Category: Reviews

Picnic

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One of my biggest gripes about Reading is that there are limited options if you want a really good breakfast. I’m talking about crispy, smoked streaky, really good quality sausages, excellent toast, perfectly poached eggs and mushrooms by someone who knows how to cook them into sticky, salty perfection. Oh, and HP Sauce (I know some people like ketchup with breakfast, but then some people like Nigel Farage. It takes all sorts, I guess).

Ironically, your best bets tend to be the chains. And they’re not too bad, I suppose – Cote does a pretty good breakfast, especially their French version with a generous helping of crumbly boudin noir. Carluccio’s used to be top of the heap for me with their resolutely Italian take – thin translucent strips of pancetta, gorgeous wild mushrooms and herby, soft scrambled eggs with ciabatta toast – although recently they’ve tried to Anglicise it by slipping in an incongruous banger. And if you like that sort of thing, Bill’s has a lot of fans, although I’ve always found their breakfast a bit underwhelming.

Most of the independent places in the town centre fall down on the quality of their ingredients – bouncy sausages and pink rubbery bacon are the main culprits here – so I decided to act on a tip-off and drive out to a farm shop a short distance outside town. And it was going well until I bounded up to the counter only to be told that they’d stopped serving at 11.30 (brunch clearly wasn’t a word in their dictionary). Then I remembered that Picnic had recently started doing a Sunday brunch menu, so I did an about turn and headed back into town to give it a whirl.

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Miller & Carter

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I must confess, I’d been in no hurry to visit Miller & Carter. Why? It’s a chain for starters (with nearly 40 branches, though I had never heard of it before it opened in Reading). A Mitchell and Butler chain at that, so part of the big faceless group that owns All Bar Ones and Harvesters across the land, not to mention the likes of the Oakford and the Abbot Cook. Then there’s the basic idea of it: a steakhouse is all very well, but perhaps a bit limited if your idea of dinner extends beyond meat and chips. Last but not least, I was put off by the pricing – I struggled to get my head round the idea of paying over twenty quid for a steak when I could go to London Street Brasserie for their excellent venison with haggis less than a hundred metres away for roughly the same price.

And yet, after all that, this week you’re reading a review of Miller & Carter. Why? Well, I’ve had it recommended to me more than once. Some people on Twitter told me they preferred it to CAU. Some restaurant staff told me it was where they liked to go on their rare nights off. And a friend of mine (who used to work in hospitality and is very particular) told me that on her rare date nights with her husband she often goes there to have the chateaubriand because they do it well and the service meets her exacting standards. Besides, sometimes it’s nice to do a review that doesn’t involve getting in the car or eating curry.

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Piwnica Pub

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I’d put off visiting Piwnica Pub for something like six months and there were two reasons for this; the one I told myself and the real reason. In my mind, I’d decided that it was a winter restaurant. A cellar restaurant serving rib-sticking Polish cuisine, tucked away just off the London Road, felt like somewhere for the colder months when you can see your breath in the air and you want big platefuls of hot comfort food, dumplings and stews and all that jazz.

That was how I justified the delay, but perhaps more significantly I struggled to persuade anybody to go with me. Polish food, it turns out, doesn’t have a great reputation outside the Polish community, despite the amazing delicatessen on St Mary’s Butts full of interesting bread which also sells about five different kinds of herring (and, to me at least, that’s a good thing: I bloody love herring). One friend, who occasionally accompanies me on reviews, told me that he’d been to Piwnica already. He emphatically wasn’t a fan. “I ordered a starter, some kind of pork spread, and when it turned up it was literally just lard.” he told me.

“What did it taste like?”

He gave me the Charles died years ago look from “Four Weddings And A Funeral” and I realised, too late, what a stupid question I’d just asked.

“How would I know?”

So I had mixed feelings as I turned off the road and found my way down the stairs. But in the back of my mind I was still thinking that this had the potential to be another of those breakout finds Reading has scattered around, doing a roaring trade under the radar. Besides, the TripAdvisor reviews were glowing – and none of them mentioned lard, either.

