I expected something from House Of Flavours to make it onto my list, but I always thought it would be the chicken pistachio, the dish everybody talks about. And then I went back to House Of Flavours earlier this year and although I tried the chicken pistachio (and it was very nice, too) this dish is the one that really caught my attention.
From the Indo-Chinese section of their menu, the Chicken Buhari – better known as Chicken 65 – isn’t lumps of meat bobbing in sauce but a richer, thicker, stickier affair, chicken coated in yoghurt and spices and fried into spiced, moreish wonder. I have a sneaking feeling it doesn’t really work as a main course, and it’s too big to eat as a starter, so your best bet is to persuade somebody to add it to your order and share. Although the downside to that, of course, is that you have to share it.
29. Chocolate mousse, The Lyndhurst
I am a huge fan of chocolate mousse, and although it turns up regularly on the continent – I could have had it every night in Paris back in March – it seems to be harder to spot on menus here in the U.K. I’ve had lovely versions further afield, in Bristol or in Newbury, but until recently you had to go to Côte to get your fix here in Reading.
Gladly, the Lyndhurst must have somehow heard my unspoken prayer, because they recently added one to their dessert menu and now you don’t need to leave town in order to eat a superlative example. You get a phenomenal, generous dollop of the stuff and although the presentation varies – sometimes it’s with red fruits and coulis, sometimes it’s not – the thing that doesn’t change is that it comes sandwiched between two slabs of outrageously good peanut and sesame brittle, which is delicious and not so brittle that it endangered my composite fillings.
28. Jerk chicken, rice and peas, Sharian’s Jamaican Cuisine
If you go to Blue Collar on a Friday – the original market, not the permanent site, there’s only one time when you won’t see a massive queue outside Sharian’s Jamaican Cuisine, and that’s when they haven’t got round to serving yet. After that, you need to be prepared to wait a while. Some of that is due to the speed with which they do things, because nobody rushes those guys. But a lot of it, too, is down to demand. And it’s justified: people queue across Market Place for a reason.
The pick of their menu, for me, is the jerk chicken – a lot of it, hacked into chunks, tanned on the outside and tender underneath, smothered with hot sauce and served up on a bed of rice and peas, with coleslaw and iceberg lettuce so you can feel slightly more virtuous. It really is so, so good, and I miss the times when I was a gentleman of leisure because I used to eat it far more often. These days, when you can be waiting half an hour to get to the front of that line, not so much.
27. Chapli kebab, Kobeeda Palace
A bit like the incident at House Of Flavours that started this section of my list, Kobeda Palace’s appearance in my top 50 is a bit of a curveball. I’ve been enthusing about their karahi chicken ever since I first visited the place back in 2016 and I fully expected it to grace the higher echelons of this hit parade. So I went back to Kobeda Palace last month with Zoë, for research purposes you understand, ordered half a kilo of the stuff and… well, I liked it but I didn’t love it. Not to worry, because I had ample dishes on my longlist that could have squeaked into this rundown and it would have been none the poorer for it.
But what I didn’t reckon on was how much I’d love the dish I ordered that night just to make up the numbers, Kobeda Palace’s chapli kebab. A flattened disc of lamb, shot through with fiery chillies, all crispy-edged and harbouring a glowering heat, it was just crying out to be wrapped in naan and dipped into one of the three chutneys they brought to the table. Smash burgers may be all the rage, but it turns out Kobeda Palace has well and truly been there, done that and got the t-shirt. If I hadn’t liked it so much, I might have had the presence of mind to take a photo.
26. Thalassery mutton curry, Pappadams
I enjoyed this dish so much I ordered it two times in quick succession, less than a fortnight apart. Pappadams’ mutton curry is a proper bear hug of a thing, with slow-cooked, rugged chunks of tender mutton in a thick, sticky sauce that is more warming comfort than aggressive heat for heat’s sake. This is one to bear in mind as we move into autumn and the air has that thinner, sharper feel to it, and eating a bowl of this would be a great way to cancel out the gloom of the shortening days.
