20. Vegetable samosa, Cake & Cream

The decisions get really difficult from this point on. But picking the vegetable samosas from Cake & Cream, a little bakery just off the Wokingham Road, has never been a difficult decision. Their assorted pakora, sold by weight, are marvellous but the samosas, for me, are next level. They’re old school triangles rather than Punjabi pyramids, but they’re outstanding and, as far as I can tell, made and cooked to order. 

You wait there in that bare front room, watching people come and go collecting their preorders and their cakes, knowing that soon it will be your turn and you’ll get a plastic bag full of piping hot samosas to carry off home. They’ll give you one or two little plastic tubs of hot sauce, although the masala filling is flecked with chilli and has plenty of heat of its own. Apart from that it’s just the magical three Ps, potatoes, peas and pastry. They have a minimum order for card purchases, but if you stock up and throw some pakora in it’s easy to get over the threshold. I buy some to treat myself after a trip to my dentist, just up the road, and I get envious looks on the number 17 home.

19. Fried chicken, ThaiGrr!

I love fried chicken in all its forms, which is by now a matter of public record. But in a town with plenty of options ThaiGrr’s fried chicken really does stand out. It’s jointed chicken on the bone, you get plenty of it in a portion and the brittle crispiness of the skin, itself scattered with fried garlic, is one of those mouthfuls that makes the world seem, if just for a minute, like a blessed and blissful place. I first discovered it as a delivery and I thought it was pretty good, but you have to have it in the restaurant where it’s out of the fryer, on to the plate and in front of you in no time. I’ve only ever been to ThaiGrr! without ordering it once. I regretted it almost immediately.

18. Beetroot and peanut croquette, The Lyndhurst

This used to be on the Lyndhurst’s specials menu and then it got promoted, so now it’s a regular fixture and, for me, it’s the pick of their current starters. You get two huge, pillowy croquettes, breadcrumbs fried to a crisp, with a really clever mixture of deep, earthy beetroot and peanut along with a soupçon of heat. Throw in a trio of accompaniments – a bright herb chutney, a carrot chutney and a deep sauce with tamarind like high octane HP – and you have a gorgeous plate of food which I’ve ordered an awful lot over the past few months. And, because the Lyndhurst never wastes their time or yours, even the salad is perfectly sized, perfectly dressed and eminently worth eating.

17. Pork belly, Clay’s Kitchen

Who had number 17 in the sweepstake as the first time Clay’s made an appearance in this list? If that’s you, pat yourself on the back. Their pork belly was a new addition to the menu when Clay’s opened at London Street, post-Covid, and it’s been a mainstay ever since. It’s sumptuous stuff – few restaurants can cook pork belly half as well as Clay’s do – and the flavour of it is truly off the scale. I’ve always adored any dish with jaggery in it, and here it gives a sticky-sweetness that marries beautifully with belly pork.

Underneath it all, there’s the hum of ginger, knocking the edge off and lending the heat that makes it a three-dimensional, fully realised dish. One day I’ll have a plate of this to myself, but short of going to dinner with a vegetarian I’m not sure how that will ever happen. My serving suggestion is to have it with a dry white wine to cut through all that indulgence. Actually, I’m just saying that to sound like I know what I’m talking about: my real serving suggestion is to order two portions.

16. Challoumi wrap, Purée

Forget “Sam’s Wraps”, if you’re in the centre of Reading at lunchtime this is the wrap you want, from Sam Adaci’s big green food truck just outside the Boots on Broad Street. Everything he does is good – including his magnificent falafel made and fried to order – but my heart belongs to his Challoumi wrap. Loads and loads of superbly spiced chicken, cooked and finished on the hot plate, just enough heat and charred edges, is laden into a sizeable flatbread with salad, pickles, garlic sauce, chilli sauce and halloumi.