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The Crown, Playhatch

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N.B. By November 2019 the Crown had been acquired by Brakspears and the menu differs considerably from the one I reviewed in 2015. In particular there are no longer any South African dishes on the menu. I’ve left the review up for posterity, but it’s no longer representative of the experience you would have if you ate at the Crown.

This week’s review is sort of me returning a favour. The enigmatic Roast Dinners Around Reading (worth a read if you’re not a regular already: his weekly reviews are probably the highlight of my Mondays – well, that and Only Connect) recently visited one of my top recommendations, The Bull at Sonning, and was a big fan. So it seemed fitting that I try out the Crown, which has occupied his top spot for as long as I can remember. The last time I went there was long before it had a makeover and repositioned itself doing classic pub food with a South African twist, so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. And yes, the website talks about freshly prepared, quality ingredients but, well, don’t they all?

First things first, I have to mention the building itself. Pulling up onto the gravel driveway in the dark doesn’t do the outside justice (though there’s lots of smart seating outside which looks like it could be gorgeous in summer – if we ever get one again) so the first impression you really get is when you walk through the door. The welcome – quick and friendly – was nice enough but the interior is stunning; there are lots of big rooms broken up only by lots of beams, some of which could be perilous after a couple of pints if you’re over five feet eight. The dining area is in a rough L shape, with a large barn section at the end literally crowned with, erm, a crown, all wrought iron and grandeur.

As is de rigueur these days, the furniture is shabby chic and mismatched (I lost count of the number of different dining chairs in the barn area – one large table only had a couple which matched at all) and the paint is the very regulation Farrow and Ball. The interior’s been done by the same people who styled Henley’s Bull On Bell Street and it’s every bit as tasteful: I felt like I should have been there in my gilet and Hunter wellies. Having dinner with friends called Pippa and Tarquin, probably.

The menu’s an interesting one which covers lots of bases without feeling overextended. There’s some kind of South African connection (though I’m not clear exactly what) so there are a few South African touches (Boerewors, bobotie, the dubious delights of “monkey gland sauce”) but they’re well integrated. There’s hearty stuff, slightly more sophisticated stuff and a couple of vegetarian dishes (and several salads) – enough range, in fact, to make Brits feel safe without feeling completely staid. It’s a nice balance.

Although the starter menu was full of temptation (more so than the mains, I thought) boneless ribs stood out as something I rarely see and, in truth, an invention I think the world has long been waiting for. I don’t mind ribs, but it’s impossible to eat them with any dignity and there’s always that moment of trepidation when you take the first bite – will it come away neatly and easily, or will you be left gnawing away and embarrassing yourself, your dining companions and, most likely, people at the next table? That’s before we get to the mess – there’s always mess, and there’s always more mess than you think there will be (which reminds me, must buy more wet wipes).

I was delighted when they turned up, because they just looked pretty. Presentation seems to be a strong point at the Crown – it was attractive enough that you wanted to eat it but not so aesthetically precious that you felt like you were ruining it. What I soon realised is that boneless ribs don’t resemble ribs at all – durr, the clue’s in the name – so if anything they were like small slices of belly pork and none the worse for that. I really liked them – tender, tasty, no bounce, artfully drizzled with glaze. On top was a heap of red cabbage which was packed with cloves. I liked it, because I like cloves, but it was only just the right side of the line between really good mulled wine and overpowering Yule-themed Yankee Candle. Oh, and the salad was not only pretty but edible, with little cubes of tomato and some attractive shoots on top. Not only was it edible, but I actually ate it, and you can’t say that very often. Good work all round, I feel.

CrownRibs

The other starter, hot smoked salmon was even better; a great big cylinder of it, all salty and smoky, was served with some sliced bread which had been generously oiled, garlicked (I think I may have just verbed a noun: sorry about that) and chargrilled, a little pile of salad, four little dollops of herbed crème fraîche and best of all, some slices of preserved lemons. It might sound busy in theory but it wasn’t in practice – and it was much prettier than my terrible photo would have you believe.