25. The Regular, Smash N Grab
I love Smash N Grab. I love what they do, and I love the way they pluckily carry on from their little hut on Cemetery Junction, dealing with their belligerent neighbour and all the challenges their location brings. But they don’t get on my list because I find myself rooting for the underdog, having read through their social media. They get on my list because their burgers are the absolute business.
A lot of people complain about the modern trend of burgers to build up rather than out, a thick, Scooby Doo-style sandwich with more tiers than a wedding cake, impossible to eat. Smash N Grab has clearly thought about that because although their burgers are immense they are wide rather than tall, built around their excellent smashed burgers. Although they have many variations on the theme their original and best makes my list: The Regular, two of those patties, ribbons of sweet, caramelised onion, gooey American cheese and their own burger sauce. I personally like to add mushrooms to mine, your mileage may vary. It’s impossible to eat one tidily, but it’s also impossible to eat one without a smile on your face.
24. ThaiGrr!’s Roar, Thai Grr!
ThaiGrr!’s menu can be a bit of an intimidating one, once you step away from the red curry, green curry, pad Thai and massaman that make up the core of their menu. Beyond that the choice starts to get bewildering, especially when you factor in the number of different permutations of minced pork or minced chicken – as a salad, with aubergines, with fried egg, the list goes on. What you actually want, in my experience, is ThaiGrr!’s Roar, their eponymous dish.
Most of their standard mains are all there ready and waiting to be dished up, as at somewhere like Kokoro, whereas their specials they cook for you there and then. And of them, ThaiGrr!’s roar is the finest I’ve had – a potent dish of minced pork, with lemongrass, shrimp paste and kaffir lime, Thai food with the stabilisers off. Despite the four chillies on the menu, I find it’s not as overpowering as I initially feared but you do get a huge spectrum of flavour and, as you approach the end, a lingering desire to do it all over again.
23. Chocolate roll, Geo Café
Geo Café used to bake everything – bread, baguettes, pastries, you name it. At some point they stopped doing bread, which I believe they buy in, but the baguettes and the pastries, fashioned by co-owner Zezva’s own fair hands, continued. And it’s just as well they did, or the residents of Caversham might have staged the most middle-class revolt you’ve ever seen.
Everyone has their favourite, and I’m sure some of you are reading this and saying You fool, what about the pistachio medialuna or how could you overlook their cardamom buns? I know, I know, pipe down, they’re all good. But my vote goes to the chocolate roll, a hulking great distant cousin of the pain au chocolat which is bigger, burlier and denser, beautifully lacquered and buttery, packed with deep, dark chocolate. It’s a brooding thing, in the image of its creator, but like its creator it’s also a bit of a sweetie.
22. Kothey chicken momo, Sapana Home
Happiness is still a plate of Sapana Home’s pan fried momo, all to yourself, with a mango lassi, listening to the music on the radio and watching people amble down Queen Victoria Street. You used to be able to get all that for a tenner, but although it costs more now it’s still very keen value. Other momo are available, and all their momo are available cooked several different ways, but the slightly caramelised crust of the pan-fried variant edges it for me.
I’ve had this dish so many times – in good times and bad, with friends and alone – and in as far as a dish can keep you company, you couldn’t hope for better company than this. My favourite momo, of the ten, is number four: the headlong rush of the first three has passed, you’re properly appreciating them and you haven’t yet reached the terrible sadness of the final two. It’s a metaphor for something, but I don’t know what.
21. Mezze box, Fink
My pick of all the permanent fixtures at Blue Collar, Fink is consistently superb and its mezze box is the way to eat everything they do so well in one convenient package. So you get a couple of pert, vinegary stuffed vine leaves, couscous and olives, some foliage, three different sauces of varying heats – all of which are bloody marvellous – and the topping or toppings of your choice.
