City guide: Lisbon

On By ediblereadingIn Features6 Comments

I first visited Lisbon in something like 2007, and loved it immediately. It was a scruffy, hilly, lively maelstrom of a city, zigzagged by bright yellow old-school trams, where the coffee was industrial, the pasteis de nata were ambrosial and street art was everywhere, as were beautifully grand, tiled houses. Octopus and salt cod were also everywhere, with either or both featuring on the menu of seemingly every restaurant I visited. I returned with a couple of bottles of vintage port – one of which is still in the garage and almost worth too much to drink now – and a fierce desire to go back. My then wife, put off by the scuzziness, was less keen to return.

I visited a couple more times, each time liking the place even more, and then, for over a decade, it never quite made the top of my list of places to visit. In that time, I saw more and more people discovering it for the first time and felt increasingly jealous and left out. I liked it before it was cool! I would silently protest at the screen of my phone, every time wondering why it had been so long since I travelled there.

People would ask me for recommendations for places to go in Lisbon, and eventually I reached the point where I only had one recommendation left that I had any confidence in, because the place had been going since 1950: more on that later. So I knew I was long overdue a return trip, and that finally happened last week.

Returning I was reminded of what a special place it is. Almost absurdly beautiful, with stunning views, gorgeous streets, a city on the river and right by the Atlantic. It was still sunny and warm in early December, although the Portuguese didn’t seem to think so: they were dressed for an autumn day and must have been mystified by the sight of me in shirtsleeves, shorts and sandals. I was too happy topping up my vitamin D to care.

Lisbon, I must say, wasn’t quite as I remembered it. It’s far more affluent and gentrified nowadays. When I first went it was a very poor city, and your money went a long way. Blame its increasing popularity, blame the much-discussed golden visa scheme, blame the Time Out Market if you like, but for whatever reason its character has definitely changed. That’s not a bad thing, it just makes it a slightly different experience to the one I recall. But some of that is also just the passing of time, so Lisbon having a craft beer scene and third wave coffee now is just about it being the year 2024 in Europe, not some red pill Lisbon has uniquely swallowed.

The other thing I didn’t quite remember was how hilly Lisbon is. Fuck me, but it’s so hilly. Google Maps ought to have an option where you say you want to walk from point A to point B and, even though Google Maps also tells you it will only take you 15 minutes, it then looks up your BMI and tells you to think again. Every day I felt like I’d walked 20000 steps when in reality I’d done a fraction of that, it’s just that so very many of them were up rather than along. Every now and again, on a walk, I would turn a corner, look up and think Seriously?

But not only that: the topography of Lisbon, somehow, is hill upon hill upon hill. The whole place undulates in a manner which makes you wonder how it was ever built at all. There were occasions where I honestly felt like I could travel from A to B to C and back to A without ever not going uphill: it was like living in an M.C. Escher drawing.

So there is beauty, and a castle, and countless miradouros, but that beauty comes at a price. When I last went to Lisbon I was eleven years younger and more supple, less weighed down by life and all the lovely meals I’ve had in the course of writing this blog. It might be a young person’s city, and I hate even being the kind of person who says that.

The best piece of advice I received from my friend Mike, who runs European tours in Lisbon often, was to make use of Bolt, which is like Uber but much cheaper. I rarely did a trip across the city that cost more than five Euros, and I tried not to think too hard about the underlying economy of a place where sitting in your car in traffic for half an hour, going relatively short distances around town earned you less than five Euros. Maybe the gentrification hasn’t trickled down to everybody: in my experience it rarely does.

It’s there none the less: Lisbon has the Time Out Market, which I didn’t eat at on this trip even though everyone says you absolutely should, and the LX Factory, which I did visit and is a bit like Bicester Village for hipsters. It’s very Instagrammable, but I imagine Lisbon is a very Instagrammable city all round. I didn’t get to the Alfama, the old slum district below the castle which I so loved eleven years ago, on this visit. Instead I wandered round Principe Real which is full of concept stores and wonderful boutiques and cafés and, crucially, is on the flat throughout: next time, I’m definitely staying there.

The way that Lisbon was exactly as I remembered was that the food and drink scene could match any city I’ve been to. I’ve often said, to anybody who will listen, that Portuguese food and wine is easily the equal of Spain’s but never gets the credit for it. Also, more even than Spain, Portugal’s food has never really taken off in the U.K.: with the exception of the restaurants of Nuno Mendes in the capital, it’s hard to think of other notable proponents. Here in Reading, multiple Portuguese restaurants – O Beirão and O Portugués – have tried and failed to gain a foothold.

Well, that’s a shame, because even on a relatively brief visit to Lisbon I ate so well (and had so many places on my shortlist that I couldn’t get to) that I could completely see how it remains one of Europe’s great gastronomic cities. And that also reflects in the fact that – and this is a huge compliment – I was asked by several people to write a city guide to Lisbon before I’d even got home. I was already planning to do one, because I packed an awful lot of good places into four days in the city, but I was also aware of all the places I hadn’t got to and really wished I could visit.

But I was surprised by just how many of my readers were off to Lisbon in the not too distant future: several of you told me you are going next year, and one reader told me that she is heading to Lisbon literally the day after this piece is published (I offered her a sneak preview of the list, in case she wanted to book anywhere in advance). Best of all, two of my readers actually touched down in Lisbon halfway through my holiday and, taking their lead from my posts on social media, ate at one of my favourite places. They were not disappointed, because it was the place that’s been going for nearly seventy-five years, that I first tried on my first visit seventeen years ago and have gone back to every time since.

The rest of the places in this guide showcase much more variety – traditional and modern, some authentically Portuguese and others more reflective of the melting pot the city is now. I had an absolute blast eating and drinking at each and every spot on this list, and if my guide helps some of you with your own trips, whether that’s next week, next summer or next winter, then I will be delighted. And if it persuades any of you to add this gorgeous, vital, hilly – very hilly, I can’t stress this enough – city to your list of places to visit, all the better.

1. Bonjardim

This is the place I recommend to everybody, the place I’ve been eating at on every trip to Lisbon since I first went, back in 2007. Once, on a holiday with my old friend Dave I ate there twice – on my first and last day in the city – and on this visit it was my lunch stop less than an hour after we checked in and dropped off our bags.

Bonjardim is tucked away on a little alley just off Praça dos Restauradores, not far from the train station and close to the top of the Baixa, the grid of streets that runs down to the river and constitutes Lisbon’s flattest district. It celebrates its seventy-fifth birthday next year and although the menu has a good range of fish, seafood and grilled meats, the only thing to have here, really, is the spit roasted chicken. Over the last seventy-four years they’ve got it down to a fine art.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a plate of smoked ham and a couple of glorious salt cod pasteis while you wait for the chicken to arrive, or that you shouldn’t drink a caneca of ice cold Sagres into the bargain. That all forms part of the anticipation, that and watching chicken turn up at neighbouring tables, knowing that it will soon be your turn. But when it does finally reach you? Well, it is glorious.

It never disappoints. Rubbed with salt and lemon, the skin is a papery, crispy, savoury miracle. But the meat underneath, which comes off the bone ridiculously easily, is sublime. And you’ll pick and pick and pick until the whole carcass is white and clean, because none of this can be wasted. They even do good french fries too, equally salty and utterly delicious.

But the chicken is the thing. It ruins all other chicken, that’s the only problem. It will be some time before you can enjoy a Nando’s again, and my attempts to chase this particular dragon, at the likes of Casa do Frango and Bébé Bob, has been an exercise in futility. I think deep down I always knew they would be, but I did it because even if there was a one per cent chance those places could match Bonjardim, it would be worth the gamble.

A whole roast chicken at Bonjardim costs a ludicrous seventeen Euros, and it pained me that I only got to eat there the once. Both subsequent days, when I took my chances at no reservation places, in the back of my mind I was thinking to myself it’s okay, because if they’re full I can just go to Bonjardim again. So of course none of them turned out to be full.

The mystical power of Bonjardim has not waned in the nearly twenty years that I’ve been going, and one of my favourite moments of the trip, even more so than eating there, was seeing Zoë eat that chicken for the very first time. We messaged our friend James, who himself made his Bonjardim debut earlier in the year on my recommendation. “It’s a biblical experience” came the reply almost instantly. “God tier chicken at excellent prices.”

