Restaurant review: Django’s Smokehouse, Didcot

On October 23, 2026October 23, 2026 By ediblereadingIn Reviews2 Comments

Right, let’s hear it: did any of you have Didcot in the sweepstake? Thought not, which means that the jackpot rolls over for another week. Same time next Friday?

So yes, a curveball. A review from Didcot today. And I know that the obvious response from many of you will be why Didcot? To which I would answer, Why not? After all, it’s a mere thirteen minutes from Reading on regular fast trains, making it as easily accessible as the likes of Wokingham, and Maidenhead – both of which have featured on this blog more than once – and far easier to get to than Henley or Oxford.

I know that many people have bought tickets to Didcot Parkway without ever alighting to the platform, because it’s nothing if not a sweet spot for split ticketing, but who among us has ever ended our journey there and had a look around? But it would be worth it if Didcot was harbouring a terrific restaurant that justified an expedition, so the real question isn’t Why Didcot? but Is Django’s Smokehouse such a restaurant?

Django’s Smokehouse has a curious origin story. The building was the home of a Chinese restaurant called Chopsticks for over 20 years, and when Chopsticks’ owner tried to hand the business over to her son, 26-year-old Andy Lai, he decided that he wanted to turn it into a smokehouse. The idea had marinated with him throughout lockdown, and in 2022 Django’s Smokehouse opened its doors.

You could say it was a risk, but Lai was convinced he was on to something. Didcot was on the up, he thought – “in five years’ time people won’t recognise Didcot”, he said – and his experience of food festivals made him think that American barbecue was just the thing to fuel the town’s ascent. And he might have had a point, because this summer Django’s won Best International Restaurant at the 2026 Ox In A Box Awards, beating a very accomplished field including Oxford heavyweights Spiced Roots and Antep Kitchen, both of which I’ve reviewed.

Now, those awards are voted for by the public, and I’ve always been a little sceptical of those – I’m thinking of the massive annual data gathering exercise conducted by Prosecco-gargling permagrifters Muddy Stilettos here – but the fact remains that these particular awards receive tens of thousands of votes, and for a relatively unsung spot in Didcot of all places, which hasn’t even been reviewed by the local media, to come out on top points to a devoted fan following. It was enough for me, so on a cold and muggy Tuesday night I hopped on a train to Didcot, my unsplit ticket in my Apple Wallet.

I had no idea what the centre of Didcot would be like, and having now visited I consider myself none the wiser. The stroll from the train station into town felt strangely disconnected from civilisation and then suddenly I found myself walking along the perimeter of the Orchard Centre, Didcot’s answer to the Lexicon or the Westgate. The Christmas illuminations were up but unlit on Orchard Street, the pubs were done up for Halloween: retail and hospitality, I find, are annoyingly good at making you realise the year is drawing to a close.

Everything I passed made for a strange hotchpotch: a massive Cineworld and the swanky arts centre on one side of the road (it closes at 8.30pm), the biggest branch of Boswell’s I’ve ever seen and a very upmarket-looking outpost of Crispy Dosa on the other with, just after it, a colossal Ladbroke’s. It seemed as if all the buildings were on shuffle, and rounding the corner to approach Django’s Smokehouse I had to walk past a sizeable branch of PureGym. That felt like trolling, every bit as much as watching people take their driving lessons on the street where I live.

The welcome inside was warm and immediate, and made me feel less ridiculous about my pre-reserved table for one. It’s a big restaurant, when it needs to be: 150 covers across two floors, with a big dining room out back and another upstairs. The wall of the back room displayed Polaroids of customers who’ve passed and failed the restaurant’s “Danger Wings” challenge: Django’s website has a similar gallery for another of its eating challenges, featuring people who have gamely agreed for the restaurant to capture their attempts to clear their plates – successfully or less so – for posterity.

But on a Tuesday night, that shrunk down to the homely. All the customers there during my visit were in the front room, which was a surprisingly agreeable place to be. I was seated in the window looking in, at a table bigger than I needed, but there was a cosy and likeable feel to it. The cobwebs were up for spooky season, their award was proudly on display and menus advertised a Halloween bottomless brunch and “brisket for Christmas”. I liked it there, although that cosiness dissipated somewhat when a Deliveroo driver came in and the door behind him took ages to close.

