven’t eaten it for a year. I guess the problem is that the list of things we all haven’t done for a year is so long you forget half of what’s on it.

You can only order via Deliveroo, and the range is slimmed down compared to the restaurant menu – a handful of starters, just over half a dozen maki, the same for nigiri and only two types of sashimi. There’s no tempura, no temaki, no platters or bigger selections, either, so the selection is considerably more limited than at Sushimania, Osaka’s closest competitor. The pricing is comparable, but all over the place: some items are more expensive at Osaka, others at Sushimania with little rhyme or reason behind it. 

Osaka also has main courses on its menu, ramen, rice and noodle dishes, all priced around the twelve pound mark. I decided to steer clear of them, partly because I figured sushi and sashimi would travel better – with no danger of going cold – and partly because once I started looking at all that sushi and sashimi I pretty much wanted to eat that and nothing else. Moreover, Deliveroo was running an offer that gave you twenty per cent off provided you spent over twenty pounds: not difficult at the best of times, but easy as pie when you’re scratching a year-old sushi itch. 

Delivery was free of drama and in very good time – I placed my order just after seven o’clock, and about half an hour later the man was at my door with a couple of bags. Plonking them all on a couple of little tables in the living room, I was struck that although sushi was convenient to have delivered, it probably loses out more than most food when you compare it to eating in the restaurant. Japanese food is all about precise arrangement and beautiful presentation, and that’s something you can’t really replicate when you package food for delivery. So instead everything was crammed into black plastic trays with a clear lid – and I did find myself thinking that the black plastic might not be recyclable. 

There felt like an awful lot of packaging, too: I wasn’t sure, for instance, whether a separate plastic sachet of ginger, wasabi and soy sauce with every single item was strictly necessary. It felt odd, too, that they supplied all these condiments but no chopsticks – there was probably a tick box for these when ordering but I wasn’t used to asking for asking for cutlery for a delivery order (for obvious reasons) so I didn’t spot it. Fortunately, it turned out that we had a couple of pairs of in the house: the ones pictured below, which I thought were adorable, were commandeered by my public transport-loving partner in crime.

We kicked off with the one hot dish we’d ordered – crispy chicken karaage – a portion each because we were too peckish to share. I loved this: it’s a reference dish I often order in Japanese restaurants and I think Osaka’s rendition is up there with any I’ve tried (with the possible exception of Gurt Wings’ “JFC” at Blue Collar on Fridays, which is Death Row stuff). 

Good tori karaage is trickier to do than you might think, and many versions either feature breast meat which is a little too dry or thigh which is just a tad too bouncy. Perhaps it’s all in the marinade, but the texture of Osaka’s was bang on, the coating light and crispy with no grease or oiliness at all. I squeezed my lemon over the generous helping of fried chicken, dipped it in the thick mayonnaise, sprinkled with black and white sesame seeds, and ate in rapt contentment. 

One way of offsetting having a whole portion of fried chicken to yourself is to eat something as clean as sashimi, so we each had a portion of salmon sashimi to ourselves, too. You got three expertly cut slabs of fish for your money – just under five pounds – and they really were terrific, marbled, almost buttery things. If only everything that was good for you tasted as marvellous (or contained as few calories as) sashimi, the planet would be a very different place. And even if it wasn’t, I might be a lot slimmer. The sashimi came, as it always does, with a big pile of spiralised mooli, and I wondered, as I always do, who actually eats that bit: slim people, probably.

I’m not generally a fan of nigiri, but I always make an exception for unagi, or grilled eel. There’s something about this especially meaty, muscular fish, strapped with seaweed to a lozenge of sushi rice, that makes for a perfect mouthful. Osaka’s were decent – and pretty good value at four pounds forty – and the eel had plenty of oily flavour, but I would have liked a little more of the savoury sauce on top.

The rest of our dishes were all variations on sushi rolls and, like the rest of the food, they were impeccably done, tasteful and a model of restraint. Avocado maki are another of those reference dishes – done well, there’s nothing quite like that gorgeous creamy avocado hugged by rice, all dabbed in a tiny pool of soy. These were very well assembled – no looseness, no nori not quite meeting in the middle – and the avocado was wonderfully ripe with no browning. 

It seemed a little strange that each maki was made up of several smaller slivers of avocado rather than one big strip, but it made no difference to how enjoyable they were. Spicy tuna maki were also extremely good, with the fiery tuna perched on top of the sushi rice rather than encased by it – these were definitely the punchiest thing I ate, and a dish I’ll make a beeline for when I order again.

Finally, we had ordered an uramaki roll – these are bigger, longer affairs, all of which hover around the twelve pound mark. The selection through Deliveroo was very limited – just the five on offer, as opposed to the twelve on the restaurant menu – and the purist in me ruled out the two featuring crushed tortilla as a fusion bridge too far. Fortunately the one we ended up going for, the green dragon, turned out to be an excellent choice. This had katsu prawn, a baton of avocado and thin strips of cucumber in the middle of the rice with avocado daubed on top, the whole thing then crowned with Japanese mayonnaise (Kewpie, at a guess), a drizzle of dark unagi sauce and, last but not least, a little cluster of tobiko, or fish roe. 