It’s hard to eat tidily – it’s more a tube than a wrap in fairness, without a closed end – but you’ll find yourself scavenging for every last mouthful. I sincerely hope he raises his prices shortly after receiving this accolade (I think he reads the blog: Sam, sort it out) but as this went to press you can get one of these for six pounds fifty. If you’ve never tried one and this even remotely sounds like your kind of thing – and unless you’re vegetarian or vegan I’m not sure how it couldn’t be – you owe it to yourself to make a pilgrimage to Broad Street to check it out. Tell him I sent you: he’s the unfailingly cheerful chap up at the hot plate, working like an absolute Trojan.

15. Chicken chilli, Kamal’s Kitchen

I first encountered Kamal’s chicken chilli when I ate at Namaste Kitchen, and it was the beginning of a long love affair. It was hot – properly hot, not just what my friend James calls “white people hot” – with an almost-fruity acrid sauce like nothing else I’d had: Kamal later told me that the secret ingredient was Heinz tomato ketchup.

I missed it for a long time, but when Kamal opened his eponymous restaurant on Caversham Road I was delighted to find that, if anything, he’d managed to improve it further over the intervening years. It really is an intoxicating, addictive dish and it still has enough bite, in more ways than one, to hold your attention and simply refuse to let go. When I held a readers’ lunch at Kamal’s Kitchen, last summer, it was the star of the show. Afterwards we went to Phantom for post lunch beers and I lost count of the number of people who said “fuck me, that chicken chilli”, or words to that effect.

14. Mini raj kachori, Clay’s Kitchen

One thing I really love about Clay’s is its determination to make the best version of any dish they decide to cook. You see it across their menu, and it makes me a tedious restaurant reviewer when I visit other Indian restaurants in town. You could probably make a very good drinking game from ER reviews, and I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody already has. Lengthy preamble that has nothing to do with the restaurant: two fingers. Breaks the 2000 word mark again: two fingers. Moan about Reading Borough Council, à propos of nothing: two fingers. Say “it’s okay, but Clay’s does it better”: down your drink in one.

So yes, this dish, the mini raj kachori from Clay’s small plates menu, is phenomenal. And yes, it’s a superior reimagining of the kind of dishes you can get at Bhel Puri House, or Shree Krishna Vada Pav. It’s a crisp pastry shell, like a hollow bubbled crisp, crammed with a spicy mixture of potato and pulses, cool with mint, vibrant with heat, drizzled with tamarind and yoghurt and sev. But where Bhel Puri House’s, or SKVP’s equivalent are prosaic but fun, this is a symphonic, epic dish without a gastronomic hair out of place. Everything on Clay’s small plates menu is miraculous in its own way, but this one’s my favourite.

13. Sweet and sour aubergine, Kungfu Kitchen

Who had number 13 in the sweepstake as the first time Kungfu Kitchen made an appearance in this list? Nothing like a running joke, right? But I imagine many ardent fans of KFK will be outraged that this dish doesn’t rank even higher. It is an absolute cracker, a dish which completely transcends its description. I’ve not yet met anybody who dislikes aubergine that has tried this dish and not made an exception for it.

Ditto for people who aren’t fond of sweet and sour, because KFK’s dish is genuinely sweet and sour rather than most sweet and sour dishes, which are actually sweet and even sweeter. So this is more complex and nuanced than that – it is absolutely beautiful and I think pretty much everybody who has ever tried it at KFK has it on their shortlist of must-order items.

I have photos of the vast majority of the dishes in my top 50, but this one eludes me. That’s because when it’s plonked down on the table I never, ever have time to get my phone out before someone at my table has grabbed a spoon and started dishing it up. Who can blame them?

12. Cut mirchi chat, Clay’s Kitchen

We’re now at the point in the list where I could write great gushing love letters to every single dish, and I’m trying to rein myself in. But really, this dish is one of my favourite things you can eat in Reading and even sitting down to write about it makes me realise it’s far too long since I ate it last – not since the 9th of June, the day of that rave review in the Guardian, in fact. It’s hard to describe, harder still to do justice to. It’s a chilli, wrapped in a glorious crunchy coating (including, at a guess, gram flour), fried and cut into slices. 