That evening my company was a couple of tables for two and another lone diner, also with a reservation. I wonder if she was writing a blog, too. And like I said, service was just pitch perfect from beginning to end: I have a soft spot for anybody who calls me “lovely” and refuses to judge an order which verges on conspicuous consumption. They didn’t win that award for nothing, that’s for sure.

Django’s menu had something for everyone who is not vegetarian or vegan: half a dozen well-chosen starters and then an onslaught of smoked meats – five different kinds, although if you’re in a group you can mix things up with a sharing platter. There were also loaded fries, as seen all over TikTok all the bloody time, and, on the other side of the menu, a small selection of burgers: I’m not sure why you’d have a burger at a smokehouse, but I guess it takes all sorts. Prices were decent, too. Starters mostly came in under a tenner and only two of the main courses – the wagyu beef brisket and the beef short rib – would set you back over £20.

There was also a small specials menu featuring, among the smoked pigs in blankets and truffled macaroni cheese, a queasiness-inducing quadruple smashed burger, which sounds like the kind of thing Shaggy and Scooby eat halfway through not contributing to solving the mystery, high as a kite. There were only a couple of meat-free options, and the server told me that after a run at the weekend the restaurant was out of smoked barbecued jackfruit: I won’t insult your intelligence by pretending I’d have ordered it, otherwise.

No power on earth would have stopped me, though, from kicking off with some frickles. I’ve had frickles in many places, and they often fail by being too big, too sparsely battered, too watery. Django’s were an absolute treat: little tart bombs, ticking away in a light and brittle batter, waiting to detonate. I liked the sweet mustard dip they came with, but to be honest I’d have been happy with them on their own. I’d have been happy with them on their own twice, for that matter.

They were easily their money at £7.50 if you like pickles, and fried food, and I am fortunate enough to love both. Django’s menu is a little amorphous in the sense that a lot of the starters would work as sides and vice versa, but these were probably a genre apart even from that – the ideal beer snack. I wish something like this was available in pubs across Reading, or even just one pub, actually. I’d make it worth their while.

On that note it’s worth saying that Django’s serves wine and some good-looking cocktails but its beers on tap, classic Americana, are Budweiser and a sessionable IPA from Goose Island. Context is everything: if I’d ordered that IPA in a pub I’d have found it thin and middling, but when you need something to zhuzh up a palate being continually coated with glorious fat, over and over again, its lemony effervescence was, by accident or design, a super choice.

The pork belly burnt ends were less successful. Huge hunks of meat, striated like sandstone, they looked like they’d turn out to be a highlight of my month. But sometimes appearances can be deceiving, and I wanted these to be more fun to eat than they were. The meat lacked give, required the punctuation of those thick layers of fat to make a satisfactory whole. But what they really needed was to be glossy with sauce, something to offset and augment, and instead they had a thin drizzle.

Not only that, but a thin drizzle of something subtle, when this is not a cuisine that calls for or rewards subtlety. The menu says that it comes with gochujang aioli, and leaving aside for one moment the fact that gochujang aioli isn’t a thing that needs to exist, what little sauce there was managed not to taste of either. The menu calls these sticky, which is the last thing they were, and it’s a shame. I’d have loved them to just be smothered in gochujang, come to think of it, and authenticity be damned.

I seem to have ordered pork belly bites, or something like it, a few times this year on duty, but never has the gulf between potential and achievement been so difficult to bridge. You can also have the burnt ends as a main – see what I mean about that amorphous menu? – but if you go to Django’s, I’d advise against it.

But I was not unhappy. My seat was comfy, my beer was cold, my people-watching was up to scratch. A couple of regulars came in who had clearly reached the point of befriending the staff, and a little genuine warmth in a restaurant goes a long way. I was on to another half of that IPA, and whoever was in charge of the music was trying to appeal to has-beens like me: Everybody (Backstreet’s Back); Zombie; it was like Gen X FM had taken over the turntable, or I was back in the Bull and Chequers in Woodley as a callow 23-year-old, at the mercy of whoever had stuck a few quid in the jukebox.

The server had done that winning thing where I’d asked her for recommendations and she’d suggested the thing I was tempted to order, the flipside of the phenomenon where you pick something and they say “oh, good choice”. So the slow-smoked 7 hour beef short rib was her idea and mine: the menu even has an asterisk next to that dish, denoting one of the restaurant’s favourite dishes. If I didn’t like it, perhaps it would reflect on all of us.