Typing that all out makes it sound incredibly busy, and I was worried approaching it that it would taste too muddled, but it really was a masterful dish. The many flavours and textures could have jostled for supremacy, or tried to shout each other down, but in reality the whole thing was harmonious and superb. I especially liked the fact that the cucumber was so finely cut – so often you get a big watery ingot in the middle of your sushi – and the crunch largely came from the katsu prawn instead, with everything else almost symphonically arranged. 

Again, I imagine this dish is quite a looker in the restaurant but distinctly jolie laide when delivered. Not that that bothered me in the slightest: I’ve taken more than enough pictures of the university’s Lego Building to prove that I have a soft spot for the unconventionally attractive.

Our meal for two, including a 20% discount, came to just under forty-five pounds, not including tip. And although I feared at the start of my meal that I’d still be hungry at the end of it I found myself nicely sated: all those small bits of rice here and there add up, and you find yourself full almost by stealth. Some people will think that’s pricey, and I understand that you could get a lot more food for far less money, but to some extent I feel that runs the risk of missing the point.

I’ve found Osaka’s food far more difficult to sum up than usual: it’s technically very competent, and much of it is delicious, but because it’s so polite and precise, so well done and well behaved, the danger is to damn it with faint praise. It does feel like the menu is less suited to sharing than the likes of Sushimania, and more limited too, so I can see that if you wanted a sushi feast you might spend your money elsewhere. But if you compare individual dishes I’d say that Osaka is better, in terms of its attention to detail and quality of execution (a more interesting comparison might be with Oishi down the Oxford Road which, confusingly, offers delivery both under that name and the nom de plume Taberu Express).

Also, more than with most restaurants, I sense that Osaka offering its menu for delivery involves a number of compromises. Those kind of compromises wouldn’t trouble, say, a burger joint, but for sushi and sashimi it must be frustrating to present your food in a format so far from the ideal. Personally, I’m delighted that they made those compromises so I could spend some of my Monday evening enjoying their immaculate food. Resetting the clock of terror is one thing, but resetting the clock of sushi is a far happier experience. 

For all of the time I’ve spent looking back, I do wonder what the world will be like in March 2022. Perhaps we’ll look back on all our Timehops and Facebook memories and we’ll struggle to remember what it was like to feel and behave the way we once did. Maybe it will be like seeing Bobby coming out of the shower in Dallas, feeling like we’ve had the strangest dream, the kind that fades quicker than we can tell it to somebody or write it down. In any event I’m looking forward to that future, when the restaurants we love are thriving again and the people we love are sitting at our table. When it comes – and it will come – Osaka will be one of the places I go to celebrate.

Osaka
The Oracle, Unit R16, Reading, RG1 2AG
0118 957 3200

https://www.osakarestaurants.co.uk
Order via: Deliveroo

Takeaway review: La’De Kitchen

On By ediblereadingIn Reviews2 Comments

This week’s review owes a big debt of thanks to Mansoor, a long-time reader of the blog who came to the first ever ER readers’ lunch over four years ago. He came on his own and very kindly, in reference to some of the conversations we’d had on Twitter, brought me a blue Toblerone as a present. 

For those of you who’ve never had one, the blue Toblerone has salted, caramelised almonds in it and is, for my money, the finest of all the fruits of the Tobler tree. You can only get them in airports (and it’s better to get them in the UK, where they’re usually three for a tenner), and for a long time I had a decent stockpile in my basement, because I was lucky enough to go on a fair few holidays in 2019. My failure to replenish it before the lockdown this time last year is one of my many Covid regrets; we finished the last one at some point last summer, and it was as tangible a reminder as any I could think of that we were, quite literally, going nowhere fast.

I wasn’t sure whether that first readers’ lunch might be a bit much for Mansoor – he was at a boisterous corner of that long table in Namaste Kitchen – but I’m happy to say that he kept coming along and these days brings his delightful wife Zahra with him. Mansoor told me at one of the lunches that he had used the blog to find places to take Zahra for dinner back when they were courting – which was lovely to hear, but also highlights just how long I’ve been doing this for. But it’s obviously worked for them, and they’re always a welcome presence at the events I used to organise, pre-Covid. 

“Food is how I keep my wife happy”, Mansoor once said to me and, speaking as someone whose moods are largely managed through the judicious application of calories, I can understand that completely. Over the years, Mansoor has returned the favour by giving me lots of excellent recommendations in return – he was the one who introduced me to Reading’s best samosas at Cake&Cream down the Wokingham Road and recommended that I try the chapli kebab when I went to the now-defunct Afghan. 

He has also been telling me to try Rizouq, on the same strip, for as long as I can remember – I never did, because you couldn’t really eat in there, but now I’m doing takeaway reviews it’s firmly on my list to try before this lockdown comes to an end. And at the end of January, when I announced that I was going to start reviewing takeaways, he was very insistent that I should try La’De Kitchen, the subject of this week’s review. “Best Turkish grill I’ve had in the U.K.”, he said. “It might be an 8 on the ER scale.” That was all the encouragement I needed.