I tend to go for their chicken shawarma, which is beautifully spiced and seasoned thigh meat, cooked bang on, and their falafel which are as good as anybody’s in town, with the possible exception of Purée. All that and you can almost convince yourself that this, because it’s sort of, almost a salad, is the healthy option. Since Gurt Wings left Blue Collar this is my order of choice every Friday. Back when Gurt was still trading in Reading, it was my order of choice every Wednesday.
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.
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.
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?
A great philosopher – Kermit The Frog in Muppet Christmas Carol, no less – once said that life is made up of meeting and partings. He was right, and that’s as true of restaurants as of anything else. Last week, as part of the blog’s 10th birthday celebrations, I wrote about the most joyous meetings, the happiest moments when a new restaurant came to town and changed the game. This week it’s time to look at the other, more sombre side of the coin, the restaurants we’ve loved and lost.
Maybe that sets a miserable tone I don’t intend, because on each occasion our town was lucky to see these places, and it’s better for the fact that they traded here, however briefly in some cases. All of them leave behind happy memories, of evenings that were part of the fabric of our lives, and of Reading itself. And most of them, in some way, contributed to the forward movement of the food and drink scene in the UK’s largest town.
After all, there’s a finite number of buildings in Reading, despite developers’ best efforts to bung flats everywhere, and sometimes a door can’t open until another has shut. If the Baron Cadogan hadn’t closed we wouldn’t have Clay’s on Prospect Street, if Café Metro had thrived maybe Kungfu Kitchen would have opened in another town. And much as I loved Ha! Ha! back in the day, and didn’t mind Mangal in that spot, they both had to leave Kings Road for House Of Flavours to find its home. It’s interesting that of the places that make my top 10, many have not had somewhere else open in their place. Maybe those ones just couldn’t be topped.
This has been an exceptionally difficult list to whittle down and rank. Part of that is down to the sheer volume of places that have closed over the years I’ve been writing this blog. Some attained a status where people probably thought they’d never close, others were the sort of places that always looked touch and go to make it to the one year mark (I’m thinking of the more eccentric places to open in Reading here: Faith Kitchen springs to mind).
Although I’ve drawn an arbitrary line to only cover restaurants that have closed since I began this blog ten years ago, I know people have Reading restaurants they’ve missed for longer than that. Santa Fe on the Riverside, for instance, or Ben’s. The one I particularly mourn from the more distant past is Chi’s Oriental Brasserie, a restaurant that still crosses my mind from time to time. And it’s easy to feel sad, but we should be positive and happy these restaurants graced our town at all, whether it was for a long time or a good time.
Making these choices was excruciating, and to demonstrate exactly how excruciating here are some of the great places that didn’t make my final cut. I couldn’t find space for Tampopo, which closed in 2015 and proved that you can run a credible independent restaurant out of the Oracle (and that the Oracle, ever the hooligan, will then kick you out to make space for TGI Friday).
Siblings Home in Caversham, the Collective of its day, didn’t quite make my list either: Reading wasn’t quite ready for a take on Labour & Wait back then, more’s the pity. Similarly I couldn’t fit in two of the Oxford Road’s best restaurants of the last 10 years, Bhoj and Tuscany. Bhoj, back in the day, was just a wonderful place to eat and I developed a huge soft spot for Tuscany and its unpretentious approach to pizzas where you basically told them what you wanted on it and they made it for you there and then.
Bhoj moved into town, overextended itself and closed. Tuscany, on the other hand, suffered the saddest fate to befall restaurants: it just disappeared. No announcement on social media, no explanation. First the Google entry said it was temporarily closed, then it was permanently closed, and you never got to say goodbye. A couple of my top 10 closed that way: it still hurts.
Honourable mentions also go to the Tasting House, a place which went through many subtly different incarnations over seven years but was always worth a visit and Zest, which decided to call it a day after the pandemic. And finally, possibly the most difficult one to omit was Cairo Café. The fact that it hovers just outside the top 10 gives you a good idea of the pedigree of the others.