My two readers who were in Lisbon at the same time as me went there for lunch on the Saturday, and put a picture up on my Facebook page. “God damn, that chicken is something else” said one of them; there is something about that chicken, it seems, that makes you take the Lord’s name in vain. But honestly if there is a creator, and I’m still unconvinced on that score, they should be honoured to be mentioned in the same breath as Bonjardim’s finest.

Bonjardim
Travessa de Santo Antão 11, Lisbon

2. Lupita

The pizza restaurant Lupita is one of the no-reservations spots I mentioned just now, and I am absolutely convinced that if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s literally just round the corner from the Time Out Market it would be impossible to get a lunchtime table there. As it was we still got lucky, turning up just before half one and managing to snag the only vacant table at the exact moment that it came free. When we left, about an hour later, there was quite a queue forming.

Normally I wouldn’t do any of that – turning up on spec, queuing and what have you – but I made an exception for Lupita because everything I had read suggested it was very special (and, of course, I had Bonjardim as my Plan B). And special it was, belying its no frills appearance, plain metal folding tables and stools.

The pizza was exquisite. I’m loath to use hyperbole, because I love pizza and have enjoyed great pizza all over the shop, from Bristol to Newbury, from Bologna to Paris, from Bruges to Northumberland Avenue. But if I’ve had a pizza better than Lupita’s I can’t remember it right now. The base was a marvel, light, puffy and chewy, with the look of a Neapolitan pie but with the droop-free structure of its transatlantic cousins. The toppings – guanciale, jalapeños, a feisty chimichurri sauce and a dusting of Parmesan – were out of this world. And that feeling, of being in the middle of something so outstanding, gladdened my heart.

If I stopped there Lupita would be worth a visit. But on the day I went they had a special starter which happened to bear my Italian porn star name, Puttanesca Pockets. Just imagine: something like a mini calzone cut into two bite-sized halves, each stuffed with olives, capers, tomato and anchovy, the best Breville you never had. I would try to recreate it at home, but I know it would never approach that level of genius. “That dish will be on my mind all day” said somebody on Facebook when I put a picture up: that makes two of us.

Oh, and they only do one dessert, a Basque cheesecake. Guess what? It, too, is superlative.

Lupita
Rua de Sao Paulo 79, Lisbon
https://www.instagram.com/lupita.pizzaria/

3. Jesus é Goês

My final lunch of the trip was at Jesus é Goês, just off the very swanky Avenida de Liberdade. Normally eating Indian food on a European city break is the last thing I would ever do, but Jesus é Goês is all about the food of Goa, a Portuguese colony for over four hundred years, so it piqued my interest. I spotted it on an episode of Somebody Feed Phil on Netflix; for the uninitiated, somebody always does, rather a lot, and yet Phil never shuts up. It’s strangely endearing and annoying at the same time,

The restaurant is the brainchild of the eponymous Jesus, who opened the place ten years ago, and I didn’t discover until halfway through my meal there, doing a little research between courses, that he sadly died last year. The place is now run by his partner, a lovely, kind and smiling hostess who took excellent care of us during lunch. You can book this place, I later discovered, but only via WhatsApp: we were the only customers in the whole place on a Saturday lunchtime, which slightly saddened and concerned me.

Having eaten the restaurant’s food, I can add mystified to that list of adjectives, because it really is wonderful stuff and, with the exception of Clay’s, probably the best Indian food I’ve had outside India itself. I started with the restaurant’s iconic “holy burger”, an intensely spiced, deeply complex morsel served on a spoon topped with a poached egg yolk and more spices. I was under strict instructions to eat the whole thing as a single mouthful so of course I did, and it’s as good a single mouthful of food as I’ve tasted all year.

Zoë was eating an equally terrific samosa packed to the rafters with spiced meat, and I insisted that we ordered another burger and samosa so she could know the same joy as me. It would have felt wrong not to be able to talk about the experience of tasting that holy burger with her again, later in the holiday, later in the year or just later in our lives.

The mains kept up that standard – I did recognise a couple of dishes like pork sorpotel from Clay’s regional menus in the past, but I had to try Jesus é Goês’ goat curry, almost as much a signature dish as the holy burger. The meat benefited from a long, slow cook but what really made this was the dark, glossy, phenomenally spiced sauce, poured onto rice or loaded onto a chapati. Zoë’s chicken cafreal, served on the bone – although it didn’t stay on it for long – was completely different and equally enchanting, the sauce with more fragrance and citrus, less smoke.

This felt like food for the soul, and not necessarily something I’d ever have expected to eat in Lisbon, let alone to love so much. It felt strangely moving to eat in Jesus’ restaurant, knowing that he was gone but that his food would be enjoyed by hundreds of people who never got to meet him. I’m glad I was one of them. A sign on the wall said “ASK JESUS FOR A RECOMMENDATION”: this might be the only time I’ve ever put my faith in Him.

Jesus é Goês
Rua São José 23, Lisbon
https://www.instagram.com/jesusegoesoficial/

4. Prado

Prado was my Fancy Meal of the trip. I invariably do one on most holidays, where there’s an à la carte menu but I allow myself to be persuaded by the tasting menu. From there it’s only a momentary lapse before you’re signed up for the wine pairings, too, the whole nine yards. It’s a slippery slope, and at the bottom of it is an evening where you’re cosseted and indulged and don’t have to make a single decision again. And to do that in this tasteful space with its inventive menu, beautifully chosen Portuguese wines and well-judged service – well, it was no hardship at all.

The tasting menu, I will say, was made an easier choice by the fact that Prado’s à la carte wasn’t really an à la carte in the true sense, instead being a list of small plates with a recommendation that you order something like four per person for sharing. So you’re going to end up with something like a tasting menu whether you like it or not, and although I found that a tad irksome I did manage to get over it. The tasting menu is 75 Euros here, to give you an idea, but I suspect that curating your own small plates playlist would probably cost there or thereabouts.

It’s a minor quibble anyway, because the food was brilliant. Prado is Portuguese for meadow, it turns out, and Prado prides itself on taking a farm to table approach, although that didn’t quite square with a menu which leant very heavily on fish. But no matter, because so much of what I ate was imaginative, original and just plain fun. Beef tartare came sandwiched between leaves of grilled cabbage, octopus was served on a skewer, zhuzhed with the addition of a chorizo emulsion. Even the bread was lifted by a pot of spreadable pork fat, shot through with garlic.

Every dish was fascinating, a real beauty pageant of cracking creations. Hard to single out anything, but marinated mackerel served in a chilled, fresh soup of green apple and green olive was a combination I could never have conceived of in a million years yet loved eating. I adored Prado’s John Dory, spiked with pil pil and served under a dehydrated kale leaf. Oyster mushrooms, served in a goat’s butter sauce, lardo draped on top were a proper delight, as tasty as they were beautiful: it was just a shame that the garlic-laced pork fat earlier on meant we hadn’t saved any bread for mopping.

I thought the Alentejano acorn fed pork, served ruddy pink with potato purée was probably the weakest course of the meal, but Prado saved the day with an outrageously good dessert – a brioche with a sweet, burnished, caramelised crust, served with exemplary coffee ice cream and a sauce which went perfectly with the glass of Madeira we were given to polish off proceedings. Two hours and a couple of hundred Euros very well spent, even if the rest of the meals of the trip were, by comparison, far less rarefied.

Prado
Travessa das Pedras Negras 2, Lisbon
https://pradorestaurante.com/index2.php

5. Trinca

Trinca is nothing to look at from the outside – I almost walked past it without realising it was my Friday night dinner reservation – and inside it’s a plain and unprepossessing room. But it was an absolute riot – a small, intimate place that felt more like a neighbourhood restaurant than anywhere else I ate in Lisbon.

The menu is on a chalkboard and changes all the time, and to say it jumps around is to put it lightly. The cheese was traditionally Portuguese, the textbook focaccia we had with it less so. And then there were grilled leeks, almost more like Spanish calçots, served with a ginger hollandaise and Jerusalem artichoke crisps, a dish that was truly a citizen of the world. Not international enough for you? How about fregola topped with shiitake mushrooms cooked in ponzu and glazed with gochujang?

That’s before I get onto our main courses. Octopus – so far, so Portuguese – but in tacos. Or tacos with confit Iberian pork topped with a zingy salsa verde and (a masterstroke, this) pork crackling. But just to throw one last cuisine in, we also tried Nepalese pork belly, simply spiced and grilled, accompanied by a cucumber salad singing with sesame. A menu like this shouldn’t work, and paradoxically that’s exactly why it did.