That said, I’d heard murmurs about La’De Kitchen for much of last year. They’re in an interesting position, because they have restaurants in Woodley and Pangbourne so can, in theory, cover both east and west Reading (there’s a third La’De Kitchen – the original, I believe – in Muswell Hill: a good omen, because I imagine that part of London is home to quite a demanding clientele). A lot of the good feedback I’d heard related to the Pangbourne branch, but Mansoor was talking about the Woodley one. As it was the closest to my house, that’s the one I ordered from one weekday evening.

La’De Kitchen is on JustEat but you can order direct through their website, which I did because I wanted them to get as much of the money as possible. Their menu is wide, varied and enormously tempting: a mixture of hot and cold mezze; classics from the charcoal grill and güveç (Turkish casseroles). There are also pide, or Turkish pizza, along with a few more European dishes – some Italian pizzas and a couple of steak options, both also cooked on the charcoal grill. 

I’ve heard some feedback that La’De kitchen is on the pricey side, but I couldn’t decide whether it was – most mezze dishes hover around the seven pound mark, and that feels reasonable enough, but some of the mains creep close to twenty pounds which I can see might feel steep for a takeaway. I guess part of the problem here is that for most people, the obvious yardsticks are Bakery House and Tasty Greek Souvlaki, both of which are reasonably priced almost to a fault. So, the question is: does La’De Kitchen represent a premium experience, or is it just spenny? 

In a run which will probably jinx my delivery experience over the weeks ahead, for the third week running my food arrived efficiently, quicker and – crucially – hot. I ordered at about twenty to seven and forty minutes later a man was at my door holding out my bag. By my reckoning it’s just over a ten minute drive from Woodley, so I thought that was pretty good going. And the bag was absolutely chock full of food: initially I thought I might have over-ordered, and by the end of the meal I was certain of it. 

Everything was in recyclable cardboard boxes, and the attention to detail was spot on – everything that was meant to be hot was, and everything that was meant to arrive chilled had survived  the journey without warming up. We decanted some of it onto dinner plates and took the rest through to the living room to be divvied up when we’d cleared enough space.

Not only did I follow Mansoor’s advice when I chose the subject of this week’s review, but I also let him guide me on most of the things we ordered. The first of these was the pistachio adana, a lamb kofte studded with crushed pistachio. As a first forkful of the meal it was almost impossible to beat. I’m a sucker for a lamb kofte, whether it’s from Kobeeda Palace, or Tasty Greek Souvlaki or Bakery House, but La’De Kitchen’s rendition was so good that it was almost hyper-real. It was packed with dense, coarse, beautiful lamb, to the extent that it made its competition feel pappy and padded out by comparison. 

One of my mother’s constant complaints about lamb in restaurants is that it never seems to taste “lamby” enough. I wasn’t sure I knew what she meant, but having sampled the depth of flavour in La’De Kitchen’s adana I am beginning to understand. If there’s one dish I would order again, it would be this one: and the strip of pita underneath which had soaked up all those juices (and some stray fragments of pistachio) was a wonderful bonus. This went particularly well with the yoghurt and mint dip they provided – unsurprisingly, you could say – and slightly less well so with the chilli sauce, which felt more like a salsa. A blackened chilli rested on top of the kebab: a very fiery one, as I was to discover.

Mansoor’s other recommendation was music to my ears. Turkish, Greek and Lebanese restaurants often specialise in shish kebabs and it can be a challenge to get flavour and moisture into chicken breast, to the extent that I often give them a miss in favour of kofte, shawarma or gyros. But La’De Kitchen’s chicken kulbasti kebabs – chicken thighs that had luxuriated on the charcoal grill – were truly gorgeous. Herbed, spiced, marinated and expertly cooked to have the char and tenderness I was hoping for. Chicken thighs can be difficult to get right, but thigh meat is always better than breast meat in the hands of the right kitchen, and this was astounding. 

Both these kebabs cost sixteen pounds, which made them among the cheapest mains on the menu, and I thought they were very good value. You had a choice of chips, rice or bulgur rice as an accompaniment, so we tried out a couple of those between us. The chips looked limp coming out of the box but were actually very decent – dusted with herbs and with plenty of flavour, even if the texture was slightly lacking. And I liked the bulgur rice, nutty pearls rendered a rich red with tomato. There was also a salad, full of ribbons of red onion: I would have liked it to be better dressed, but perhaps it wouldn’t have travelled so well if it had been.

Octopus is one of my favourite things to eat, and a dish I always associate with holidays, so when I saw it on the hot mezze menu I had to try it. That smell of the charcoal practically leaped out of the box when I opened it, and there it was, that glorious fractal coil. There’s a skill to cooking octopus, too – too much and it can be dry and too brittle right at the end, not enough and the whole thing is too rubbery. 

La’De Kitchen didn’t put a foot wrong with theirs, and within a few mouthfuls I was sitting by a harbour (in my mind at least) with a cold Efe in front of me and the sun beating down. Zoë had never tried octopus before, and although an unworthy part of me was hoping she wouldn’t like it so I could eat it all to myself, when she loved it as much as I did that made me even happier. It’s always better after all, if you can, to escape with an accomplice. This starter was on the expensive side at a tenner, but it was worth every penny just to feel like I’d travelled somewhere, even if in a small way.