And it was so huge, and so almost good, and so very huge. I quite liked it, possibly because God loves a trier and it nearly worked. It was a colossal piece of meat and yes, it did sort of slide off the bone. It had a black pepper rub, and a George Hamilton tan, and it didn’t take much for a fork to shred it nicely. I could see why people would love this, because I came close to loving it myself.

But the beef managed not to entirely be to my taste, in a few ways that may have been particular to me. The bits that were dry were a little too dry, not sauced enough, an issue I’d also encountered with the burnt ends. The server nicely brought me some of the restaurant’s own barbecue sauce, and it was very good, but the beef needed it I thought. And then there was the fat, which for me wasn’t rendered enough. It reminded me of the times I’ve eaten an undercooked beef cheek, and there in its core, not melted down, I’ve found a gooey blob of fat like the end product of a messy sneeze.

I know some people love beef fat, almost certainly love it more than I do, and this mightn’t be a deal breaker for many of you, but it slightly deterred me. I know that the comparison might be superficial at best, but I thought of the short rib curry that the Moderation serves, or the short rib dish on the menu at Clay’s, and I wanted this dish to live up to that potential. Not comparing apples with apples, or even beef with beef: different cooking methods, different ethoses, all that jazz, but it didn’t quite hit the spot for me. It wouldn’t put me off trying other things at Django’s, but at £28 I wanted this to be a knockout.

Still, the fries were excellent – especially after my hideous experience last week – and Django’s coleslaw, with plenty of red cabbage and a dressing that tasted more like a vinaigrette, was very enjoyable. I would have liked some pickles on the side to lend acidity but I can eat pickles pretty much any time, so I would say that.

I would have ordered some sides, but I figured I’d asked for quite enough food as it was. Besides, a lot of the sides looked as if they might be bought in: my server confirmed that the popcorn chicken was, and stuff like the mozzarella sticks sounded more Iceland than Kansas City.

The friendly chatter between the servers and their regulars meant it felt like it took a while to get my bill, but I didn’t mind. It was nice, on a cold and inhospitable night, to sip my beer a little longer and postpone the drab walk back to the station: I couldn’t find anywhere in Didcot to have a good pre-train pint anyway, as the Town That Untappd Forgot.

Eventually, during a break in their conversation, I asked if I could settle up. “I was just about to come check on you” my server said, and I honestly believed her. My food and drink – and make no mistake, I left that restaurant full – came to just over £62, including a 12.5% service charge.

While I was sitting there, in no particular hurry, I wondered whether the owner was right that Didcot would be unrecognisable in five years. He only had another year for that prophecy to come true, after all, and I guess when he said that he probably had no idea just how challenging those five years would be for all of us. People who open restaurants are dreamers, but if it wasn’t for their reckless, sometimes poorly-researched dreams, towns and cities across the U.K. would be infinitely poorer.

That was definitely true of Reading, but I reckoned it was true of Didcot too: I mean, I’d now spent about two hours there and I unilaterally decided that qualified me as an expert.

So is Didcot worth going to, just to eat at Django’s Smokehouse? You’ll have your own view on that from what you’ve read but if you want to hear mine, the answer is: kind of. I wanted to like Django’s very much indeed, and parts of it I really did. The menu is admirable and interesting, the service is a shining credit to them.

I wish I could have unconditionally adored the food. I wish I’d been able to say “this took me back to when Blue’s Smokehouse opened in Bracknell”, or “if you miss Bluegrass BBQ this is the place for you” or even “close your eyes and you could almost be in Copenhagen, at Warpigs”. I can’t quite say any of those things, but that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t charmed in a quieter, less performative manner.

So yes, if you like barbecue, or you’re in the area, or you have a split ticket and feel like living dangerously, Django’s is ten minutes and a world away from the station. Is it the best restaurant in Didcot? I’m not sure about that. I have always revered Zigana Turkish Kitchen, slightly further out, a spot where you smell the charcoal a block before you reach the front door, where the Efe is cold and eating the lamb chops for the first time verges on an epiphany. And yet, for some reason, I’ve never reviewed it. So that’s settled, then: next time I’m in Didcot I will go there. Maybe you’ll win the sweepstake, that week.

Django’s Smokehouse – 7.3
126 Broadway, Didcot, OX11 8AB
01235 813333

https://djangossmokehouse.co.uk

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Restaurant review: M’s Smokehouse

On April 17, 2026October 27, 2026 By ediblereadingIn Reviews1 Comment

As of October 2026, M’s Smokehouse appears to have closed. I’ve left the review up for posterity.