To be honest, the crème fraîche got rather lost against the salmon – I think it had dill in, but there might have been some parsley – so it needed the tangy, vinegary lemons to lend some zip and oomph to proceedings. Adding a bit of that lemon to a forkful of the salmon was a bit like putting Worcestershire sauce on your baked beans – once you’ve done it once it’s hard to imagine the dish without it. A cracking start: generous, just a little bit cleverer than it needed to be and with so many flavour combinations that it never got boring.

CrownSalmon

For mains it seemed absolutely right to have a South African special. The Bobotie (which I later discovered is pronounced beau booty, although I, mistakenly but enthusiastically, said it as bobot-yeah! instead) didn’t grab me on the menu but I am glad I threw caution to the wind and tried it. Out came a wee cast iron dish filled with minced meat (beef, I think, although it could have been lamb, or both) mixed with spices, sultanas, flaked almonds plus tiny pieces of ref pepper. On top of all that was something which looked like cheese but was in fact a layer of whisked egg which gets baked when the whole thing goes in the oven, sort of like a savoury custard.

It was so good – like nothing I’ve eaten before, intensely flavoured, sweet and rich with lots of complexity and a little heat. Really lovely stuff. Eating it, I found myself wondering if it was close to what mincemeat might have been a couple of hundred years ago (Google says yes, incidentally). It didn’t really need accompaniments – I would have been delighted with this on its own – but it came with some anyway – some very plain (allegedly saffron) rice and a prettily pleated poppadum. Just in case there wasn’t enough flavour there was a small pot of some of the spiciest mango chutney I’ve ever eaten and some fresh tomato salsa that, a bit like the herbed crème fraîche in the salmon starter, didn’t stand up to the rest of the dish.

CrownBobotie

I promised myself at the start of the year that I’d order one vegetarian main course every month, and with the exception of the month where I spent half of it on holiday I’ve kept that promise. This was likely to be my last meat-free main of the year, and I realised it was time to confront the ever-present on menus, the vegetarian main course you really can’t escape. Yes, just as Mario inevitably has to face the end of level baddie, there was no chance of me getting to the end of the year without ordering the mushroom risotto. So I did.

Unfortunately it was probably the only duffer of the evening. Again, it looked good on paper; wild mushrooms, lemon thyme and truffle oil were all namechecked, but what turned up needed to be half as big and twice as interesting. The mushrooms were wild – no trades descriptions issues there – but there was so much rice that they were drowned out. So much cream, too, with no seasoning to bring the flavour out in anything. There was enough truffle oil that you smelled it when it arrived at the table but after that nothing, a bit like those strangely flavourless herbal teas that you get. No lemon thyme either that I could see, just some rocket. Finally – and this didn’t bother me but I imagine it would many bona fide vegetarians – I’m pretty sure there was parmesan on top. In many ways, this was a fitting final vegetarian main course of 2015 because it highlighted how frustrating and difficult it must be: if a place like the Crown, which got so many things right, still couldn’t deliver a good mushroom risotto, what hope was there for everywhere else?

CrownRisotto

There was no chance of dessert after such big main courses and, to be honest, the dessert menu plays it far safer than the other two courses (cheesecake, Eton mess, banoffee pie, you know the drill by now) so I didn’t feel like I was missing out. Drinks were nice enough – a glass of South African red which was pleasant and everyday, but not wildly exciting and a bottle of Fever Tree bitter lemon which was very nice, albeit a little small. Dinner for two – two courses and a drink each – came to just under fifty pounds, not including service.

Speaking of service, it deserves more of a mention: I think at various points in the evening we were looked after by three or four different people and they were uniformly excellent, just informal enough to be engaging but never over-familiar. The young lady who took our money at the end was a particularly good ambassador, enthusing about the restaurant and talking about some of her favourite dishes (including the bobotie – no surprise there – and the steak). It was pretty busy, too – despite being a week night quite a lot of tables were occupied which is pretty good going for a location out of town. I think I heard a couple of South African accents, also a positive sign.