Nowadays it comes to the table all fancy, covered in finely diced tomato, pomegranate seeds and crispy sev, but I remember this dish when it made its debut at London Street when it was less glamorous but no less delicious. It never needed the makeover, although it looks beautiful now, because it was a knockout from day one. Like many of Clay’s starters and small plates, it’s absolutely perfect for sharing which just reinforces the kind of place Clay’s is, where meals are all about shared experiences. I just love that. The menu describes it as “a childhood favourite snack”: and to think I had to make do with Nice N’ Spicy Nik Naks.

11. Lamb with cumin, Kungfu Kitchen

I had this dish on my second ever visit to Kungfu Kitchen, and I could have told you then that it would be one of Reading’s 50 best dishes four years later, barring any disasters like Kungfu Kitchen burning to the ground. I found it very difficult to imagine I’d ever live in a town where there were fifty dishes better than this, and if I did I imagine Kungfu Kitchen would still be behind more than one or two of them.

It’s deceptively simple – ribbons of almost-pink lamb, fried as little as they can get away with, with onions, chillies, coriander and sesame seeds. But the devil is in the detail, in that sauce, reduced and clinging to every crinkle of the meat, rich with cumin, deep, delicious and unlike anything else.

Well: I say that, but I remember trying a similar dish, a couple of years previously, at Memory Of Sichuan. Memory Of Sichuan is not a bad restaurant at all, but comparing their dish to KFK’s is like comparing a Rolf Harris painting to a Turner. One last thing – this is a dish to attack on arrival, to wolf down. You want that lamb almost still bleating, before it continues to cook through and those fibres toughen. Think of it as a licence for gluttony.

• Click here for dishes 50-41
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This piece is part of Edible Reading at 10. See also:

• The 10 most significant restaurants of the last decade
• The 10 saddest closures of the last decade
• Edible Reading and me

40. Crispy squid, Intoku

Fried squid – or calamari, the two seem to be used interchangeably on Reading menus – is ten a penny in Reading, but you’ll struggle to find a better rendition than Intoku’s. Served very simply, beautifully coated and stunningly tender, it’s almost worth making a detour to Intoku just for this dish. But be warned – if you do, and they’re on form, all the squid you order elsewhere in town will feel just a little more bouncy, a little less impressive. Is it worth it? Take it from me, it is.

39. Fried lamb momo, Momo 2 Go

I’ve had my fair share of takeaways from cheery little Momo 2 Go, partway down the Oxford Road. But some dishes don’t travel, and you need to eat them there and then. Nothing exemplifies that better than Momo 2 Go’s fried lamb momo, crunchy little balloons filled with marvellous minced lamb. Order, dip, devour, leave delighted. Nothing could be simpler: they might be called Momo 2 Go, but these will make you stay.

38. Spider roll, Iro Sushi

A recent, joyous discovery, Iro’s spider roll is probably my favourite sushi in the whole of Reading. It’s a medley of showstoppers – crunchy soft shell crab bolstered with matchsticks of cucumber, bound up in their peerless rice, slices of buttery avocado draped indolently over the top. But that’s not all, because the whole thing is drizzled with spicy mayo and then festooned with tobiko, which pops against the molars. Everything is great, everything is great together and everything works. Writing this has made me want to order it now, although I suppose that’s the equivalent of laughing at your own jokes.

37. Pulled pork roll, The Nag’s Head

The Nag’s Head is one of Reading’s finest places to drink beer, if not the finest. But pork scratchings and Mini Cheddars can only accompany beer up to a point, so it’s very fortunate that the pub has also turned its thoughts to the kind of snacks that can fuel a drinking session without being too fiddly or forcing you to go elsewhere to eat. The crown jewel of their menu, for me, is the pulled pork roll – strand after strand of yielding pork, dressed with a slightly punchy barbecue sauce in a very serviceable brioche bun. The garnish of ready salted crinkle cut crisps instead of some token undressed salad? Icing on the cake.

36. Monkey Burger, Monkey Lounge

I was worried I’d need to take Monkey Lounge off this list, because it closed for its summer break and then its summer break went on for weeks longer than initially promised. I feared we had another “temporarily closed” to “permanently closed” debacle on our hands. But gladly those fears were unfounded and it reopened on Friday. They make their own burgers and they are an absolute delight – thick, coarse patties with bacon, cheese, burger sauce and crisp iceberg. No frills, no mucking about, just a burger where everything is spot on and you can eat it without unhooking your jaw.