I’ve talked about this before, but it helps when you’re writing a restaurant review to have some kind of hook, some reason why you decided, this week of all weeks, to check that particular venue out. Canny restaurants make that easy by having something about them, whether it’s in their branding, their social media or their USP – or, in London, by having a well-connected chef or owner.

Big chain opens a branch in a prime location on the ground floor of one of Reading’s most iconic buildings, for instance: that’s a hook. So is Nationally acclaimed restaurant reviewer rather likes this place in Winnersh, or Is Reading’s most expensive restaurant worth the money? On the other hand, Yet another smash burger place opens in town isn’t: not unless there’s potentially something special about it.

In the case of M’s Smokehouse, which opened on the Basingstoke Road at the end of January, you’re spoiled for choice. Its Instagram describes it as the “First and Only Smokehouse in Reading”, which isn’t strictly true – remember Bluegrass BBQ? But Bluegrass closed last January, so the second half of that description is correct, for now at least. I don’t know about you, but I miss Bluegrass: a decent independent alternative in south Reading would be a find.

And there’s more. The smokehouse’s Instagram blurb also describes it as a “halal smokehouse”, and in that respect it is definitely a first: so no pulled pork or sausages, just brisket, burgers and fried chicken. Now, that kind of thing might enrage the swivel-eyed types who used to comment on my blog’s Facebook page, pretending to give a toss about animal welfare, but I thought it was worth checking it out.

The final clincher was a report from one of my readers – via Bluesky of all places – that M’s Smokehouse might be a different beast to the likes of Mr T, Smoke & Pepper, Grilla Kitchen and all those other attempts at viral status. “It was awesome,” my reader said. “I also had a lovely chat with the people running it about how smoking meat well is hard.” That settled it, so on a Monday evening I went for a stroll to investigate.

M’s Smokehouse is at the bottom of a hill, on the same run of shops as attempted viral restaurant Kyaneez, most famous for the videos featuring its eccentric owner, tracksuited and wearing shades, leading a choir of kids in reciting his restaurant’s catchphrase like some latter-day Pied Piper of Hamelin. On a Monday night the difference between Instagram and reality was stark, and Kyaneez was like the Marie Celeste, with no takers for its £10.99 “Munchy Box” or its pizza that claims to be 100% fresh, where the base looks like it’s 100% fresh out of some packaging.

Not that M’s Smokehouse was any busier when I got there. Two tables were occupied, one by what appeared to be a mother and son, laptop out while she had a long argument, on the phone, with her doctor’s surgery about a prescription. The other had a Deliveroo driver at it. It wasn’t clear that either table had anything to do with the restaurant’s food: I’m pretty sure the Deliveroo driver was waiting to pick something up from the big Morrisons down the road.

And the room looked – well, it looked like they’d opened in a hurry. Forbidding dark grey walls, pale wood panelling and tables, industrial lighting. It didn’t look like a place to linger and enjoy, although the seats were comfy. It felt like a place where you might wait to collect a Deliveroo order.

A pale wood clock, not adjusted yet for British Summer Time, was the only adornment on one wall. On the other, large letters spelled out mEAT AT M’s, a strange mix of upper and lower case, in the kind of Tolkienesque font last seen on a prog LP cover 50 years ago. Often with the design of a dining room, even if it’s not my thing, I can say “I see what they’re trying to do here” but in this case, really, I didn’t have a clue.

There were no menus on the tables and another weird feature of the layout was that you had to go up to the counter, through a little corridor, to place your order. Again, that created a feeling of disconnection: normally you can see the counter from where you’re sitting and the staff can see you. Without that, the space at the front felt even less like a dining room and more like a waiting room.

Anyway, the menu was compact in the way that always inspires confidence. Just the six burgers, featuring fried chicken, grilled chicken, smashed burgers and the smokehouse’s signature 12 hour smoked brisket, with prices ranging from £8 for a single smashed burger to £16 for the works, with both burger and brisket.

Fries cost extra, and you could either have them as they came or loaded with brisket, fried chicken and so on. Pricing again was a little variable – so, say, you would pay £2.99 for a large fries but to have one loaded with brisket would cost you £13.99.

The only way I could find to benchmark, really, was to compare the cost of a double smash burger with fries to Honest, and on that basis M’s Smokehouse is ever so slightly cheaper. But it doesn’t serve booze and you can’t stick bacon in it, so horses for courses.