Despite the South African influences The Crown feels archetypally English in a Richard Curtis sort of way; the interior is beautiful, the staff are all lovely and much of the food is really good looking. I half expected it to be more style than substance (like Love Actually – that’s two hours of my life I’ll never have again) so it’s lovely to be able to report that there’s more depth to it than that; the food (with one exception, sadly – probably not one for vegetarians) was both tasty and interesting. Perhaps it reflects the growing competition in the area between Reading and Henley where there are plenty of options, but if anything, The Crown was better than I expected it to be: better food, better presentation, a better dining room and better service. You know what, I think that Roast Dinners bloke might be on to something. Extra gravy, anyone?

The Crown, Playhatch – 7.7
The Crown, Playhatch, RG4 9QN
0118 9472872

http://www.thecrown.co.uk/

Lazeez

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Lazeez closed in February 2018, and will be replaced by a new restaurant, apparently called Afghan. I’ve left this review up for posterity.

Pardon the pun, but eating out is often about your gut reaction, and some of the oddest meals I’ve had while reviewing have been ones where my head tells me one thing and my gut tells me another.

Usually, that happens in fancy, precise, pristine places: my head admires the artful arrangement of ingredients on the plate and the provenance (which always, however well-intentioned, has a whiff of name-dropping about it) on the menu, but my gut tells me this is food for people who love to tell people where they’ve eaten, rather than food for people who love to eat. Lazeez, a newish Pakistani restaurant down the Wokingham Road, is that unusual beast, the same phenomenon in reverse. I can see lots of reasons why I would dislike my meal there, so how come I didn’t?

I went partly because despite being three months old it had nearly no digital footprint whatsoever – no reviews, nothing on TripAdvisor, although I’ve been told by one reader that it was easily as good as House Of Flavours. But also, I was also intrigued by the notion of a Pakistani restaurant, as I don’t think Reading has any others which specifically identify themselves as such. In a rare piece of research not involving Wikipedia, I even asked a colleague at work, currently planning his wedding in Islamabad, what Pakistani food is like. “Pretty much the same as Indian”, he said.

It’s an interesting place to open a restaurant, two doors down from Miah’s Garden Of Gulab, which either demonstrates huge confidence or a fundamental lack of market research (even now, having eaten there, I can’t decide which it is). But it’s quite a nice room, a big square with booths and banquettes round the edge and tables in the middle. One interior wall has rather tasteful brick-effect tiles, another has very attractive lattice-work with lighting panels behind it which, disconcertingly, change colour on a regular basis. I can imagine on another, busier, night it could all be a bit much, but on a quiet weekday night (and it was quiet – we were the only table there) I rather liked it while at the same time knowing I shouldn’t. It was a disconnected feeling I had to get used to.

Certainly the menu was compact by the standards of Indian restaurants I’ve been to: no poppadoms on offer, a smallish selection of starters, a similarly manageable range of mains (grilled, chicken, lamb or vegetarian) and a handful of specials, including lamb trotters – maybe another time, eh? – and the only seafood main on the entire menu. Two other things jumped out from the menu. One is that the restaurant doesn’t have an alcohol licence, which I suppose will rule it out for some people but didn’t bother me. The other, more significantly, is how inexpensive everything is: most mains hover around the six pound mark, the costliest starter is four pounds.

So, cheap and nasty or cheap and cheerful? The starters were the first evidence. Shami kebab, which I ordered as a change from the usual sheekh kebab, sounded interesting – a mixture of finely minced lamb and ground dal. I liked it more in theory than in practice – two round pucks which had a vague flavour of lamb but none of the texture that goes with it, and a heat which went from “meh” to “my word” by the end of the dish. If anything they were more like spicy rissoles, which sounds more like a euphemism for a medical complaint than something you’d clamour to pick off a menu.

LazeezShami

Chicken tikka was a more traditional choice and was better, if not perfect. I was a bit surprised by how neatly cylindrical it all was, cut into equal sized chunks by someone very good at cutting things into small chunks (a trick which was to be repeated with the main courses). It was quite tasty, if a little bit lacking in the tenderness of the best examples I’ve had in Reading. I couldn’t decide how I felt about it, torn between “this is only four pounds!” and “well, it’s only four pounds”. Both starters came with a perfectly decent selection of perfectly decent raita, mango chutney and something a bit like a hot chilli mint sauce.