When Cairo Café closed I felt a particular sadness, but it was a useful reality check: bad reviews can’t break a restaurant and good reviews can’t make one. And, as always, there’s a cautionary tale hiding in place sight: if there’s somewhere you love, and you can afford to pay it a visit, do. Recommend it to friends. Do your bit to send people there instead of Côte or Wagamama.
Because restaurants are more at risk of closure now than at any time I can recall, and it would be a shame to look back, in a year’s time or ten, and wish you’d done more. If you wanted any illustration of this, San Sicario was trading when I started writing this piece. At the point of hitting publish, it has closed for good. That’s how quick it can happen.
All that said, let’s be positive again and celebrate ten truly brilliant places that are no longer with us. I hope that, whether you agree with my list or not, reading it brings back some happy memories of the places that have enhanced Reading over the last ten years. It’s definitely done that for me.
10. Cappuccina Cafe (closed May 2014)
The chances are you never went to Cappuccina Cafe. In fact, you may have never even heard of it.
It was on West Street, not too far from where Cairo Café was until recently, and it had one of those backstories that are so rife in Reading’s hospitality scene. A husband and wife team, one of them Portuguese and one of them Vietnamese, deciding to set up a cafe which, however incongruously, combined those two cuisines. Portuguese food has never really thrived in Reading, and as for Vietnamese Cappuccina Café opened before its time, long before the likes of Pho, Mum Mum and Banh Mi QB.
And the food was good. I had marinated chicken which was good but not amazing, but an outstanding banh mi and a very enjoyable pastel de nata – again, they’re everywhere now but they weren’t in 2014. I made a mental note to go back, and then before I could, mere weeks after I published my review, it was gone. My friend Wendy read the review and went several times a week so she could try all the different banh mi. I kept saying I’d join her: I didn’t, and then I couldn’t. And now, really, my nine year old review is the only evidence anywhere that this place ever existed at all.
So Cappuccina Café makes my list for a few reasons. The food, sure, but also because it was snatched from us so soon. Partly, too, because it’s emblematic of all the great restaurants and cafés you might never get round to visiting, a sort of Tomb Of The Unknown Restaurant, if you will. If you don’t agree with this one, or you don’t know it, just substitute your own biggest regret in the number 10 slot. I imagine you have one.
9. Nibsy’s (closed June 2021)
I don’t know if you could blame anybody for deciding to sell their business in the summer of 2021. Those bounceback loans were falling due, many people – me included – were still staying clear of eating and drinking indoors and, if you had premises in the town centre, you’d reached the uncomfortable realisation that people weren’t working there during the week, shopping there at weekends and spending money in your café or restaurant.
On that level I tend to think that Naomi and Jon, who owned Nibsy’s, were smart to get out when they did. Especially as what lay ahead was a sluggish recovery from Covid just in time to get walloped by utility bills, the price of ingredients, the challenge of getting and retaining staff and all the other Brexit bonuses which bless us all.
But it was still a huge shame to see one of Reading’s most innovative, trailblazing businesses call it a day. Naomi has since written on social media about how maybe she just needed a break, but I suspect it was still a clever move. Not for her worrying about how to survive the winter ahead, or having to stop customers using charging sockets for their laptops, or any of the other things that have become necessities for small business owners.
And how lovely that as part of the sale they protected Nibsy’s legacy, making sure they sold the business as a gluten-free going concern and keeping the brand name, with the faint promise that it might one day return. Even so, it was sad to see such a well realised independent business in the town centre calling it quits. Few places inspired so much devotion – yes, from customers who didn’t eat gluten but also, I suspect, from a number of well-wishers without skin in that particular game.
8. Forbury’s (closed April 2019)
Some of the restaurants on this list went out in their prime, at their absolute peak. That’s usually down to the owners selling up or wanting to do something else, or of course that perennial Reading favourite, the toxic landlord. But a couple of places on this list, sadly, were past their best by the time they threw in the towel. Forbury’s is a good example of that, I think.