When I first visited Monkey Lounge I did with no particular expectations, but it gladdened my jaded heart that the burger was so much better than it needed to be. This is the entry level burger, by the way: they do a Monkey “King” Burger where you can double up on the patty but although I’m greedy, I’ve never been that greedy. The chips, considering they’re bought in, are decent too.

35. Sausage panuozzo, Madoo

Madoo does many great toasted sandwiches. But most of them are made with their flat, sturdy focaccia, which I’d say is more of an acquired taste and not necessarily the airy, cakelike stuff you’re used to. For me, their panuozzo is where everything comes together. More like a panino or a ciabatta the bread has more give, and makes for an infinitely more satisfying sandwich.

But that’s just the half of it, because what elevates Madoo’s panuozzo and gives it a place on this list is the filling – a superb amalgam of glossy molten scamorza, dense clusters of fennel sausage meat and the piece de resistance, cubes of potato. Madoo, like Shree Krishna Vada Pav, understand the appeal of sticking potato in a sandwich, and a note of smoke permeates the whole thing, courtesy of the scamorza. I could eat this every week. Some months I do.

34. Tiramisu, Sarv’s Slice

One of only a handful of sweet treats in my top 50, Sarv’s Slice morphs into Sarv’s Slab for this magnificent wodge of boozy, creamy indulgence. Don’t get me wrong, I really like Sarv’s pizzas, and if their carbonara special was a permanent fixture it would have waltzed into this list. But I have a real weakness for tiramisu and Sarv’s version is about as good as it gets. You have to eat it with a wooden spoon, but that’s the only way this dish and the words “wooden spoon” will ever be mentioned in the same sentence. 

33. ‘Nduja pinsa, Mama’s Way

This is the last in a trio of consecutive Italian masterpieces, and would you believe this is the the second and final pizza in my list? Hard to credit, I know, but Mama’s Way makes the grade because their pinsa is something a little different from the Neapolitan, bubbled on the outside, saggy on the inside template that has been adopted across the country. Their pinsa is simultaneously airier and a tad more robust, and I’m rather fond of it.

Purists would sniff at this and point to the fact that Mama’s Way buys its bases in. I say purists are missing out because Mama’s Way buys other stuff in too, really good stuff, that transforms the humble pinsa into a thing of beauty. Splodge after splodge of brick red ‘nduja, detonations of umami delight scattered across the pizza, make it a perfect solo treat, sitting up at that window with a glass of white wine or a negroni, watching people heading up and down Duke Street. Reading is never going to be Bologna, but on a good day it can make you miss Bologna a lot less.

32. Chilli paneer, Bhel Puri House

I always expected this dish to make my top 50 but just to be on the safe side I made a beeline for Bhel Puri House recently, for the first time in a long time, to make sure it wasn’t just the nostalgia talking. I’m so happy it wasn’t – if anything absence has made the heart grow fonder and the palate more grateful. Bhel Puri House’s chilli paneer is an old school classic, and it’s stood the test of time superbly.

Bhel Puri was here before the likes of Clay’s, Madras Flavours and Shree Krishna Vada Pav (theirs was the first vada pav I ever tasted) and they are still going strong without making a song and dance about it. Their paneer Manchurian is good, but their chilli paneer is the benchmark – savoury, spicy, sticky and tumbled with peppers, spring onions and just enough potent green chilli to make your eyes water. I love the fact that a dish I first ate in the first six months of my blog is still right up there.

31. Pork gyros wrap, Tasty Greek Souvlaki

You could say that this is the third pork sarnie in this section of my top 50, and I suppose technically you’d be right. But Tasty Greek Souvlaki’s pork gyros wrap is so much more than that. I’ve always found it strange that they’re named after souvlaki when, for me, their gyros is so superb. And this, as a sandwich, absolutely has it all: ribbons of gyros meat, shaved off and fried until crispy, smothered in a decent tzatziki and bundled into a wrap with a sheaf of top-notch chips. 