Finally, I had really wanted to try the hummus kavurma, a dish I often order at other restaurants. It should come as no surprise by now to find that La’De Kitchen’s version was exemplary. The houmous was a lovely texture – coarse, but not too gloopy, with just the right amount of tahini. And the soft umami nuggets of lamb were resting on top just waiting to be scooped up with pita. I have to mention La’De Kitchen’s pitas, too, because they were stunning: full of air, edible balloons, with a scattering of black and white sesame seeds and a pleasing glaze to them. They were hugely generous, and they gave us three of them; eating them made me wonder what La’De Kitchen’s pizza would be like.

Mansoor had also told me that I needed La’De Kitchen’s pistachio cheesecake in my life, so after an appropriate period of rest and digestion had taken place I fished it out of the fridge. Desserts haven’t exactly been a feature of my takeaway reviews so far, so I was very happy indeed to get to try one. It was good but not great – the centre was very cold and much harder than the rest, in a way that suggested this dessert had previously been frozen. I might have been spoiled by the lovely cheesecake they sell at Geo Cafe, by the very talented Anabel of Reading Loves Cheesecake, but this was a little too sweet and a bit too insubstantial for me. 

The base, which didn’t go all the way to the edge, was sponge rather than biscuit and tasted boozy to me, like the bottom of a tiramisu (and in fact La’De Kitchen also sell a tiramisu, so maybe they share a component). Some more chocolate chips would have been nice, too, but then I’m not sure I’ve never seen a dessert that couldn’t be improved with more chocolate chips. Your mileage may vary.

Dinner for two, which included more food than we could sensibly eat in one sitting – not that that stopped us – came to pretty much bang on sixty pounds. That may seem on the high side, but La’De Kitchen don’t charge for delivery and we could easily have ordered less food and have been every bit as happy – provided that octopus still made the cut, anyway.

As you can probably tell from this review, I was very impressed with La’De Kitchen. For one of the first times since I started reviewing takeaway food, I realised some of the things I miss out on by eating new food in this way. It’s lovely to eat dinner on your lap watching Interior Design Masters With Alan Carr, and it’s lovely not to have to brave the rain or leave the house wearing trousers that don’t have an elasticated waist. But even though La’De Kitchen’s food was terrific, it made me think how much I would have liked to eat it in their restaurant, taking my time over everything, getting through a bottle of a great Turkish red and catching up with good friends. And I imagine La’De Kitchen’s food could be very easy on the eye in the restaurant, far nicer than my very limited plating skills make it look.

But to make too much of that would be to be one of those people who looks at good takeaway food and says “I’ll come in to try it when they reopen”, because these restaurants need our help to make sure they can reopen. And La’De Kitchen, as much as any restaurant I’ve reviewed this year, absolutely deserve that support. There is nothing revolutionary about what they do, arguably, but they do it superbly. And actually, I don’t think Reading has ever really had a good Turkish restaurant: I’ve always had to head to Didcot, to the amazing Zigana’s Turkish Kitchen. Zigana does positively life-changing lamb chops: the fat is even more prized than the meat. 

I introduced a friend to Zigana a couple of years ago, and she and her husband regularly went there to eat before Covid. He orders the lamb chops – just the chops, no chips or rice or garnish – and ploughs through them without a care in the world, in his happy place. After I’d finished eating my meal, I messaged my friend. I’ve just eaten the most delicious Turkish food. I said. The restaurant has a Pangbourne branch that could probably deliver to you. I haven’t tried their lamb chops, but I reckon they’ll be excellent. It felt like the right thing to do: passing on recommendations is what this blog is all about. And thanking people for recommendations, too. So thank you, Mansoor. See you at the next readers’ lunch?

La’De Kitchen
61-63 Crockhamwell Road, Woodley, Reading, RG5 3JP (also in Pangbourne)
0118 9692047

https://www.ladekitchen.com
Order via: Direct through the restaurant, or via JustEat

Takeaway review: The Lyndhurst

On By ediblereadingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

The Lyndhurst is under new management as of June 2024 and does not currently offer takeaway. I’ve left the review up for posterity.

It’s been a month since I started publishing takeaway reviews, and the feedback has been fantastic: I really appreciate all the social media posts, comments, Retweets and emails from people who have discovered new places to order from as a result. It’s lovely, too, that so many people have told me that reading a new review every week makes life feel a tiny step closer to normality. I feel that way too, and by my reckoning we have at least another six more reviews to look forward to after this one before lockdown is eased to the extent where we can all eat outside once more, assuming that the weather – and those pesky virus variants – play ball.

I said that I would predominantly focus on restaurants I haven’t previously reviewed, which means that the last month has been one leap into the unknown after another – some very good, some terrific and some best forgotten (I actually had a very nice email from the Forbury Hotel inviting me in for a comped meal when they reopen and asking me to take my review down in return: you can probably guess how that discussion went). 