By the time it closed in 2019 it was a shadow of the restaurant it once was, possibly a victim of that kind of business lunch falling out of favour. The last few times I went the food was just a little too much for a little too little, the market menu not heaving with bargains the way it once did. Maybe it hurt them to have a restaurant literally opposite in the Forbury Hotel: that would have annoyed me, if I was them.
But believe me, few restaurants could match Forbury’s in its pomp. For really wonderful a la carte dishes, for a superb, excellent value set menu, for a wine list full of indulgence that always had some finds on it and, finally, for always feeling really special in a way that its rivals – Cerise and London Street Brasserie – never did. It was a sort of hushed temple to gastronomy, eating there felt grown up and I loved it. As Bob Dylan once said, I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now. But I enjoyed feeling grown up, for a while.
Best of all, every summer they did a wine and cheese night where you drank wine after wine, ate from a seemingly bottomless trolley of wonderful French cheeses, ate charcuterie and remoulade and tartiflette and rolled home feeling like you lived in the best town on earth. That night, at least, you did.
7. Chef Stevie’s Caribbean Kitchen at the Butler (closed August 2022)
Although Chef Stevie was at the Butler for little over a year, it was a very happy year that just about spanned two summers for Reading residents. With that sunlit courtyard and benches out back and a menu equally full of sunlight – excellent dumplings, rich goat curry, deep, delicious jerk chicken and macaroni pie – it was a return to pop-ups, and the first significant collaboration between a pub and a chef since before the pandemic.
I was really sorry to see it go, but it happened gradually. First they announced they wouldn’t be cooking some nights, then a couple of times I wandered over only to find that Chef Stevie wasn’t in the building. And then, last summer, he announced that he was moving on. He left to cook at a water park in Windsor, only for it to close shortly after in tragic circumstances.
I sincerely hope that we haven’t seen the last of Chef Stevie in Reading, but even if we have we’ll always have those two summers, sitting just off Chatham Street bathing in the sunshine, a cold pint of Neck Oil glowing on the table, jerk chicken on the way.
6. I Love Paella at the Fisherman’s Cottage (closed July 2018)
I’ve already written about I Love Paella as one of Reading’s most influential restaurants of the decade, but its departure was also a hugely sad event which deprived Reading of one of its most special places, especially in terms of al fresco dining.
As a venue, the Fisherman’s Cottage really had it all with I Love Paella in the kitchen. Brilliant outside space, a lovely dining room with light flooding in from the conservatory roof, an excellent range of craft beer and, the thing that brought it together, Enric and Edgar’s outstanding food.
Whether it was those almost-legendary salt cod churros, empanadas of every stripe, a beautiful salad festooned with hot grilled chicken, goats cheese caramelised and served with a smudge of tomato jam, pretty much everything they did was fantastic. They served flamenquin once, the Cordoban speciality of breaded, deep-fried pork loin stuffed with ham and cheese, and it was like an instant plane ticket to Andalusia.
And, of course, there was the paella. I’ve never forgotten how beautiful it was, but you could easily eat it and forget that other main courses even existed. In I Love Paella’s early days they had served individual portions of not-quite-paella, but this was the real deal – a huge pan of the stuff, plenty of chicken thighs on top and, underneath, the socarrat – the word for that crispy, toasted rice at the bottom of the paella pan, all concentrated flavour, the very best bit of one of the very best dishes Reading had to offer.
When I Love Paella left the Fisherman’s Cottage I got all kind of grief for being vocal about it on social media. I don’t want to go through all of that again, so let’s just say it was a shame that they left at such short notice. The Fisherman’s Cottage brought in a new team, and put together a menu which looked very similar, but they couldn’t recapture that lightning in a bottle (the pub is now under new ownership). It’s a shame. But it was good while it lasted.
5. Buon Appetito (closed April 2023)
This is most recent closure on my list, which means it’s still a little raw. Buon Appetito closed without ever making an official announcement, and customers turned up to bookings to find the place shut, lights off. I think they still haven’t formally confirmed that they’re shut, or why that happened. Rumours have swirled around, as they do.