They used to be an absolutely ridiculous bargain but even now, in 2023 with inflation through the roof, one will still only set you back something like seven pounds fifty. With a street food market on its doorstep twice a week, Tasty Greek Souvlaki has to offer something special at lunchtime to stay in the game. Unlike their sadly departed neighbours Mum Mum, who didn’t even last a year selling banh mi, Tasty Greek understood that only a truly spectacular sandwich would do.

• Click here for dishes 50-41
• Click here for dishes 30-21
• Click here for dishes 20-11
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This piece is part of Edible Reading at 10. See also:

• The 10 most significant restaurants of the last decade
• The 10 saddest closures of the last decade
• Edible Reading and me

I decided at the start of the year that it would be a fun idea to close off my tenth birthday celebrations by counting down Reading’s 50 best dishes. I may have a moan about them from time to time, but like everyone else I love a list. I love getting to December, firing up Pitchfork, looking at its top 50 albums of the year and, naturally, never having heard of most of them. Half the enjoyment of lists like these is feeling your tastes have been validated when they align with those of the person compiling the list, the other half is thinking that they’re numbskulls when they don’t. Well, maybe it’s more 30-70, but you get my meaning.

Well, it was a fun idea – in theory. In practice putting it together has been far more difficult than I imagined and has involved ranking, re-ranking, shuffling the pack when restaurants have closed since I made my long list and then remembering dishes, or whole restaurants, that I had completely forgotten. One recent discovery forced me to kick a very enjoyable dish out of my list just to make room. 

And of course the mind plays tricks, so in a month where I haven’t written reviews I have been out and about trying and re-trying dishes on my long list to check if they were as good as I remembered. Many were, a couple have come off the list. In at least one case I went to check out a dish, found it had lost its lustre but found, on the same menu, a game-changing replacement.

I should lay down a couple of ground rules for this list. First of all, I decided it should be dishes you can only – or mostly – get in Reading. That has ruled out chains, in most cases, although I’ve been more understanding where a restaurant has a very small number of branches. I can’t pretend there’s rigid logic to that but it does, for instance, mean that you don’t have anything on here from Honest or Pho. In one or two cases, I may have relaxed that ever so slightly. Normally I would say “sorry, I don’t make the rules up” but, well, in this case I have. If you don’t like them, you’ll just have to read another of the many lists of Reading’s 50 best dishes wafting around online.

Second of all, it has to be a dish you can get in Reading right now. There are few things more annoying, in my book, than pieces that ignore this rule. Whether it’s reviews of plays you can’t go to or products you can’t buy, they always have that smug whiff of “here’s what you missed out on”. So if a dish isn’t available right now it missed the cut. This has especially, I’m afraid, penalised restaurants that change their menu frequently and that, in particular, has counted against one of my favourite places, the Lyndhurst. So their karaage chicken, their gorgeous curried monkfish, their Korean wings are all incredible but as they’re not on the menu right now they fall into the category of what might have been.

Now we’re done with the caveats, here are the disclaimers. I make no pretence to have tried every dish in Reading, and that means that this list is my best, most informed selection but of course, it can’t claim to be definitive. There are probably gems on every menu that I haven’t yet discovered, and there are certainly great restaurants across Reading not represented here. In some cases that’s because I haven’t got to them yet, and in others it’s because sadly I haven’t made it back to them in time – Vegivores, in particular, springs to mind.

I’ve never really had any time for imposter syndrome. Writers can be an egotistical bunch, and in my experience the more a writer claims to be paralysed by imposter syndrome the more likely it is that they’re more taken with the sound of their prose voice than you could ever be. I’ve been doing this for ten years, and I’m quite happy that I’ve earned my place doing so. But even I have to admit that putting this list together introduced an uncharacteristic level of doubt. What right did I have to pronounce on this? I might, after a decade of reviewing Reading restaurants, be as well qualified as anyone, but was I any better qualified than anybody?