By contrast, this week’s review is a return to an old favourite, and about as close to a home fixture as you can get on this blog. The Lyndhurst, the gastropub on Watlington Street, is the closest restaurant to my house, and by my reckoning I’ve probably ordered takeaway from them more in the last year than from anywhere else. And that means that I do have to add a caveat before we get under way: the team at the Lyndhurst have hosted one of my readers’ lunches, so I am not anonymous to them. 

Even so, I’ve seen enough of their customer service, and looked enviously at enough photographs of their dishes taken by other people, to be confident that I don’t get special treatment as a paying customer. In fact, the Lyndhurst is so modest about its cooking that I fully expect them to be amazed to see themselves featured in the blog this week. It frustrates me that they never shout as much about their food as I’d like them to, so I’ll just have to do it for them.

So why the Lyndhurst this week? Their delivery has always felt a bit of a well-kept secret. They started it in the summer and they continued to offer it on the side when they reopened as a restaurant in July, although it never felt like something they promoted very strongly. I made regular use of it in the second half of last year, and had emotional reunions with many of my favourite dishes: the phenomenal chilli beef nachos, their superb katsu chicken burger, that Scotch egg. 

But the Lyndhurst never stayed still for long, so new dishes were always cropping up. There was a chicken dish with a stunning morel sauce that blew me away, another with both pork belly and presa Iberica which livened up several wintry Saturday evenings in front of Strictly and a take on poutine featuring confit duck that had instant classic written all over it. But when Reading went into Tier 4, followed swiftly by a third national lockdown, the Lyndhurst decided to take a break. January passed without a peep, and I found myself worrying about what the future held for them.

Worrying unduly, as it turned out: at the start of February the Lyndhurst announced that it was returning for takeaways. The menu looked good, too, with the old favourites still in place – burgers, fish and chips, the legendary nachos – but supplemented with brand new dishes many of which, like chicken tinga tacos, steak arepas and feijoada, showcased a new Latin American direction. 

That in itself might have been enough to prompt me to review them, but the clincher was that gradually over the last few weeks the Lyndhurst have been ramping up their delivery options. Initially the pub only delivered to the surrounding areas, but when they relaunched on the 4th February they specified that they would deliver within a mile of the pub. Last week that delivery radius was extended to two miles, which opens it up as a realistic option to people across Reading. 

I live just down the road, so I’ve been able to try their food all along, but I thought it was time to review it so everybody else could see what they might have been missing out on. Besides, that whole modesty thing (again) means that most people probably don’t know that the Lyndhurst delivers that far afield. The pub has started mentioning it, almost as if in passing, but sometimes on social media talking isn’t enough and you have to do a little more: not the hyperactive look-at-me-look-at-me style of some businesses, but at least raising your voice somewhat.

The Lyndhurst serves food on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and on Sunday lunchtimes. I booked in a delivery for Saturday evening relatively early in the week and spent a few days idly looking at the menu, trying to work out whether to go for the tried and tested or whether, in the spirit of all those leaps into the unknown, I should pick dishes I knew less well. But I didn’t finalise my order until Saturday lunchtime, because the Lyndhurst also supplements their regular menu with a small selection of specials and I wanted to wait to see what they were.

The Lyndhurst uses specials cleverly, as a way of testing dishes that may graduate to the permanent menu. Not only that, but they told me a little while back that apart from the core dishes they were thinking of changing everything on the menu on a regular basis. So technically much of the menu could class as a special, and it’s possible that by the time this review is published some or all of the dishes I ordered may have been replaced.

Even without the specials, the menu is just the right size and, cleverly, it only loosely distinguishes between starters and mains. Prices range from about eight to fourteen pounds, with most dishes hovering around the ten pound mark. You can tell, from the pricing and the dishes, which ones are technically starters, but when you’re ordering takeaway and everything comes at the same time those distinctions are less useful.  

What is helpful, though, is how smartly the menu has been put together: many of the Lyndhurst’s dishes – tacos, nachos, Korean chicken wings – make excellent sharers, which makes it a lot of fun for bigger households. It also helps – and I know this from extensive personal experience – that portions across the board are really generous. By way of illustration, and bear this in mind when you see the pictures further down, I have pretty large dinner plates. Everything the Lyndhurst dishes up, without exception, manages to make them look small.

Tempting though the specials were, I had got it into my mind that this might be one of my last chances to try some of the dishes on the main menu, so I made my selection, paid the Lyndhurst and spent the rest of my Saturday happy in the knowledge that dinner was taken care of. It arrived bang on the dot at the requested time, and the paper bag which came out of the insulated box was perfectly hot and full of goodies. Laying them out on the kitchen worktop I was struck by the effort that the Lyndhurst puts into its packaging – everything was sturdy, well thought out and recyclable, and everything held its heat superbly.