But it’s such a sad loss. When I wrote various features about Reading restaurants – the best place to eat solo, the best place to eat al fresco, who did Reading’s best pizza – Buon Appetito came up again and again. Now, I wouldn’t for a minute say that Buon Appetito did the best food Reading has ever seen. There’s only so good pizza can be, after all, although I still remember their amazing pistachio tiramisu.
But Buon Appetito understood how to make a restaurant great. Have a wonderful outside space where you can bask in summer and be warmed by heaters on the winter. Serve a reliable menu and a mean Aperol Spritz. Play fun music, and have warm, personable people looking after you who seem to genuinely care whether you have a good time.
These might all sound like basics, and they should be, but when they all properly come together, as they did for Buon Appetito, the end result can be something magical. Restaurants are only partly about the food, you know. They’re really about the experience, and how everything combines to make that experience special. Buon Appetito, like the restaurant that tops this list, truly understood that.
I know the way this list is written makes it sound like I’m up on the mountain handing down tablets of stone, but it is of course a personal list and my placing of these restaurants reflects my experiences. I had many sunny evenings out on that terrace drinking spritzes and eating Neapolitan pizzas, nowhere to be and nothing to do the next day. But the meal there I really remember was in the dead of winter, at the start of last year.
Zoë was admitted to the Royal Berks just before Christmas 2021 with Covid, after struggling with the virus for a week. She was in there for four nights, and I couldn’t visit her. She didn’t have the breath to speak so we would have FaceTime calls where I rattled on and she nodded, wan and exhausted, until I had tired her out. Some people clam up when they’re frightened but not me: you can’t shut me up.
Every day I dropped a little care package with the nurses and went home to watch Game Of Thrones, hoping it would take my mind off it. It was a time I don’t care to remember. And then she was discharged, on a lot of medication, and a slow period of convalescence began. It was weeks before she was even up to going for a walk again.
And when she was, in mid January, Buon Appetito was the first place we visited. It was cold, but the heaters were on outside and we had a pizza each and all in all it was a truly magnificent meal. If the staff thought we were mad to eat outside at the beginning of the year, they were too lovely to let on and that meal was the first time things had felt normal in a very long time. I’ll always love them for that.
4. Mya Lacarte (closed May 2017)
Last week I wrote a piece about the restaurants that changed Reading the most in the ten years that I’ve been writing this blog. Mya Lacarte was probably the most influential restaurant of the previous ten years, and although I never reviewed it – they knew who I was, and I wrote something for their website, back in the day – it was still very much a force for good when I first started blogging in 2013.
When it opened, in that spot where Papa Gee is now, Reading had seen nothing at all like it. Almost the perfect neighbourhood restaurant, with an emphasis – real, not fake – on local ingredients and a true star in the kitchen in the shape of French chef Remy Joly. It had a dream team in service – co-owner Matt Siadatan and Alex Darke running front of house, both alumni of London Street Brasserie (the most influential restaurant of the decade before that).
It felt like a little bit of Brighton had been planted in Caversham, and it flourished. They had a mailing list, and if you were on it you were invited to their seasonal tasting nights, where you got to sample all the wonders that were about to be added to the menu. And those were just wonderful nights, when everything came together and that corner plot was a beacon of warmth and hospitality and you felt like a member of the best club on earth.
The food was always exemplary and often imaginative. I still remember a dish that was simply tomato presented different ways: I think it included a consommé and a sorbet, and it was one of those things you eat and remember for years. Mya was the first place I tried sweetbreads. I’d never instinctively trusted a kitchen like that before, but with Mya I would have let them serve me anything.
Like Forbury’s, its final years weren’t its best: the restaurant changed hands in 2016 and closed the following year. By that stage there was little left of the extraordinary comet that blazed across the sky of Reading’s food scene. Siadatan went on to run Thames Lido when it first opened, I think Darke worked there too. Reading had good restaurants after Mya, but much as I love many of them, we’ve never quite seen its like again.