Two things reassured me. One was a comment I got on Twitter from my recent dining companion Emma. “You’ve eaten way more than 50 dishes in Reading over the last 10 years” she said, and put that way she has a fair point. But the other was a lovely comment I received on my blog’s Facebook page when I announced that I was going to publish this list. It was from regular reader John, and with his permission I’ve reproduced it here in its entirety. “I’m trying to think about ones which might not feature on your list” he said, and then he wrote this:

Kungfu Kitchen’s salt and pepper snow white mushrooms, and their stir fried five spiced firm tofu with chilli should make the cut. Clay’s baghare baigan (which I think you can now only order from home, tragically). Papa Gee’s melanzana pizza, and their salsiccia e friarelli pizza, eaten rolled up and slowly. Coconut’s pork satay. Honest Burger’s local Reading market burger. 

House of Flavours’ incomparable lamb chops, and their pistachio chicken curry. Memory of Sichuan’s cauliflower in hot spicy pot (and their leftover egg fried rice, eaten with a serving of Ottolenghi’s chicken Marbella). Kobeda Palace’s aubergine curry, and their okra curry, and their hummus eaten with one of those naan breads which could clothe a six year-old. 

Osaka’s grilled cheese gyoza because they’re so wrong they’re actually right (but still wrong, even so), and their kimchi seafood tofu stew, which should only ever be eaten on the coldest day of the year. One of Workhouse’s sausage rolls, eaten in the Forbury in the sunshine, and one of CUP’s bougatsas, eaten outside in the shade of that massive linden tree, where every crisp crack of pastry coats the table downwind in a dusting of cinnamon and icing sugar. A piece of Picnic’s plum and marzipan cake, for self-explanatory reasons.

And a murgh makhani from Miah’s Garden of Gulab, for old times’ sake – and to remind us what the best Indian dish in Reading was twelve years ago, and how far we’ve come since.

John’s list is notable for two reasons. One is that it’s just a beautiful roll call of excellent food, and I challenge you to read it without wanting to check out at least one thing on it. But it’s also notable because, without exception, absolutely nothing on John’s list matches with the fifty dishes I’ll be talking about in the next five days. And that, really, is kind of the point. To paraphrase the great Spencer Tracy in one of my favourite films of all time, Inherit The Wind: my list is a just a list. It’s a good list, but it is not the only list. 

So I hope you enjoy reading it. I hope you enjoy it when, like a game of Battleships, my selection happens to be the same as yours and I hope you enjoy calling me every name under the sun because your own favourites are missing. But most of all, I hope it makes you check out something I’ve chosen, or simply go back to your favourite place and order your favourite. Or even make your own list, every bit as good and valid as mine, as John has done. I can’t think of a better way of ending a month celebrating ten years of my blog than by reflecting that I could have compiled this list four times over, each time completely different, and still not exhausted what Reading has to offer.

50. Dosa chips, Madras Flavours

Many fine meals start with a snack, and my list does too. When I visited Madras Flavours earlier in the year I found a lot to like. but this dish – the result of someone having the ingenious idea of frying little curls of dosa and liberally dusting them with a potent spice powder – was the thing that has stayed with me.

49. Mutton chops, Adda Hut

From chips to chops, although chop is misleading in this context. Because what Woodley’s Adda Hut describes as mutton chops are in fact hulking great spheres of breaded minced mutton – somewhere between a croquette and an eggless Scotch egg, with a note of spice almost reminiscent of haggis. Woodley features in my top 50 twice – the other entry might be less of a surprise, but I was thoroughly charmed by the quiet loveliness of this dish.

48. Gaeng massaman, Thai Table

Thai Table, just the other side of Caversham Bridge, is one of those under-the-radar places that just unceremoniously gets on with doing its stuff without any social media or, seemingly, any comms at all. Their massaman beef curry, all gloriously tender beef in an intensely soothing sauce with a little heat and a warm coconut hug, is a positive balm for the soul from one of Reading’s most modest restaurants.