No dish cost more than fifteen euros, many of them cost a lot less. The most expensive red on the wine list, which was biodynamic and very pleasant indeed, cost a shade over thirty euros. A more different experience to Prado is hard to imagine, but it was an equally valid one. I left this neighbourhood restaurant full, happy and deeply envious for all the locals there, who clearly lived in its neighbourhood.

Trinca
Rua dos Anjos 59C, Lisbon
https://www.instagram.com/restaurantetrinca/

6. Tapisco

Arguably Lisbon’s two most famous chefs are José Avillez and Henrique Sá Pessoa. The former has two Michelin starred Belcanto and a raft of other restaurants across the city – Cantinho do Avillez, Bairro do Avillez and so on. In case that wasn’t ornate enough, Bairro do Avillez contains three different restaurants, or eating areas. What’s the Portuguese equivalent of a Russian doll? Anyway, he has something like sixteen restaurants in total, and I found the whole experience of trying to pick one exhausting, so I gave up.

Sá Pessoa, on the other hand, has a much narrower portfolio. There’s Alma, which is double starred, and Tapisco, which is his more affordable, casual restaurant on the edge of Principe Real. I went to Tapisco on my last evening in the city and had a really enjoyable meal full of well executed versions of Portuguese classics. My cuttlefish, simply battered and fried with a coriander mayonnaise was simple, unshowy and a proper pleasure, and Zoë’s tuna tartare with avocado and little wasabi pearls was equally gorgeous.

For our main, we both gravitated to the same thing, arroz de pato, a deeply savoury daydream of a dish, rice studded with shredded duck, topped with dried duck and smoky sausage, dotted with aioli. This was not a dish to share, it was a dish where you jealously guarded your own personal skillet, spooning and enjoying and worrying about the point in the future when you could spoon no more.

I had arroz de pato once at O Portugués once, back when I was reviewing takeaways. Now I know what this dish can be, I would be reluctant to order it again – although, that said, De Nata have it on their menu. Surely it’s worth a try?

Tapisco also, by the way, does a chocolate mousse with olive oil and salt which even managed to supplant Thames Lido’s in my affections. Who needs two Michelin stars anyway?

Tapisco
Rua Dom Pedro V 81, Lisbon
https://www.tapisco.pt/lisboa_en.html

7. Senhor Uva

I did my homework wrong on Senhor Uva: I thought it was a natural wine bar where you could snack if you wanted to, the perfect spot for a pre-dinner drink on our final night. It’s out in Estrela, at the end of the iconic 28 tram route, so if you timed it right you could potentially combine them.

But actually, Senhor Uva is part wine bar, part restaurant. And the restaurant part is a selection of almost entirely plant-based small plates. Having booked a table, we then hastily sent an email saying that actually we just wanted wine and a few pre-dinner snacks. Would that be okay? we asked. And if it wasn’t, we said we’d completely understand them cancelling our reservation.

Well, we didn’t get a reply but on arrival they knew exactly who we were and what we were after, and they looked after us superbly. Nothing was too much trouble, and they selected and recommended glass after glass of striking, elegant wine while letting us pick whatever small plates we wanted.

And all the small plates were excellent – one was a couple of local cheeses with handmade crackers and a sweet fruit chutney, another was potato, leek and broccoli skewers with a deep delicious sauce. A third, maybe the best, was grilled courgettes with poppadom shards and a moat of stunning ponzu sauce. When every dish was set down in front of us we were told its ingredients, and told it was made with love.

By the end of the third glass I wanted to live in a parallel universe where we’d never booked a restaurant that night, where we just stayed there in that stylish space, seemingly hewn out of the hillside, drinking more wines, eating everything on the menu, enjoying the chatter from the neighbouring tables (much of which, I have to say, was in English).

Senhor Uva has clearly done well enough to expand into a larger space on the other side of the road, and that’s where the kitchen was. As the light dimmed and we saw the room opposite glow, the regular to and fro of staff from there to here carrying food, I thought that this was what the best of life was about – travelling, finding spaces like this, being transported and getting lost in a reverie that this was somehow your place.

How I wish home had anywhere even remotely like Senhor Uva. How I wish I’d had longer there. You will never, I suspect, hear me say this again about somewhere with an exclusively vegetarian menu, so make the most of it.

Senhor Uva
Rua de Santo Amaro 66A, Lisbon
https://senhoruva.com

8. Manteigaria

Everyone will tell you that the place to go for pasteis de nata is Pasteis de Belem, a tram ride away. People queue to get in, and you eventually grab a table in one of its tiled dining rooms, and you scoff egg custard tarts fresh out of the oven, slipped onto your plate and dusted with cinnamon. After that you do the Tower of Belem, look round the Jéronimos monastery, take your pictures of the Monument to the Discoveries and take a tram back in to the centre. You’ve eaten well, you’ve seen sights, it’s a day of tourism well done.

And all that’s true. I’ve been to Pasteis de Belem, several times, and their pasteis are a revelation if you’ve never had them before. But for my money Manteigaria’s, from their gorgeous site on the edge of Bairro Alto, more than matches them. So go there instead if you’re tight for time, or want to stay central, or just trust my judgment, and you won’t be disappointed. They are warm and perfect, the pastry with just the right amount of flake and the custard with absolutely the right amount of wobble.

I have a feeling pasteis de nata anywhere in Lisbon are good – I even had a decent one at the airport before my flight home – but you may as well start at the top so you set the standard. Also, once you’ve done that I have good news for you: De Nata’s pasteis are really not that far off, and a much shorter trip away.

Manteigaria
Rua do Loreto 2, Lisbon (and in the Time Out Market)
https://manteigaria.com/en/

9. Nannarella

I always seek out ice cream on my holidays, because I associate ice cream with holidays. And normally I would recommend you Santini, a Portuguese chain, because I had their ice cream in Porto many years ago, and liked it a lot.

But Nannarella, another discovery from Somebody Feed Phil, is a level above that and up there with anything I’ve had in Bologna, Granada or Malaga. It’s a little bit in the middle of nowhere – sort of between Estrela and Principe Real – but it’s worth seeking out if you even remotely love ice cream like I do; as it happens, I took a Bolt there specifically to try it out.

Zoë thought that was a bit nuts, but once we were installed on a park bench and she was eating a ball of gianduja ice cream bigger than a baby’s fist she soon changed her tune and told me I was right all along. Since that almost never happens, it’s one for the memory banks.

I loved Nannarella’s chocolate ice cream which was on the darker side and a real work of art, but I especially loved the fior di latte, an ice cream I’ve never seen outside Italy. The confidence to do that – to make an ice cream that just tastes of itself, no vanilla, no nothing – speaks volumes about the place. And it’s completely justified.

Nannarella
Rua Nova da Piedade 64A, Lisbon
https://www.nannarella.pt/en

10. Fabrica

Fabrica was my go to coffee place in Lisbon, a choice made easier by the fact that they have branches all over the city – all of which look slightly different, all of which are very stylish and all of which serve excellent coffee.

So I enjoyed their spot just behind Praça do Comércio in the heart of the Baixa, and I also really enjoyed the massive pain au chocolat I ate there. I loved their branch on the bustling street of Rua das Portas de Santo Antão, and I adored their little coffee van in Principe Real, just around the corner from EmbaiXada, a beautiful mall of concept stores housed in a nineteenth century Arabesque palace (this is a food and drink guide but honestly: go shopping there, it’s amazing).

My favourite spot, though, was the one in Chiado, on Rua das Flores, on a steep hill a short stroll from Manteigaria. I know the done thing is to have your pastel de nata with a coffee, but Fabrica is a great advert for just eating the egg custard tarts up at the bar and then working off a fraction of the calories heading down the sloping street for exceptional coffee.

Fabrica
Rua das Flores 63, Lisbon (and other locations across the city)
https://fabricacoffeeroasters.com

11. Dramatico

Dramatico is such a beautiful spot that it’s almost tempting to recommend it for that alone. It’s a little space – again, almost hewn out of the side of a steep hill – picture perfect with white Mondrianesque windows, a lovely showcase for coffee and brewing on one side, and a handful of tables the other. The picture above doesn’t do it justice: it’s absurdly fetching.

It’s a little out of the way, just off from Principe Real and across from the botanical gardens, and our Bolt struggled to find it, leaving us gladly with a downhill stroll rather than an uphill one. But the one frustration about it is that because it’s good, it’s popular, and because it’s popular and small, it’s very difficult to grab a table.