A lovely postscript to this is that Mya lives on in more than memories. When I went to hot new Bristol restaurant Cor at the start of the year I raved about it. A little while later I got a mail from Siadatan telling me that he in turn had received an email from the head chef at Cor saying how happy she was with the review. She started out, it turns out, working for him at Mya all those years ago. Small world.
3. Kyrenia (closed January 2016)
We lost Kyrenia in stages, in the weirdest way. First it was bought, and became Ketty’s Taste Of Cyprus (the new owner, Ketty, is not Cypriot by the way). But the menus still said Kyrenia, and so did the sign on the restaurant. Then the menus started to change. And then their brilliant front of house, a kind chap called Ihor with a splendid moustache, left and that was that. Nothing was left of the restaurant I loved. Eventually they changed the name again, to Spitiko, and for all I know it might be decent: I should go back.
But Kyrenia, back when it was Kyrenia, was a superb restaurant. Tasteful and restrained inside, just packed enough to be cosy without being oppressive, it was my favourite restaurant for many, many years. I celebrated my thirtieth birthday there – in fact, I celebrated many birthdays there. I also celebrated Fridays there and Saturdays there. And if I had nothing to celebrate I’d just go there anyway and celebrate Kyrenia being Kyrenia. With a bottle of Greek red open, Ihor working his magic and a buzz developing, there was a time in Reading when there was no better place to be.
The food was always the same and always excellent – and if it’s always excellent, you don’t mind it being the same. I nearly always ordered the mezze – this restaurant was equally perfect for pairs and big groups – and if I close my eyes I can still imagine their beetroot salad, or that sensation of almost burning my fingertips on pita fresh out of the oven, waiting to be plunged into taramasalata or tzatziki.
I always told people not to fill up on the bread because you had to save space for the kleftiko, the most phenomenal lamb, cooked until it fell off the bone, a mixture of char, caramelisation, softness and perfectly rendered fat. I always ignored my own advice, but managed to fit in the kleftiko anyway. And I always made it difficult for myself by also making sure I had some octopus. Nobody had ever cooked octopus quite as well as Kyrenia, and I wonder if anybody ever will.
Writing this piece has been like composing a series of postcards from the past. I’ve loved everywhere on this list, but if you gave me a Tardis and said I could head back to any of them for one last meal, I would be sorely tempted to choose Kyrenia, just so I can remember how it was at the very height of its powers.
2. Tutti Frutti (closed October 2017)
Zoë, who has listened to me putting this list together, thinks I’m nuts to have Tutti Frutti so high up on it. “It was just a café in the station” she says. Well, she’s rarely wrong but this time she is: Tutti Frutti was so much more than that.
I really hate the phrase “if you know, you know”. It drips with smug. It often means I know and you don’t, and is usually weapons grade subtweeting accompanying an image of somewhere somebody has eaten, all coy, not telling you where the fuck it is. It always has a hint of gatekeeping about it, to me. Fuck that. I on the other hand made it my business, back in the day, to tell everybody about Tutti Frutti.
To have an independent café in the station, when everything else was run by Compass Group, felt rare enough. That it did fantastic coffee with top notch, full fat, unhomogenised milk was even better. Then add on their regularly changing range of ice cream, made with the same great ingredients, on the premises and you have something truly special.
And that’s not all. They also made a mean sandwich, the kind I would make if I was any good at it (which I’m not). And inspired by ice cream cafés in Australia, where the owners used to live, they were open until ten so you could sit there in the station, have a post dinner ice cream and watch the world go by. I’ve said it before, but there was something Edward Hopperesque about that. Factor all of that in and Tutti Frutti started to look even more exceptional.
That’s before we get to the service. Run by married couple Paul and Jane Stockley and a staff of personable bright young things, it was never anything short of brilliant. Paul in particular was the kind of old-school shopkeeper who could have stepped off the set of Mr Ben, always aproned, always calling customers sir and madam.