47. Banana bun, Filter Coffee House

I’m bending my own rules a little here, as Filter Coffee House, on Castle Street just before the alms houses, is a Reading newcomer, having only been open three weeks or so. But their banana bun is a little miracle and richly deserves a place on this list. It’s quite hard to describe, being almost glazed on the outside and beautifully dense yet spongy inside. The banana comes through loud and clear but what makes it, and makes it complex and interesting, is the rich speckling of cumin seeds inside. I had mine sitting up at the window, watching the to and fro of Castle Street, and mentally I was already planning when I would return.

46. Smashed avo, The Switch

The Switch, out on Tilehurst Triangle, is the sort of accomplished brunch spot anywhere in Reading would be happy to have on its doorstep. And its smashed avo on toast is in danger of giving that dish – the bane of moronic, anti-wokerati Daily Mail articles the world over – a very good name. Skilfully executed, laced with lime and given an extra dimension with chimichurri and Parmesan crisps, it’s one of Reading’s best and most grown-up brunches. I had mine with bacon on top, but that isn’t compulsory.

45. Pizza Sofia Loren, Papa Gee

Arguably Papa Gee’s most famous pizza, the Sofia Loren has been putting a smile on the faces of Reading residents for over a decade. A simple but effective affair, with pepperoni, red onion and nuggets of fennel-rich, crumbly Italian sausage, it has been around since all the new pretenders to Reading’s pizza throne arrived in town. And you wouldn’t bet against it still being around when they’ve all given up, either (perhaps I see it as a kindred spirit, come to think of it).

Zoë likes to pimp hers with blue cheese to create what she describes as the “Sofia Loren +”. I can imagine Gaetano rolling his eyes as he prepares that, in the kitchen, but then Zoë thinks everything tastes better with blue cheese.

44. French toast with bacon and maple syrup, The Collective

For a dish like this to make my list, it has to be its absolute best self, with every ingredient at the top of its game. The Collective understands that particular assignment, and what comes out of their kitchen is this dish as good as it possibly gets – phenomenal, rich, spongy French toast made with brioche, bang-on crispy streaky bacon (from the nearby Caversham Butcher, last time I checked), the whole thing bathed in maple syrup, with a generous hand in charge of pouring. With so few components and ingredients there’s no hiding place if it isn’t perfect. But The Collective doesn’t need to worry about that.

43. Tuna Turner, Shed

We finish this section of the list with a trio of sandwiches, all three illustrating some of Reading’s best lunch venues. First up, we have the godfather of Reading sandwiches, and one that probably justifies popping up a blue plaque on the outside of Merchants Place.

The Tuna Turner has acquired an iconic status most Reading dishes can only dream of. Sure, it’s a tuna melt, but there’s something about it and its genius combination of red onion, sundried tomato and jalapeños that has captivated Reading’s lunch crowd for a very long time, with good reason. Its predecessor had capers in it, which I thought I would miss, but this is even better.

42. The O’Muffin, Fidget & Bob

Speaking of missing things, I miss the days when Fidget & Bob did a full English with outrageously good scrambled eggs. But that was a lot of work, and their menu now has a streamlined set of breakfast dishes. Happily for us, they took the star of their breakfast – square slabs of sausagemeat not unlike a Lorne sausage – and repurposed it in the O’Muffin, their brilliant attempt to beat McDonalds at their own game. Add hash browns for extra decadence, and if you are going to eat one do it proudly and without apology or shame. It’s the most inportant meal of the day, you know.

41. The Blue, The Grumpy Goat

The Grumpy Goat added another contender to Reading’s pantheon of sandwiches when it started serving food from its new site on Smelly Alley. They have access to good bread, and the cheese is a given, so you’d expect it to be good but even so, it really is a huge treat. There’s something to be said for all their toasties but for me the Blue has the edge. It’s cleverly balanced between salty Colston Bassett Stilton, crunchy batons of apple, walnuts and just a smidge of honey. Sweet and salt in perfect gooey, oozing harmony: lunchtime accompanying beer entirely optional.

• Click here for dishes 40-31
• Click here for dishes 30-21
• Click here for dishes 20-11
• Click here for dishes 10-1

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

• The 10 most significant restaurants of the last decade
• The 10 saddest closures of the last decade
• Edible Reading and me

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

“I’ll write you something” I offered. 

“Would you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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