Normally I wouldn’t mind that so much, but the room was full of Americans – it’s always Americans – with vocal fry so bad that they belonged in a burns unit: I’m afraid it brought out my inner Sam Loudermilk.

Add in the fact that the café only seems to open until 2pm, and sometimes not even that, and the owner is capricious at best and sometimes just shuts for a two week holiday because he can, and… well, I realise this might not be the best sales pitch in the world. But in warmer months I think they have a bench outside, so there’s that.

And it was the single best coffee I had on the trip, and one of the best lattes I’ve had in quite a while. So maybe the owner can do what he likes and, if the worst comes to the worst, you can sip Dramatico’s magnificent latte on a bench in the botanical gardens. If you did, I suspect you’d forgive the place almost anything.

Dramatico
Rua da Alegria 41E, Lisbon
https://www.instagram.com/dramatico.lisboa/

12. Cerveja Canil

I don’t know how mature the craft beer scene is in Lisbon, but on aesthetics alone I’d say Cerveja Canil is similar to other craft beer places I’ve been to in Europe – black walls, basic furniture, people having a terrific time. This branch is in the heart of the Baixa (they have a second off Avenida da Liberdade) and was humming when we turned up for a pre-dinner drink. A big loud group of Brits had discovered it too, but once they – and the U.K.’s seemingly unique brand of toxic masculinity – cleared out, it became an extremely agreeable place.

Canil is a brewpub, and offers about a dozen of its own beers in a real variety of styles, so not just different iterations of hazy pales but also porters, brown ales and ESBs. Their pale ale was far better than its middling Untappd ratings would have you believe, but I also really enjoyed their guest beers, by Letra and local microbrewery Mean Sardine.

In marked contrast to so many beer places in the U.K. (and definitely in Reading), Canil also has the beer snacks down pat. I particularly enjoyed a goats cheese croqueta with honey, resting on a completely unnecessary carpet of rocket. Beer and croquetas are such a perfect match: I wish Phantom or Double Barrelled would get on the phone to Caversham’s Miss Croquetas and make some kind of arrangement.

Cerveja Canil
Rua dos Douradores 133, Lisbon (also at Rua da Santa Marta 35)
https://www.cervejacanil.com

13. Sputnik Craft Beer

Sputnik was the other beer place I tried on this trip, out of the centre somewhat but just round the corner from Trinca. Another proponent of Tollix stools and walls somehow darker than black – a look that always reminds me of seeing Darwin Deez live at the Boilerroom in Guildford back in 2015 – it was nonetheless a really lovely craft beer spot with great service, an excellent range of beers and a well-stocked, interesting fridge.

Unlike Canil, Sputnik does not brew beer itself but its twelve taps had an excellent range including local breweries Dois Corvos, Fermentage and Mean Sardine (disappointingly it also had a single beer by Brewdog, for people who haven’t yet got the memo about Brewdog).

But the fridge also had some real wonders, including more cans from local breweries and a few other Iberian classics like Barcelona’s Garage. I squeezed more drinking in than was probably wise, and left with a couple of bottles of barrel aged imperial stout to take home and pop in the garage.

All that aside, the thing I really loved about Sputnik was how inclusive and unhipster it was – pretty much every table there was a different demographic, including shabby, middle-aged me, and I was reminded that the way to be cool is to not give a shit whether you’re cool or not. In that sense, I would say that Sputnik is pretty cool, not that I’m any judge of that.

Sputnik Craft Beer
Rua Andrade 41, Lisbon
https://www.instagram.com/sputnik.lisboa/

(Click here to read more city guides.)

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Restaurant review: Thames Lido

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Can you believe that Thames Lido celebrated its seventh birthday this year? It was such an event – three articles in quick succession from the Guardian was a big deal in 2017 – and for many people it’s been a real statement piece, a special occasion restaurant that has seen off the likes of Forbury’s, Cerise and, at the start of this year, the Corn Stores. It put Reading on the map when nowhere else had, just before the two kitchens, Clay’s and Kungfu, arrived in town and changed everything.

And yet, as regular readers might know, I’ve always had a very chequered experience of Thames Lido. When I visited it on duty, over six years ago, I found things to like but wasn’t won over by the place as a whole. And on the occasions when I’ve been back, for a meal with friends or tapas by the pool, it has never completely convinced me. Consistency has consistently – irony of ironies – been the problem. There have been moments in every meal that impressed but always, somehow, an equal and opposite Newtonian disappointment.

The meal that stayed with me was one I had in the spring of 2021 with my family, just as I was emerging from a self-imposed Covid lockdown and tentatively eating outside again. We had tapas by the pool, and I had that experience – again – that some of the dishes were quite good and some were very much something and nothing. I made the mistake of posting about it on Instagram, and shortly after that I had a direct message from the head chef. It’s safe to say that dealing with criticism was not a strong suit of his.

“Looking through your account, your reviews are generally critical so may I suggest you don’t go out so much and cook a bit more at home?” he said. “I’m sure we’d all love to see the photos.”

Well, I didn’t take his advice – and I doubt he took mine in return that he might want to consider developing a thicker skin – except in one important respect, which is that I didn’t bother going back to Thames Lido after that. He left not long after those messages and for a while Thames Lido churned through head chefs like the U.K. got through Prime Ministers. I think it also had some kind of executive chef/”restaurant director” at the time – rarely a good thing – and the menu felt like it was focused more on buying and dishing up rather than cooking. So, much as others still loved the Lido, it well and truly fell off my radar.

And then, late last year, something happened which put them back on it. Out of the blue, I heard from the person handling Thames Lido’s PR, who told me that the restaurant had recently acquired a new head chef.

Nothing out of the ordinary there – it seemed to happen every few months at the time – but this time they had picked someone interesting. Thames Lido had gone for Iain Ganson, previously at the Bell at Waltham St Lawrence where he’d cooked with his brother Scott for the best part of twenty years. That made it somewhere I needed to revisit. Ganson’s food, like his brother’s, had always been exceptional and it had the potential to revitalise Thames Lido, which felt like it had been cosplaying founder Freddy Bird – not brilliantly, I might add – ever since he’d left.

So I politely turned down the PR’s very kind offers to attend pop-up guest nights at Thames Lido (and endure the horrors of what they described as “a little media table”) but I made a mental note that I had to go back before 2024 was out to find out whether the menu was remade in Ganson’s image or, like a covers band in a hotel lobby, he was playing somebody else’s hits. And finally, at the start of December at the beginning of a week off with Zoë, I made it there on a Tuesday lunchtime to try and find out the answer.

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Restaurant review: El Cerdo, Maidenhead

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Every year, without exception, you can reliably expect two things to happen in Reading’s hospitality scene. One is that there will be a raft of closures and new openings. Some years that ratio is pretty much one to one, others – like this year – it’s badly out of kilter, with far more places giving up the ghost than newcomers showing up to take their place. It’s tough out there, with no relief in sight. But the other thing that happens, every year without fail, is that none of those new openings will be a tapas bar.

I have complained about this so many times that it’s boring for all of us, so I won’t go on at length. But everywhere you look there’s a tapas bar, it seems, apart from Reading. Swindon has Los Gatos, Oxford has Arbequina. Newbury has Goat On The Roof, and Wokingham has Salty Olive. And Reading? Reading has next to sod all – unless you count Thames Lido, which I don’t, or Alto Lounge, which surely nobody should (Oh wow! Excited for this said the Chronicle‘s Facebook page this week, about the news that Alto Lounge had received permission from the council to double in size: that’s the Chronicle for you, excited about pretty much anything).

No, it’s never a tapas bar. Biryani joints are ten a penny, we went through a phase where we got three sushi restaurants in quick succession and momo are having a moment, but nobody wants to open a tapas bar. It’s a long, long time since La Tasca (which also wasn’t great) and six years since I Love Paella – not a tapas bar, but the closest thing we had – was unceremoniously booted out of the Fisherman’s Cottage. Is it a Brexit thing? Surely somebody feels like getting on the blower to renowned Bristol importer Mevalco and sorting this out, you might think, but every year nobody does.