He could be a martinet to his staff, but I loved him and his quirky little cafe. I commuted to work every day then – so last decade – and a morning that didn’t start with a latte from Paul was a bleak morning. And a fair few days finished with an ice cream. His peach and amaretto was a dream, the Kinder Bueno was equally fabulous. I managed to talk Paul into making a Barkham Blue ice cream and he tried to do it a couple of times, although he never quite got it right.
I went on holiday in October 2017 and, as I always did when going on holiday, I stopped at Tutti Frutti to pick up a latte for the RailAir. It was their last day open: the next day I started to get reports that they had closed, just like that. Nobody ever got to say goodbye.
From what I heard, it was a dispute with Great Western who run Reading Station. They put a generic hoarding up saying a new business would be in that spot soon, six years later the site is still vacant. Their greed robbed us of a wonderful business – I just hope that for them, as for the landlord of the last place on my list, it was worth it.
1. Dolce Vita (closed June 2018)
As I said when I was talking about Buon Appetito, the best restaurants are not about food, although you should always be able to get decent food at a great restaurant. The place Buon Appetito always reminded me of was Dolce Vita, very much its spiritual forebear, and Dolce Vita was a truly great restaurant where the food was almost the least remarkable thing about it.
That’s not to say it didn’t serve good dishes, because it did. Ironically Dolce Vita’s pizza and pasta were its weakest offerings but some of its dishes, like its saltimbocca or monkfish with squid ink pasta, could stand up to any dish in Reading at the time. But I sometimes felt Dolce Vita, with its Greek owner, Greek chef and Greek staff, was a Greek restaurant masquerading as an Italian one. And whenever there was anything even remotely Greek-looking on their specials menu, like glorious courgette fritters, you were well advised to order it.
It was the staff and the welcome at Dolce Vita that made it incredible, though. Yes, the room was a big and handsome one, with gorgeous sturdy tables and some outside space that was heavenly in the summer. And yes, the drinks list was always decent – although I think it’s a sign of how much I loved Dolce Vita that I could overlook them stocking Peroni. But yes, the thing that Dolce Vita achieved in this town that has never quite been equalled was the quality of its staff.
It is a rare achievement for a restaurant to make you feel like friends are cooking for you in their home, but somehow Dolce Vita managed that time after time. It became a second home for me, for a while, and it never felt weird to go and eat there instead of shuffling home and cobbling something together from the contents of the fridge.
When Dolce Vita closed, it completely came out of the blue. It was impossible to imagine Reading without it, but their landlord (John Sykes, in case you hadn’t guessed) tried to hike the rent and they very firmly said no thank you and called it a day. For a while their sister restaurant in Wokingham carried on – I’m sad I never went – and then it closed too.
How much money would Sykes have made in rent if he had left Dolce Vita alone? I don’t know. But I can tell you how much money in rent he’s made on that site since: zero pounds and zero pence. It must be tough being as amazing with money as John Sykes.
But Dolce Vita does live on, in Reading. It was one hell of a finishing school for Reading hospitality – Maria and Nas went on to start C.U.P., and although they moved to Bristol their two Reading branches are doing brilliantly. Kostas and Alex moved back to Greece.
And Paul ran Pho for a while and is now working at Veeno. You can see him outside, on a summer afternoon, charming and chivvying people on to their packed terrace. It’s no coincidence that Veeno seems an awful lot busier, since his arrival there. That I can remember the first names of all the people who looked after me on my many visits to Dolce Vita really does tell you something. It was that sort of place, and not many places are that sort of place.
But Dolce Vita lives on, too, in the minds of all the people who went there. Sometimes I’ll get talking about them at a readers’ lunch with someone who loved the place as much as I did and we’ll always share enthusiasms, stop for a second, sigh, and say “there was a restaurant”. When I was deciding how to rank these, Zoë had some sage advice. “The place you’ve talked about most since we got together is Dolce Vita” she would tell me. And she’s right. If I think about it for a minute I am transported to their balcony with a glass of white wine, good friends around me and my starter on the way. I know you can never go back but really, there was a restaurant.
Edible Reading 