My previous experience of feijoada – a Brazilian stew with beans – was at Katesgrove’s Pau Brasil where I’d found it gelatinous, stingy and bland. Nobody would accuse the Lyndhurst’s version of any of those things – it was a meaty symphony of a dish, deep, rich and absolutely delicious. I had it shortly after they added it to the menu and at that point it felt a little bit like they’d thrown the kitchen sink at it – so many different types and cuts of meat, along with chunks of sausage that felt suspiciously close to frankfurters. But the Lyndhurst is always tweaking, revising and improving, and the version that arrived on Saturday night was an impeccable v2.0, streamlined with all the kinks ironed out.

There were big, tender pieces of meat along with several ribs, all of which shed their bounty with minimal persuasion, and many more slow-cooked, tangled strands. The black beans added bite and texture, and the crowning glory – pretty much literally – was a good slab of pork belly, soft and yielding underneath but with an exemplary salty layer of crackling on top. I think the Lyndhurst understands how to cook pork belly better than any kitchen I can think of, and the whole thing added up to an embarrassment of riches. 

It came with fluffy white rice, deep, verdant shreds of spring greens and – a good flash of colour in a predominantly brown dish – a few slices of orange. I didn’t realise these were a traditional accompaniment to feijoada but it turns out that they are, and having eaten them with the stew I could completely understand why. This dish costs thirteen pounds fifty, and at that price I somehow felt as if I was conning the Lyndhurst, even though they’re the ones who set it. If it even remotely sounds like your sort of thing, I strongly advise you to grab some before it comes off the menu, to be replaced no doubt by something equally splendid.

The other “main”, so to speak, was the steak arepas. An arepa is a Venezuelan dish made from ground maize dough, a little like a bun made of cornbread, and my previous experiences of them had been mixed to put it lightly. I’d had them in Reading a long time ago, when we briefly had a Venezuelan restaurant called Arepas Caffee, and I renewed my acquaintance last year when Pabellon brought their award-winning arepas to the Blue Collar-hosted British Street Food Awards.

I could tell that Pabellon’s were streets ahead of Arepas Caffe’s, but both times I found them hard to love – there was something fluffy, almost woolly, about the texture that I just couldn’t take to. But the Lyndhurst’s version was absolutely a case of third time lucky.

Eating my steak arepas I was struck by how often it’s the sandwich, not the filling, that lets a dish down – I’ve lost count of the amount of brioches I’ve waded through that disintegrate long before the burger is finished, or bread that simply doesn’t have the oomph to live up to what’s stuffed between the slices. No such problem with these arepa – they were robust, burnished things, perfect for holding together and with a beautiful flavour that worked alongside, rather than fought against, the filling.

And there was certainly no problem with the filling either: tons of steak, most of it tender, a couple of bits slightly chewier, with rocket, red onion and a combination of two sauces that elevated the whole shebang. One was a deep, dark spicy sauce a little like mole that gave the dish punch and heft, the other was a bright, tangy chimichurri that deftly nudged the contrast dial (little tubs of both were provided in case you wanted even more: I did).

This is again a good point to talk about the Lyndhurst’s generosity: one arepa would be a fantastic steak sandwich, accompanied by the Lyndhurst’s chips which are, for my money, the best takeaway chips I’ve ever had anywhere, all crunch and rustle and salt. You actually get two arepa for your money, and “money” in this case means the almost comically generous sum of ten pounds fifty. I said it earlier on, but I have big dinner plates: look at this picture, and see if you can see much room left on this one.

Our third dish was the chicken tikka naanza, and this felt like the only misfire of the meal. The chicken tikka itself was beautifully done, but the naan felt heavy rather than fluffy and generous though the topping of cheese was, it felt dangerously close to just being a chicken pizza. I would have liked to see a more unconventional tomato base with fire and spice in it, a lighter, crustier base, a bit less emphasis on the cheese and the chicken being given more of a chance to shine – and perhaps a raita on the side rather than the garlic mayo that came with it. The Lyndhurst’s garlic mayo is incredible, don’t get me wrong (so good you’ll wish you’d saved it for your sandwich the next day), but it felt like a misstep.

That said, it wasn’t a bad dish by any means: even the Lyndhurst’s less outstanding dishes are better than many restaurants’ star players. More to the point I think the fault probably lies with me, because it delivered absolutely what it said on the tin. I just think, with hindsight, that what it said on the tin perhaps wasn’t for me. 

Our three dishes came to just under thirty-two pounds. That doesn’t include a delivery charge – the Lyndhurst doesn’t charge for delivery, but you do have to spend over twenty-five pounds unless you’re ordering for collection. That said, you absolutely can and should tip them – which I always manage to do, usually after a decidedly Mrs Doyle exchange with them where I insist that I will and they insist that I mustn’t. Their food is crazy value, to the extent that I worry about them making a profit, so tipping is the least I can do.

And for those of you considering delivery, it’s really very easy to spend twenty-five pounds with the Lyndhurst: I see they’ve added a black pudding Scotch egg to their specials for this weekend, so just keep adding those until you’ve passed the threshold (and if you find yourself with more black pudding Scotch eggs than you can physically eat, just let me know and I’ll meet you on the street corner of your choice).