I was having trouble deciding, and the very nice lady behind the counter confirmed that all the burgers and sauces are made onsite, along with the brisket. I was torn between trying the burgers and the brisket so she pointed me to “M’s Signature”, which combines the two. That, some loaded fries and an orange Fanta set me back just under £30, including a 12.5% service charge. And about ten minutes later a chap who I suspect was the chef came out with a little wooden dish containing three sauces.

“That’s our signature sauce” he said, pointing to the one on the left. “And that’s our home-made garlic sauce. And that” – he gestured at the cherry-red one in the middle – “is kind of our take on a Louisiana hot sauce. You don’t have to use much of that one, it’s pretty strong. Although I’m saying that, and I’m a bit of a wuss at Nando’s.”

I got that feeling I get in restaurants when I talk to someone who knows what they’re talking about and cares what they do, the intangible inkling that it would all be okay. So I sat back and waited for my food to arrive. The Deliveroo driver skidaddled to go and get somebody else’s shopping, the argument with the doctor’s surgery continued interminably. Two chaps, clearly regulars, came in and took a table in the opposite corner. That was all the custom M’s Smokehouse was getting that evening, it seemed.

I thought to myself that Mondays, in hospitality, must be the slowest of all possible days: no wonder so many places took it off. Then I remembered that M’s Smokehouse is open, on paper at least, eleven hours a day, seven days a week. And that brought me up short, thinking of the punishing schedule small businesses take on and how, ultimately, I was judging décor and mentally correcting an incorrect clock while sitting in somebody’s dream. I said a little silent prayer, one I’ve uttered many times in the last twelve years: please let the food transcend the room.

Fifteen minutes later, it was answered.

I’d chosen the fries loaded with Nashville chicken, and to say it was enjoyable would have been an understatement. The fries themselves were skin-on and pleasingly irregular. I had a suspicion that they were home made, or at least I was ready to give them the benefit of the doubt: I subsequently discovered, through the restaurant’s TikTok of all places, that they do indeed make them themselves.

They were perhaps ever so slightly wan and limp, partly because they could have stood to be a tiny bit hotter, and partly because they were irregularly slathered in the house sauce, along with cheese that needed more of a chance to melt. Jalapeños added some crunch and piquancy and a very decent coleslaw was served, Sally Albright-style, on the side; so different from my experience at Smoke & Pepper where they dumped the coleslaw on top of the fries, to pad them out.

But the real hit was the Nashville fried chicken. I expected this to be a single fillet fried and cut into strips, but instead it was nugget after nugget after nugget, a riot of crispy, fiery fun. The whole thing might have seemed a tiny bit slapdash on camera, but it was a positive party on the tray. I checked my bill again, because I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. £7.99 and not a penny more. I think you’d struggle to spend that money with as impressive returns a few doors down at Kyaneez, in town at Smoke & Pepper or anywhere else that’s guilty of the twenty-first century crime of attempted virality.

This also gave me a chance to dip a few unscathed chips in the other sauces. For my money, the house sauce was maybe the weakest of them: I liked the garlic one fine, but that Louisiana hot sauce was the winner. If it was up to me, which clearly it isn’t, you’d be able to pick which one adorned your loaded fries, rather than having the default of a couple of whopping splodges of the house. But these are all quibbles: the bottom line is that I’m not, generally speaking, the target market for fries loaded with anything but salt and vinegar, and I really liked these.

And then there was my burger, tightly wrapped in foil and waiting for me to declare myself ready to eat it. This, again, was a corker. I don’t think eating a smash burger that’s topped with brisket gives you the best chance to assess the patty – I must try them as nature intended at some point – but I liked the patty even so. The brisket, though, was cracking stuff, crammed in, in tender strands with a good whiff of smoke.

I thought, by comparison, about the smoked lamb sandwich I’d eaten at Smoke & Pepper – they keep cropping up, I’m afraid, because they were so underwhelming – and in terms of quality and integrity this knocked the town centre venue’s efforts into a cocked hat. Best place for them, probably. Judicious use of gherkins and a beaut of a sticky barbecue sauce completed what was, by any standards, a relatively epic sandwich.

Well, almost, anyway. I would say that this burger – the Signature, according to the menu – was right at the outer limits of value at £16, before you even get round to ordering fries. But that’s where M’s Smokehouse’s menu needs a little ironing out, I think. This dish is a single burger with brisket if you eat it in the restaurant, whereas if you order from M’s Smokehouse on delivery apps, they offer something called The General Burger which is also £16 but throws in two smashed patties instead of one.