And that’s what sends me scuttling off to the likes of Swindon, or Oxford, or Wokingham, trying to find the next best thing. Sometimes it works – Los Gatos is a little miracle – and sometimes I find myself somewhere like Sanpa, but I keep on trying because it’s a wonderful way to eat and I am always on the hunt for somewhere that brings a little hint of Granada or Málaga to unsung Berkshire. And that’s why this week I ended up at El Cerdo in Maidenhead, a ten minute walk from the train station, in the company of Katie, last seen last month sampling the glitzy splendour of Calico with me: inexplicably, after a dinner with me, she felt like repeating the experience.

Katie, it turned out, was on a proper journey of discovery, having never been to Maidenhead before. On the stroll through town to the restaurant I gave her a whistle stop tour of everything I knew about Maidenhead, which didn’t take long: former constituency of Theresa May, the infidelity capital of the U.K. (allegedly) and the town that, possibly because it was originally meant to be the terminus of the Elizabeth Line, was getting all the interesting things Reading didn’t.

That last one really is true – Maidenhead has a great independent craft beer bar in A Hoppy Place, wonderful pizza at Knead, an absolutely top notch town centre restaurant in Seasonality. And if some of the misfires, like Sauce and Flour, weren’t amazing, they at least showed that someone was trying. We walked past Sauce and Flour on the way to El Cerdo, and it was rammed, which shows how little I know about anything.

El Cerdo is by the canal, in the new development (the Waterside Quarter, apparently). “This looks so much like the Oracle it’s disconcerting” was Katie’s take, not without justification. The restaurant looked welcoming from the outside, and it wasn’t unpleasant on the inside but it had a feeling of “new build” that it couldn’t quite shake, a functional box rather than a cosy, appealing cocoon.

That’s not entirely their fault – it’s the hand they’ve been dealt with the space, and I liked the giant pig logo on one wall, past the handsome bar. But overall I felt it lacked a little character, in a way I couldn’t put my finger on. After all, Knead has a very similar dining room, but somehow it still has a feeling of bustle and hubbub. I guess the open space with the pizza oven perhaps brought things together in a way that El Cerdo’s bar, attractive though it was, didn’t quite manage. A handful of tables were occupied when we got there, including one large group in the corner, but it was a quiet Tuesday night.

El Cerdo’s menu read well. It wasn’t so big as to be unwieldy, and was divided into logical sections – nibbles, cold tapas, meat, seafood and fish. They hadn’t given in to the temptation to do paella on the side, so there was just the one rice dish and a few types of tortilla. In the run up to my visit I’d looked at the menu at Los Gatos, just to benchmark prices, and El Cerdo was definitely more expensive: nearly everything was north of a tenner, with some dishes nudging twenty.

But the wine list was good, and exclusively Spanish, and although we were tempted by a txakoli – the slightly sparkling Basque white you rarely see on menus – we went for an albariňo. It was an excellent choice – crisp and clean but not bone dry, with a little fruit. Thirty-eight quid for a bottle that’s fifteen online, so not an oppressive mark-up, either.

Now, before we get started on the food – and because tapas is by definition small plates, we have a fair bit to run through – I want to get a couple of things out of the way. One is that I had an absolutely lovely evening, and that makes it far more tempting to see the food through the Albariño-tinted glasses of good company. The other is that your mileage at El Cerdo might very well vary from mine: Katie, I suspect, enjoyed most of the dishes more than I did.

And of course, your take on this kind of food will depend on how and where you’ve had it before. Despite loving tapas and small plates, it turned out that Katie had never been to Spain, although she’s rectifying that with a trip to Barcelona just before Christmas.

I on the other hand go to Andalusia most years – and yes, I know that makes me sound like the pretentious tosspot I am – and unfortunately that means that although I went hoping for the best, I was painfully aware of all the instances where the best simply didn’t materialise. El Cerdo’s website says, pretty plainly, “If a dish doesn’t taste like it does in Spain, then we won’t serve it”. Although it also says that El Cerdo has an “executive chef”, and in my experience very little good comes of having one of those in place of an actual chef.

The first sign that I was going to have to write this kind of review came with the accompaniment to those first sips of wine, a couple of gildas. A gilda is a very simple thing – a skewer of olives and pickled chillis, all brought together with a slim ribbon of salty anchovy. Named in homage to Rita Hayworth, it’s almost a perfect mouthful, and quite hard to get wrong. You could have really amazing olives, and truly best in class Cantabrian anchovies, but even an entry level one is going to be a delight.

Or it should be, providing you use salty anchovies. But it felt to me like these were made with boquerones, the softer, more vinegary Spanish anchovies without the saline tautness of the good stuff. Which in turn meant they were all out of kilter – all vinegar and no salt, and somehow fishier than they should have been as a result. I felt like a right killjoy thinking this, because Katie seemed to enjoy hers. But I knew it could, and should, have been better.

The jamon croquetas were a similar story. They weren’t terrible – easily better than the deep fried abominations I’d eaten at Sanpa – but nowhere near the quality of anything you would get in Spain. They were a little flabby, a little pale, a little lacking in the crisp shell you needed. And the bechamel inside was lacking silkiness and a proper hit of jamon. Perching a little slice of it on top of each croqueta just showed you, Jim Bowen-style, what you could have won.

Last time I went out with Katie at Calico, she took me out of my comfort zone by ordering more vegetarian dishes than I would personally have chosen, which probably meant that my review was useful to slightly more people than it would ordinarily have been. The same thing happened here, where Katie was stuck between two dishes, broccoli with almonds or hispi cabbage, that I would never have ordered in a million years.

I took against the former for containing coconut ajo blanco in order to be vegan – good luck convincing anybody that they’d serve that in Spain – and so hispi cabbage it was. And actually this turned out to be one of the better things we ordered, although possibly one of the less Spanish ones. The cabbage came topped with a caper and raisin purée, which was heavy on the raisin and light on the caper, and squiggled vigorously with what was apparently a cured egg yolk sauce.

Your guess is as good as mine: I certainly didn’t get cured egg yolk from it, partly because I don’t really know what a cured egg yolk would even taste like. The little pieces of fried kale on top were pleasant too, although it gave me flashbacks to the Lyndhurst, which always makes me sad. There was a real whack of lurking heat in this too, and all in all it was probably the cleverest thing we had. Not massive, and not cheap at just shy of a tenner, but with lots to recommend it.

One of the biggest crimes against Spanish food was what came next, something the menu described as our “lazy” or open tortillas. We picked the eponymous El Cerdo tortilla, with chorizo and black pudding, and it’s difficult to describe how underwhelmed I was by this. Lazy is about right, to the point where maybe the menu should have said “we can’t be arsed to make a tortilla”.

Now in fairness the server, who was excellent, asked us if we wanted it runny or medium, and maybe we should have gone for the former. But whether it was runny or medium, this wasn’t a tortilla. It was an omelette. An underseasoned one that had been cooked through, with four bits of chorizo plonked on top and some black pudding – the British kind, not gorgeous soft Spanish morcilla, lobbed in the middle. No softness, a little onion, no potato that I could discern. This dish frustrated me. I imagine it would have made a Spaniard angry.

We’d ordered dishes in waves, partly because El Cerdo, Wagamama-style, says that everything you order will come out when they feel like it and we didn’t want to be swamped with dishes in one hit only to find the evening over. El Cerdo said that you should aim for two to three dishes each, which we took to mean three each, and actually doing it this way helped because we got to spy on the table next to us – four lads who kept their coats on throughout for some reason – and swap one of our dishes for something they’d ordered.

That dish was another of the relative hits of the evening, pincho de pollo with crispy polenta and mojo rojo. It was a reasonably generous skewer – four substantial enough pieces of chicken with a weird treble clef of red sauce, resting on a rope bridge of crispy sticks of polenta. And again, it wasn’t terrible but I didn’t found myself wowed. The chicken was nicely enough done, but El Cerdo makes much of its charcoal oven and I didn’t feel this had the char I’d expect from such an impressive piece of kit. The polenta added contrast, but if it did indeed have Idiazabal cheese in it it was a whisper, not a shout.

And again, thirteen pounds for this – even by 2024 standards – felt steep. I thought back to the skewer of chicken I had at Kolae, earlier in the year. Different cuisine, of course, but in terms of technique, flavour and value it was worlds away from this. This felt like the kind of dish that might pleasantly surprise you at Alto Lounge, but only because your expectations were on the floor.