I make no bones about being so unreservedly positive about the Lyndhurst. I think we’re incredibly lucky to have such a good, inventive kitchen in town constantly experimenting and innovating, doing brilliant food which is simultaneously very unfussy but involves a huge amount of thought and hard work. They can be apologetic and reserved about their food in a way that reminds me of Clay’s Hyderabadi Kitchen, Reading’s other great food introverts – perfectionist, always critical of their own efforts and deeply uncomfortable with bigging themselves up. And yet on quality alone, their food – like Clay’s – shouts from the rooftops. 

It will be all I can do not to get in touch with them between finishing writing this and it being published on Friday morning to book another delivery slot for Saturday night – in fact, they single-handedly present one of the biggest obstacles to my ongoing project to keep making those leaps into the unknown, ordering from new restaurants and different kitchens, trying to unearth more gems for you, boldly going where no restaurant reviewer has been before. But that’s my problem. On the other hand, if you live within two miles of Watlington Street and you feel even remotely peckish you suddenly have one fewer problem than you did ten minutes ago: if that’s you, I truly envy you.

The Lyndhurst
88 Queens Road, Reading, RG1 4DG
0118 9503888

http://www.thelyndhurstreading.co.uk/
Order via: Direct through the pub, Thursday to Sunday

Takeaway review: Finn’s

On By ediblereadingIn Reviews6 Comments

I rather missed fish and chips last year. It wasn’t in the A-list of things I missed – I didn’t miss it as much as going to restaurants, getting on an aeroplane, waking up in a hotel, or hugs, or impromptu nights down the pub, or the first beer of the holiday – but even so it was a small, nagging thing that I missed for the best part of 2020.

If I had felt comfortable going out to get fish and chips I might not been that bothered, but because I didn’t there were moments here and there that blindsided me on a week night when I was suddenly struck by how nice it would be to wander to the chippy, place my order and rush home with it while it was still hot. It’s one of those meals that can perfect a summer night, eaten out in the park or on a bench, or a cold winter’s night, the steam rising from the bag as you take those final steps home.

Fish and chips is one of those curious dishes that is sometimes eaten in restaurants – London Street Brasserie and the Lyndhurst both do excellent versions – and often eaten at home as a takeaway, but relatively rarely delivered. And until this year, I couldn’t have reviewed most chippies because you couldn’t eat your fish and chips in – it’s a very long time since Reading had a Harry Ramsden’s at the top of the Oxford Road (and eating there was always a very strange experience) and the gentrified likes of Kerbisher & Malt or Poppie’s have never made their way down the M4 to Reading from the capital.

We have plenty of burgers and a fair amount of pizza, but if you want fish and chips you still generally head for your favourite chippy and pick it up from there. And when it comes to favourite chippies, people in Reading all fly the flag for different ones. Caversham types are proud of Wings on the Gosbrook Road, Whitley residents will sing the praises of Deep Blue up on the Basingstoke Road. If you live in Earley you might have a view on Top Table or Terry Ling’s, and down in West Reading there’s 555 Fish Bar, a pescatarian take on the number of the beast.

I used to live near Seaspray, a lovely little place on Crown Street, and I was very sad when it closed. There was no longer anywhere decent within walking distance, and even if there had been going wouldn’t have felt right: people get tribal about chippies, you see.

These days my nearest fish and chip shop is Finn’s, the subject of this week’s review. It’s a few doors up from student breakfast hub Café Yolk on Hatherley Road, and I believe it’s owned by the same people. But I’m not reviewing it because it’s the closest, I’m reviewing it because it’s a more interesting beast altogether. Most fish and chip shops are still stuck in the world of a few decades ago, the turn of the century, but Finn’s is a very modern establishment. It set up an Instagram account back in 2018 and never put much effort into it, but last summer, waking up to the existential crisis faced by all hospitality businesses, it started taking social media seriously. So if you look now you’ll see an active Instagram account full of pictures that are likely to make you peckish. 

And not just that: Finn’s does gluten free fish and chips on Tuesdays, and has a well-regarded vegan offering every day. And crucially, at the start of this month, Finn’s joined Just Eat, so now you can get it delivered to your door provided you live less than two miles away. This felt like a win-win to me: I was used to having to pick it up and walk home, but I was close enough to the restaurant that a delivery was bound to get to my house quicker than if I’d collected it myself.

The core of the menu is pretty compact – cod, haddock, masala fish or vegan fish (the menu doesn’t say what’s in it, which surprised me) all of which come with chips. Some come in a large, some in a regular and with some you get to choose: I have no idea why. This does mean you can’t, as some people would at a chippy, get a portion of fish each and share a bigger portion of chips, but that felt like a minor drawback. 

You can also have a variety of other dishes with chips – prawns, scampi, fishcakes and so on – or you can order those as sides. Finally, of course, you can go for sauces and mushy peas, and Finn’s also serves poutine, the Quebecois speciality of chips in gravy with cheese curds. Zoë and I had had the kind of shitty day which is only really medicated with calories and booze, so we went wild in the aisles, ordered a bit of everything, poured a couple of beers and waited for our dinner to arrive.