LazeezTikka

No sooner had the starters left than the mains, two sizzling karahi dishes on little wooden stands, were whisked to the table. This is one of my pet hates in any restaurant, and more than anything it made me wonder if Lazeez quite got how restaurants are meant to work. I understand it must be dull standing around in a kitchen when the room out front only has two customers in it, but that’s no excuse to curtail what’s meant to be a pleasant, leisurely evening for those two customers. Still, I could hardly send them away and again, I found myself thinking that given the price perhaps I was the one with the wrong expectations.

Karahi chicken was pleasant. Chunks of chicken and, I think, some little shreds of chicken were in there and I spotted a few little batons of ginger on top. The sauce was red, a little spiced but pretty unremarkable. The whole thing was a little well-mannered for me, as if someone had fitted a normal dish with a silencer. It was also ever so slightly on the small side and the pieces of chicken were also a tad diddy, especially if you’re used to the massive pieces in many Indian restaurants where you have to cut them in half or risk somebody having to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre. Still, at the risk of repeating myself, it was six quid.

The star of the night was the bhindi gosht – lamb curry with okra. The okra was what made it – sticky rather than slimy, still firm and really quite delicious with the gently spiced sauce and the sweet shreds of onion. This managed to be subtle rather than bland, in contrast to the karahi chicken which got that balance wrong. But again the pieces of lamb, though tender and soft, were small and few and far between. Both dishes, the karahi chicken and the bhindi gosht, were shiny with oil to the extent where I had slight misgivings.

LazeezMains

Rice was rice, no surprises there. There wasn’t enough sauce to need it all. More of a clanger was the aloo paratha. I love paratha; I know it’s unhealthy but there’s something about those buttery layers of bread that makes me come over all unnecessary, and the idea of such a thing stuffed with potato really appealed to me. Unfortunately, what came out was a stodgy, oily thing, the shape of a frisbee, full of cubes of potato and peas as you’d find in the middle of a samosa. Arg and Lydia from The Only Way Is Essex are switching on the Broad Street Mall lights this weekend, but even those two combined are not quite as dense as that paratha was. We abandoned half.

On a more positive note, possibly due to the lack of an alcohol licence, Lazeez doesn’t just do glasses of mango lassi. Oh no. They do a jug of the stuff. For seven pounds. It’s not every day you can go into a restaurant and say “and I’ll have a carafe of the mango lassi” and they deserve some credit for that alone (it was very nice too, to the extent where I wish I’d skipped the shami kebab and had a jug to myself). I should also say that service was lovely, if a tad eccentric. Obviously there are no real excuses for a meal which took – no word of a lie – forty minutes from start to finish, but the waiter was very friendly and genuinely interested in us, what we thought of the food and the Indian restaurants around town. Dinner for two came to thirty-two pounds, not including tip. We didn’t have dessert, mainly because my stomach felt more oiled up than a Chippendale.

Sometimes the act of writing a review is the final thing that crystallises my view of a restaurant. You’d think that would happen here, and yet despite all that’s gone before I feel a certain warmth towards Lazeez. Yes, there were lots of mistakes – the timing, the execution of some of the dishes, their oiliness – and yet it feels like Lazeez is a chrysalis from which a good restaurant might at some point emerge. I even wondered whether I was really in the target market for Lazeez or whether it’s aimed towards the Pakistani community in Reading (it wouldn’t necessarily surprise me; on my way home I wandered into Home Taste across the road and asked if I could look at a menu. “Not unless you’re learning Chinese” grinned the man behind the counter).

Crucially, what might keep Lazeez going is that it fills a gap in the market; it’s cheaper than most of its competitors and it’s an easier, more casual place to grab dinner (especially before going out drinking, or if you’re with teetotallers) than Miah’s. Put it this way, given a choice between the two I’d still go to Lazeez nine times out of ten, even though ten times out of ten my head would probably tell me that Miah’s is a “better restaurant”. But that’s how it goes: the gut wants what the gut wants, after all.

Lazeez – 6.7
146a Wokingham Road, RG6 1JL
0118 9668802

http://www.lazeezrestaurant.co.uk/