If you wanted more evidence that El Cerdo wasn’t capable of delivering a flawless plate of food, their monkfish in tempura with chickpeas was exactly that. Just as at Calico, Katie had talked me into ordering something with chickpeas and they were lovely – nutty, earthy, positively moreish. But what in god’s name was going on with the monkfish? Two slightly forlorn nuggets of the stuff in a batter that was not, by any stretch of the imagination, tempura. It had no crunch, no texture, and when you tried to cut through it it all fell away, leaving a dense little knot of woolly monkfish, a sad savoury parody of a profiterole.

It turned out that Katie had never had monkfish before. “It’s not usually like this” I told her, feeling like I had to do something to rescue monkfish’s reputation. I hope for Katie’s sake that her first visit to Spain is better than her first taste of monkfish. If it’s on a par, that means she’s had her pocket picked on Las Ramblas.

By this point I’m guessing neither of us really wants me to go on, but go on I must because there were a couple more dishes. Again, Katie quite liked the patatas bravas, which I think we’d picked to make sure we felt full at the end. And again, it wasn’t atrocious but I have never, ever had patatas bravas like this in Spain or indeed anywhere decent in the U.K.

The bravas sauce didn’t taste like bravas sauce, it was fruitier and lacked any kind of heat. The alioli, giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming that’s what it was, was not unpleasant. But it needed more of both, and moreover the potatoes were wan specimens, technically cooked but lacking the golden hue and brittle texture that makes this dish a treat.

Writing this, I should let you know, is the weirdest experience. Because I had a really lovely evening but the more I think about the food the more surprised I am by that.

We decided to have a dessert and there was one on the specials menu – a tangerine cake with white chocolate ganache and yuzu sorbet – which our server told us was perfect for sharing. So we also decided to have a dessert wine each, and identified a very nice-looking Pedro Ximenez on the wine list. So we ordered it, and our server came over apologetically. There was only enough left in the bottle for one glass – well, one and a half glasses, really. So what would we like to do?

Of course, as something approximating to a gentleman, I let Katie have that and went instead for a white dessert wine from Rueda. But when they came over, both were in very small glasses, both were the same size, and both looked bigger than they were because each of them had an ice cube lobbed in it.

“They weren’t the coldest, so I put an ice cube in them” explained our server.

This begged so many questions, like why aren’t you keeping your dessert wine in the fridge? or maybe you should have asked first?, let alone is that really what a glass of Pedro Ximenez looks like? or why didn’t you give her the rest of the bottle, were you saving that final half glass for Santa?

It was just baffling, and especially so because otherwise service was lovely all night. She told us they’d been open about a year and that although this week was quiet, things ramped up for the Christmas season after that and business was booming.

Last but not least, the dessert. It looked fancy, it looked cheffy and I can see that it was kind of designed for sharing. And leaving out the question of whether yuzu is remotely Spanish, the yuzu sorbet in the middle was easily the best and most enjoyable thing in the whole dish, resting on a sort of granola crumb. But there was nothing you could really describe as a white chocolate ganache, because neither the quenelles of something or other or the isosceles triangles of white chocolate fitted that bill.

But that wasn’t the most heinous failing: that was the cake. Dense didn’t even begin to describe it. You could work out your upper body trying to drive a spoon through that cube of stodge, and I felt like I did. There’s a chap called David who comes to my readers’ lunches whose job is to build machines that are used to test whether materials can withstand immense pressure. David would take a professional interest in that cake.

Because I seem to have spent most of this review pointing out places that do things better than El Cerdo, this feels like the right time to mention the pistachio cake I had last year at Manteca.

By this point, with the exception of a couple of chaps at the bar, we were the last table there so we settled up and made our way back to the station in the cold. Our meal, including a 12.5% service charge, came to just over a hundred and fifty pounds. Now, I think life in Britain has reached the point where it’s difficult to say “that’s expensive” any more because you’d end up saying that about most meals out.

But instead, we can at least talk about value: that’s more than my recent meals cost at Calico, at The Cellar, or Storia. My meal at Goat On The Roof cost a smidge more, admittedly two years ago, but El Cerdo can’t hold a candle to Goat On The Roof.

Granted, none of those restaurants are an exact match in terms of how many courses, how much booze and all that jazz, but the central point remains: El Cerdo does not feel like value. Not compared to any of those places, not compared to the tapas places you could eat at along the train tracks in Oxford or Swindon. So the search continues, and maybe next year I’ll rock up at Salty Olive having one last stab at finding great Spanish food a very short distance from Reading. Because if there’s one thing we can be fairly sure of, it’s that a tapas bar will not open in Reading next year.

But let’s close by looking on the bright side. For two years now I’ve been taking the train to Maidenhead, trying all these places and bemoaning the fact that Reading doesn’t have them. But actually, now, I’m beginning to think that my head was turned by Seasonality and Knead. Because outside those two, the new places I’ve eaten at in Maidenhead – the likes of Sauce and Flour, Storia and El Cerdo – don’t leave me thinking that we’re missing out. If there’s a market for box-ticking, slightly inauthentic, sterile restaurants and those restaurants want to go to Maidenhead instead, I’m all for it. I’m happy to hold out for something better. Even if experience tells me I might be waiting a very long time.

El Cerdo – 6.3
The Colonnade, Waterside Quarter, Maidenhead, SL6 1QG
01628 617412

https://elcerdo.co.uk/maidenhead/

Café review: Zotta Deli

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About five years ago, a very nice lady called Elizabeth came to the last ER readers’ lunch of the year, at Clay’s Hyderabadi Kitchen, back when it used to be on London Street. I assumed she must have had a terrible time for some reason, as she never came to another. But then this year she returned, attending one at Clay’s new home in Caversham, and the most recent lunch at Kungfu Kitchen’s new home. She’s brought both her husband and her son to lunches this year, so I guess perhaps she likes them after all.

Elizabeth is American, and her accent has that drawl of somewhere in the southern states, although I’ve never asked exactly where. And at my lunch in the summer I discovered that Elizabeth and I were as good as neighbours. Because, just like Kungfu Kitchen, I moved house this year and it turns out that Elizabeth lives just around the corner from me – in, I might add, a really handsome-looking house. She lives so nearby, in fact, that she told me that if she’d known when I was going on holiday she’d have taken my bins out for me: I was reminded of something the great Barry Crocker sang, nearly forty years ago.

Anyway a couple of weeks back I got an email from Elizabeth, telling me I should review Zotta Deli. It was on my radar already, an institution run by father and son Rocco and Paolo Zottarelli. It made the local news this year when it announced that it was closing its Winnersh premises in July after 10 years trading there, relocating to a new site on the Basingstoke Road, just opposite the holy trinity of Aldi, the Victoria Cross pub and that massive Morrisons. Now Reading residents, they opened their doors in their new spot at the end of September: all the best people seem to be moving house this year.

I knew people who raved about Zotta as a deli, and I have a feeling it used to supply arancini to the likes of Shed, but the move from Winnersh to Whitley was more than an alphabetical one: Zotta was also changing angle somewhat, going from being a pure deli to a spot where you could eat and drink, as well as picking up produce to take home. So a combination of Mama’s Way and Madoo, you could say, just around the corner from Minas Café and Whitley’s legendary New City Fish Bar.

The comparison with Minas Café was an apt one, and part of the reason why I was so keen to get to Zotta before the year was out. Because despite all the money owners have chucked at Siren RG1 and The Rising Sun in the town centre, the gems of the last couple of years in Reading have been far more likely to be found in the less fashionable parts of town, on the Oxford Road or Northumberland Avenue.

And in particular, they were more likely to be discovered in a new breed of cafés like Minas and DeNata Coffee & Co offering proudly regional food, with a crowd-pleasing full English on the side, just to keep the locals happy. After all, that was a model that had worked well in Reading ever since Kungfu Kitchen took over the old Metro Café on Christchurch Green in 2018, keeping the breakfast menu going while cooking up authentic Szechuan dishes into the bargain. And look what happened to them.

So Elizabeth already had my interest, but she also told me that she was a big fan of Zotta’s lasagne. “They’ve just moved, and a good review from you might help”, she added. “I’ll even drop you off there sometime if you want.” I could hear Barry Crocker clearing his throat again. Now, I may not be as motivated by altruism as I should be, but I’m definitely motivated by lasagne. So on a drab and overcast Saturday afternoon I hopped on a number 6 bus and made my way down the Basingstoke Road with carbs and comfort uppermost in my mind.