This will disappoint a lot of you, and probably shorten the review by at least five hundred words, but my JustEat experience was absolutely exemplary. We placed the order just before 6pm and twenty minutes later the driver was outside the front door, in an Ola cab, opening up an insulated bag (a Deliveroo one, but I imagine he works for them too) and handing over a branded paper bag with our food in it.

Most of it was packed in faux-polystyrene cardboard, and all of it was piping hot, but it wasn’t without its challenges. For instance, Zoë had ordered a large cod and chips and I had ordered a large haddock and chips, but there was nothing on the boxes to indicate which was which. So I can tell you about my fish – and I think it was haddock because I picked the one with the flatter, more delicate looking fillet – but really, I can’t guarantee it wasn’t cod. Similarly, we had ordered a range of sides – the panko breadcrumbed prawns, the scampi and – this wasn’t my choice, believe you me – a battered sausage. All of them came in the same container, which didn’t bother me but might irk you if you were a pescatarian.

None of these are dealbreakers, but they’re worth mentioning. Similarly, many of my quibbles with the food were exactly that – minor quibbles, and probably things that wouldn’t occur to most people. So I would have liked my fillet of fish to be ever so slightly bigger (and my chips to be slightly smaller). I would have liked my batter to be a little crispier and not quite so soggy underneath, and I would have liked the chips to be more of a mixture of big, floury ones and the little sharp scraps that so enliven the bottom of the bag when you pick them up from a chippy.

But even so, having a fish supper on a Wednesday night on the sofa, in my comfies, watching the strangely compulsive Lightning on BBC2 (just me?) still made for a deeply enjoyable experience. The batter had plenty of flavour and seasoning, the fish fell into deeply pleasing flakes and if you can’t enjoy a plate of hot chips there might be something medically wrong with you.

The side dishes were more of a mixed bag, I’d say. I really liked the panko breadcrumbed prawns (I was put on to them by theatre impressario and one-woman arts whirlwind Steph Weller, who introduced me to Finn’s in the first place years ago), which were beautifully done with a neat contrast between the light, crunchy interior and the firm, meaty prawns within. The scampi, also breaded, but a little more claggy inside, were less successful but still decent. What both really needed, and were missing, was a dip – it would have been good to have a little tartare sauce, say, thrown in.

The battered sausage was Zoë’s idea. “You won’t eat this, will you?” she said. “When it comes to sausages you like the posh shit.” She cut into it, had a mouthful and then realised that over the last few years I’ve sneakily (and successfully) converted her to the posh shit, too. “No, I won’t finish that. But I’m fucking full anyway.” I looked at the cross-section and it did have the look and texture of mystery meat that so puts me off that kind of thing. Your mileage might well vary, but it felt to me mostly like an item you’d order if you wanted to be ironic. Some things are best left in the past, and I suspect battered sausage might be one of them: that said, if Finn’s ever decides to do a black pudding fritter I’d be the first in line for it. I’d probably camp outside the night before.

Last but not least, the poutine. This was slightly a victim of us having ordered so much food, and the way it was served – in a foil tray with a cardboard lid – meant that it felt like it went cold a lot quicker than everything else. Given that chips come with pretty much any main you order this is always likely to end up as an add-on, but that said I did quite like it. The curd cheese was firm and squeaky as it should be – like halloumi but without the saltiness – and worked beautifully and the gravy was thick and salty, if a little lacking in flavour beyond that. 

It’s definitely a dish to file under Tastes better than it looks. But when you read, earlier on, that poutine was chips in gravy with cheese on top you were probably either filled with longing or revulsion, so I suspect you already know whether it’s your kind of thing. If it is, or if you’re just curious about whether eating it would make you feel dirty in a good or a bad way, I’d say it’s definitely worth a shot. It’s a shame, really, that they don’t allow you to upgrade regular chips to poutine to save you from double carbs.

The main fish you might detect in this review, I fear, is carp. Looking back through it it’s all a bit Goldilocks And The Three Bears: my fish is too small, my batter is too soggy, my poutine went cold, wah wah waaah. Did I mention that I loved my meal? Maybe I didn’t say that loudly enough, and I really should have done. The thing is, the niggles I mention are the kind that I used to have back in the good old days, when I was so blasé that I ate in restaurants all the time and was probably a lot more critical. I probably mention them more from muscle memory than genuine sentiment: the fact is, I absolutely adored my fish and chips – chips scattered with salt and drenched in Sarson’s, a lovely crimson pool of Stokes’ Bloody Mary ketchup on the side. 

Our order cost just shy of thirty-five pounds, including a two pound fifty delivery charge and a fifty pence service charge. But we really went for it: if you just had a couple of portions of fish and chips the whole thing would come in around twenty quid and personally, I think that’s thoroughly decent value. What a time to be alive, when you can get someone to turn up at your door with fish and chips! When I thought about it that way, and had another gulp of my beautifully cold beer, I found that, ultimately, all was well in my little world. You may still cleave to your regular chippy, and I may not be able to change your mind, but I’ll just leave you with this: Finn’s really delivers.

Finn’s
Hatherley Road, Reading, RG1 5NA
0118 3271960

https://www.facebook.com/finnsfish
Order via: Direct through the restaurant for collection, JustEat for delivery