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Restaurant review: Brutto, Clerkenwell

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Every year, without fail, a handful of new U.K. restaurants get hyped beyond measure. Every critic goes there, usually within the space of a fortnight, and every critic raves in their own hyperbolic way. Those places become impossible to book, if booking them were ever possible in the first place, and move into the heart of smugness: proper “if you know, you know” territory. These London restaurants – it’s always London, of course – are invariably hailed as evidence that it’s the most exciting food city in the entire world, mainly by restaurant reviewers living in London and writing for the national papers (or, perhaps more understandably, the Evening Standard).

So last year, it was all about Mountain in Soho and Tomos Parry’s cooking over fire (“can a dish be too good for itself?” wibbled Tim Hayward in the FT). Or Bouchon Racine, Henry Harris’ bistro. Jay Rayner described himself as a “huge dribbling admirer”, presumably to put people off booking a table, or for that matter ever eating again. And of course, there was Kolae, but you already know whether that’s good, don’t you?

And this year? Everyone has lost their collective marbles over Josephine Bouchon, Claude Bosi’s earthy Lyonnais restaurant on the Fulham Road, and Giles Coren, Tom Parker Bowles and Jay Rayner all went to the Hero in Maida Vale seemingly in the same fortnight. Giles Coren dined with Camilla Long, which means that for once he might have had an even worse time than his dining companion. I have a friend who everybody loves, who never has a bad word to say about anybody: you should hear his vitriol on the subject of Camilla Long.

Of course, the hype beast to end all hype beasts, this year, has been the Devonshire, the Soho pub run by the chap behind Flat Iron and Oisin Rogers, the closest thing the U.K. has to a celebrity pub landlord who isn’t Al Murray. Nearly all of the U.K.’s broadsheet restaurant reviewers descended on the Devonshire, mystifyingly all being able to land a table despite it being nigh-on impossible to do so, unless you’re famous. It’s almost as if there’s one rule for civilians and one rule for everyone else. Almost.

Coren even went all meta, writing in his review about being desperate to file his copy first despite seeing Tom Parker Bowles and Charlotte Ivers in there literally at the same time as him (Grace Dent, always at the cutting edge, finally got round to it last month). Still, nobody was going to match Coren for overstatement: “It’s just insane, what they’re doing” he gushed, about a pub taking the unprecedented steps of serving beer and cooking food.

It would be temping to review The Devonshire, if I could ever get a table. I used to know Rogers, a little, over a decade ago, and even got drunk with him a couple of times; he’s enormous fun, and a very canny operator. You have to take your hat off to someone who has always managed to keep in with whoever is making the weather in the notoriously bitchy world of London food, and Osh has managed simultaneously to be on good terms with everybody from Fay Maschler to the restaurant bloggers of the late Noughties and early Tens, all the way through to those tacky toffs from Topjaw. He’s always known exactly who to have onside, and is possibly even better at doing that than he is at running a pub.

But actually, I’d be more likely to go to his previous place, the Guinea Grill, which everybody thought did the best Guinness in London before Rogers jumped ship, and which also does the kind of steaks, puddings and pies people associate with the likes of Rules. All that without having to bump into the likes of Ed Sheeran? Count me in. And it’s interesting to me, that: you have places like Rules, or St John, that have been there for ever, and you have places like the Devonshire that are the new upstarts. Between those two types of restaurant? Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing at all.

But how can restaurants ever go from being the hot new thing to becoming institutions when everybody’s attention spans have been destroyed by social media, influencers and restaurant critics desperately craving the new? And what becomes of the flavour of the month when things settle down and the bandwagon rolls on to the next place, and the place after that? That’s why this week, after meeting Zoë from work up in the big smoke, catching the Elizabeth Line to Farringdon with what felt like a thousand West Ham fans and gulping down a handful of Belgian beers at the beautiful Dovetail pub, we mooched across to Brutto for our evening reservation there.

Brutto, you see, was one of The Restaurants Of 2021. Critics flocked to it that year, not necessarily because a trattoria modelled on the restaurants of Florence was what the capital was crying out for, but because this was the comeback restaurant of restaurateur Russell Norman. Norman’s Polpo group of restaurants, fifteen years ago – no reservations, small plates, typewritten menus on brown paper, Duralex glasses – probably did as much as any other to change the way people ate in London. It’s just insane what they did, as Giles Coren might have ineptly said.

I went to Polpo a little just after it opened, and offshoot Polpetto after that, and they were brilliant places to eat, although they never entirely overcame that feeling, when the bill arrived, that you’d spent too much on too little. But then came the unwise expansion, including branches in Bristol and Brighton, and then came the crash: Norman made his exit in 2020, and now only two branches remain.

And then, pretty much a year ago, Norman died suddenly and was mourned by seemingly everybody in the food world. Yet even if you never ate at one of his places, the likelihood is that in the last fifteen years you have eaten at least somewhere that has done something differently because of one of Norman’s restaurants from all that time ago, and that in itself is an interesting and far-reaching legacy.

Reading all that back it sounds like a bit of a downer, but I find it hard to imagine anybody walking into Brutto would feel down for long. I can think of few dining rooms that make you feel happier to be in them – it was simultaneously snug and buzzy, with tables full of people thoroughly enjoying their Saturday nights and others sitting up at the bar, making the most of Brutto’s fabled £5 negronis.

The dining room is kind of split level, and I guess the room at the front would be the one you’d ideally want to be sitting in, with its banquette and framed pictures arranged haphazardly on the teal wall behind (“it’s like Alto Lounge, but not shit” was Zoë’s take). But we were closer to the bar at a surprisingly good table next to a pillar, and although there was a distinct hubbub, and an effortlessly cool soundtrack seemingly pitched at Gen X duffers like me, it was never uncomfortably loud.

It really was a marvellous place, from the gingham tablecloths to the napkin lightshades to the candles stuffed into wicker-chianti bottles, and I loved it. It had that feeling of otherness I adore, the restaurant as a cocoon, where for the next couple of hours you could kid yourself that you’d walk out of the door at the end of your meal and be somewhere completely different.

It was, however, and I might as well get this out of the way now, dark. It started out as atmospheric, but as the evening went on it started to reach Dans Le Noir levels of stygian gloom. A lovely spot to be in, to drink and talk, but the practicalities of doing some of the things you ideally want to do in a restaurant, like read your menu or see what you were eating, were severely curtailed.

A solitary votive candle in the middle of our table wasn’t really going to help with that, even if the staff – who were on it throughout – replaced it very efficiently when it sputtered and went out. I got told off for getting the torch out on my phone to try and read the menu. Zoë told me that I was ruining the atmosphere for everybody, and I’ve since discovered that this is allegedly a boomer thing to do, for which I can only apologise.

Once Zoë had taken some pictures with her phone, in night mode, naturally, and AirDropped them over to me, I managed to get a decent look at the menu, which was of course typewritten. It was everything you’d want it to be, mostly: compact, affordable and interesting. Starters were mostly under a tenner, pasta dishes were closer to twenty and so were the secondi, with the exception of Florentine steak which is sold by weight. I think in the past I’ve seen these listed up on a blackboard, so as to say that when they’re gone they’re gone. Maybe they’d already gone, because our server didn’t mention them to us.

The thing you don’t notice on the menu, at first, is that there’s no fish to be seen anywhere. I saw it written on a mirror in the dining room that Brutto doesn’t serve fish, and although it’s often not my first choice it was still odd to see it completely excluded. It gave the dishes on offer a certain brownish hue, or that could have been the dim lighting, but I suppose it worked on a nippy evening with London well on its way to winter. And it’s not as if I minded, much. The negroni was fierce and medicinal and, lest we forget, only a fiver and, on top of those Belgian beers from earlier on, positively knocked the edges off the day.

I don’t sense that Brutto’s menu has changed enormously since it was first reviewed three years ago, because many of the dishes on offer were talked about in those initial reviews. One definitely was – coccoli, which translates as “cuddles”, and is little fried bits of dough with prosciutto and a small pot of tangy stracchino cheese. Remember when I said that these restaurants attract bucketloads of hype? Jimi Famurewa, then of the Standard said that they were “one of the year’s best dishes”.

I don’t know about that, but they were rather enjoyable. More doughnut than doughball, and pleasant enough with little slivers of ham and a small dollop of the cheese; there wasn’t enough stracchino, but I imagine there never is. But the problem with hype, however old it is, is that it almost sets you up against something. I bet the people who raved about these would have sneered at good old Pizza Express. It reminded me of a restaurant in Shoreditch I used to love called Amici Miei which did a similar dish to this, but far better and completely unsung. But then it hadn’t been opened by Russell Norman, that was the problem.

The other starter was three things that in isolation are hard to beat. Very fine, extremely salty anchovies, with decent salted butter and sourdough from St John just down the road. It’s impossible to argue with this really, even if it involves no cooking, and all three things were good. Zoë adored it, I wasn’t convinced it was really any more than the sum of its parts. In fairness though, this dish was just over a tenner and even in Andalusia seven anchovies of this quality might well set you back more than that.

By this point we were on the red wine, The wine list is all Italian, with lots to enjoy, provided you can read the bastard thing. Bottles start at thirty-six pounds and ascend quickly into three figures from there, and we settled for a Montepulciano closer to the shallow end for sixty-two pounds. which retails for eighteen quid online. Was it worth sixty-two pounds? We’ve established over eleven years that I don’t know a lot about wine, but I’d say maybe not.

For me the pasta dishes were probably Brutto’s greatest strength, and easily the thing I most enjoyed. I’d been tempted by pappardelle with rabbit, but in the end the classic tagliatelle with ragu was too hard to resist. And it was as close to perfect as this dish gets in this country, fantastic al dente ribbons of pasta and a rich, sticky ragu that hugged its curves closely. I’ve always been somewhat sniffy about this widely-held belief that there should be more pasta than sauce, but eating this, for once, I got the point. Everything felt like it was completely in order, in absolutely the right proportions.

Because Brutto is a homage to the trattoria of Italy, they left a bowl of grated Parmesan at your table, with a spoon. But because we were still in London, there wasn’t a lot of Parmesan in it.

For me if anything, Zoë chose even better. Her gramigna, a little spiral shape from Emilia-Romagna, came – as it does in that region – tumbled with sausage and friarelli and was a real joy. But don’t be fooled by the brightness of these pictures from Zoë’s iPhone: by this point it was getting more and more difficult to see what was going on. Even so, these two dishes, to me, highlighted that when it came to pasta dishes restaurants like Brutto or Bancone are still light years ahead of well-intentioned pretenders like Little Hollows in Bristol or bandwagon jumpers like Maidenhead’s Sauce And Flour.

I complained recently that Reading was still lacking a really good Italian restaurant and someone popped up and said “what about Vesuvio?”. And I said that I was looking for somewhere more genuinely Italian and less like a better reimagining of Prezzo, with more interesting secondi. But actually, I got that wrong: what’s really missing is brilliant pasta like this. Pepe Sale had that, back in the day. So did San Sicario. But since then, this kind of carb-centric comfort has been missing from Reading, and it’s a poorer place for it.

Speaking of secondi, to eat that course at Brutto it does help if you like beef. Three of the options are beef-driven (possibly four, depending on what’s in the bollito misto) and the roasted squash, virtuous though it doubtless was, just didn’t appeal. I had chosen the peposo, a slow-cooked stew of beef shin in a sticky, reduced sauce shot through with whole black peppercorns. And I liked it – it sort of reminded me of a stifado, although with no reliance on tomato or those maverick shallots that make the Greek dish such a delight.

But you know how you feel when you see a picture of a moment you don’t fully remember and you’re not sure if the photograph itself is inventing a memory you didn’t really have? Usually that experience dates back to childhood, but I have it when I look at the picture Zoë took of my main course. I know this is what I ate, the photo has my hand in it and the date stamp to prove it. But for me it was just a pool of blackness. You never quite knew what you were eating, or whether this would be your last big chunk of beef. I’ve always understood the saying that you eat with your eyes, but maybe not as well as I did after having this dish at Brutto. And however convivial the atmosphere was, this is where it took something away for me.

I didn’t need a great view of the roast potatoes I’d ordered on the side to know that they weren’t the best roast potatoes. Decent enough, but lacking that contrast of crunch and fluff that would have come if they’d been parboiled, and scuffed up, and cooked properly in really hot fat. Without that, they were just ballast.

Zoë infinitely preferred her main, which was a variation on the same theme. The same roast potatoes, which she viewed more kindly than I had. A slab of pink roast beef, the fat on the outside mellow and puckered, sitting in a little pool of jus. It needed the peas with pancetta that she ordered with it – I’d have liked these à la Française, with a little cream, although I know that’s missing the point in a Florentine trattoria. Anyway Zoë loved it, although she did admit that it was a tad dry. But if there’s anything our marriage proves – six months and counting – it’s that she has far lower standards than I do.

We had a fair bit of wine left, so we drank that and chatted about all sorts before making any decisions about desserts. Now Zoë works in London she is there every Saturday, and usually knocks off at eight o’clock, so by the time our evening begins, most weeks, it’s time for bed. A rare date night in the capital was a precious thing, and so neither of us was in a rush to bring it to an end. But desserts also meant digestivi, and that meant a Frangelico for her and an Amaro del Capo for me. It’s one of my favourite amaros, with something like 29 botanicals, though the one that leaps to the surface for me is mint.

I could have nursed that for some time, and maybe even had another, but the dessert menu only had a few things on it (putting pear and almond cake on there twice, once with ice cream and once without isn’t fooling anybody). Anyway, one of the items on the dessert menu was tiramisu, which meant that we were both contractually obligated to have one. Is it the dessert I order most often when I’m on duty? It definitely feels that way, and Brutto’s is up there with the best I’ve had – miles better than Little Hollows’, better than Sonny Stores‘, better than anything I’ve had in Reading, even including the wonder of Sarv’s Slice or the sadly departed Buon Appetito.

It properly contained multitudes, managing to be substantial yet airy, innocent yet boozy, simultaneously just the right size and nowhere near big enough. I loved it, and it reminded me that on the many occasions that I skip dessert when eating on duty I’m leaving the play before the final act, taking the book back to the library with the last fifty pages untouched. Brutto understands that a good meal has a beginning, a middle and an end, and that tiramisu was a more than worthy way to bring the curtain down.

With all that done, it was time to settle up and pray that the Elizabeth Line could get us back to Paddington before we were forced to catch one of those final trains back to the ‘Ding, the ones everybody refers to as the Burger King Express.

Our meal – a couple of negronis each, that bottle of wine, four courses each and a pair of digestivi – came to just over two hundred and fifty pounds, including an optional 12.5% tip. I know that’s a fair amount of money, but we had plenty of food and didn’t stint on the wine. Personally, I think Brutto is keen value, although probably more so in its starters and pasta than in its mains or wine list. I could have spent less and enjoyed myself just as much, and if I went again I imagine I would.

But would I go again? That’s the question, isn’t it. And it prompts the time-honoured answer, which goes like this. London is so blessed with restaurants – there are easily a handful of other great places to eat less than a ten minute walk from Brutto – that places have to be truly amazing to keep you visiting time and again. That drives quality, I’m sure, and it makes restaurants work hard for custom.

And maybe that also goes to answer the other question, of why it’s hard for anything to become an institution when somewhere else is always, always coming down the tracks. Back when I was on Tinder (what a fun three months that was) I deplored the way it effectively made you channel hop human beings, with their own lives and aspirations and back stories. Whatever. Next! But the way the food media works does the same thing with a lot of restaurants: one minute you’re the hottest ticket in town, the next you’re old hat.

So I had a lovely meal at Brutto and it taught me a lot about what restaurants do at their best and their worst. I have rarely felt, in a restaurant in the U.K., more like I was part of something brilliant and bigger than me. But ultimately one of the many things that united us that night was being together in the darkness. If that’s not a metaphor for something I don’t know what is. Maybe I’m just too old for all that.

Brutto felt like a neighbourhood restaurant in search of a neighbourhood. And speaking of neighbourhoods, if somewhere like Brutto opened in Reading you can bet I would be there on its opening night, and often after that. The fact that Reading can’t attract and maintain restaurants like this really puts the lie to all the old tut spouted by the likes of Hicks Baker that the town centre isn’t dying on its arse.

But while Reading still doesn’t have places like this, it still has that one thing Reading-haters always extol the virtues of: a train station you can use to get anywhere else. You could do a lot worse than make a reservation, hop on a train and find yourself here, in a place that isn’t quite Italy, isn’t quite London, but most definitely isn’t Reading. I know that’s not exactly hype, but it’s the best I can do.

Brutto – 8.4
35-37 Greenhill Rents, London, EC1M 6BN
020 45370928

https://brutto.co.uk