In that sense, the pricing still needs a bit of levelling and consistency: I wound up thinking my fries were an absolute steal, my burger perhaps less so. Did I mind the size of my bill across the two, on balance? Not one bit.

When my tray was taken away I told my server how much I’d enjoyed it and they told me the restaurant had been trading a couple of months. I asked how business was going, as I always do, and got a comme ci, comme ça kind of response. “We need the word to get out” they said, and I promised to leave a review on Google, as I also always do, even though it was something of a half-truth. After that I realised there was a number 6 bus coming past in a few minutes and, to my shame, I decided to grab it rather than schlep back up that hill. In my defence, I’d got my steps in already.

The good news is that everything that’s wrong with M’s Smokehouse is fixable. The room can get more ambiance over time, the influx of customers it deserves will do a lot to remove that feeling of being in a waiting room. The wrinkles can be taken out of the slightly erratic pricing and elusive nature of the menu. They can adjust that clock: I’m sure they have by now.

Most importantly, the owners need to find a way to bridge that gap between the space where you eat and the space where you order, because that disconnect is one of the biggest drawbacks as it stands. Both the owners (or servers, or what have you) I spoke to were brilliant, friendly and great ambassadors for what the restaurant is trying to do. But if they’re in a totally different room to you for the majority of your experience, they are missing a trick in a big way.

Because food is about telling stories, and M’s Smokehouse, I sense, has a good story to tell. It just needs to do more to tell it. In that sense it reminds me of places like Dough Bros and Stop & Taste, places that have justly earned local fame by doing things really well and giving a shit, rather than by larking around on TikTok or dishing out free scran. I would love to see M’s Smokehouse take off, and as they’re gladly not that far from my house I will do my best to help out.

And that’s the other thing: everything a restaurant really does have to get right – the things that are harder to fix as you go along – M’s Smokehouse pretty much nails. The brisket was great, the burger was profoundly decent, the sauces showed skill and care. The loaded fries made me very happy indeed. I didn’t miss pulled pork or bacon one little bit, and I think only a diehard Islamophobe – sorry, I mean animal rights activist – would.

I’ve already tried to talk Zoë into those loaded fries twice since I started writing this review, to no avail: she’s in one of those carb-free moods right now. But I have an evening to myself this week, and I already know where I’ll go.

M’s Smokehouse – 7.6
93-95 Basingstoke Road, Reading, RG2 0HA
0118 3044101

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Bluegrass BBQ

On January 22, 2016January 22, 2025 By ediblereadingIn Reviews7 Comments

Bluegrass went into administration in January 2025. I’ve left the review up for posterity.

As regular readers may remember I have a long-standing policy of not reviewing restaurants in their first month, of giving them time to bed in and settle down. Bluegrass tested my resolve more than most, being that rare thing, a new independent restaurant in the town centre. Unable to stay away, I did try to visit before Christmas only to be told – on a weekday lunchtime, no less – that the waiting time was forty-five minutes. To be honest, I just laughed and left: no-reservations restaurants are a bad enough habit to import from London, but once people are queuing round the block for American barbecue we’ve surely got everything bad about dining in the capital without any of the redeeming features.

So I’ve been sitting on my hands for a month, dying to visit on duty and having to wait while the other reviews came in. They were a mixed bag; people seemed to like the food, but a lot of people really didn’t like the experience of eating at Bluegrass. In particular, their policy of making you order at the bar came in for a lot of criticism. I was a bit surprised by this – I’d have thought eating in pubs and, for that matter, Nando’s would have got people used to this, but it seemed not. Despite that, it was voted Reading’s new restaurant of the year despite having only been open for three weeks of 2015 (on a shortlist, to be fair, which didn’t include Bakery House). So I wasn’t at all sure what to expect when I went there one evening hoping it would be quiet and looking forward to making up my own mind.

They’ve done a good job of renovating the old Gurkha Square site (which I never really liked – there was always a smell wafting from it when I went past which was somehow more Pedigree Chum than haute cuisine) and inside it’s made up of lots of different little rooms across about three floors, as well as the terrace out back overlooking the Holybrook which I can imagine will be lovely come summer.

Despite this, I’m afraid I struggled to warm to the interior. The wood panelling and bar made from reclaimed planks and the old school chairs all feel a bit done before – perhaps if I’d been sat at one of the banquettes I’d have felt more kindly disposed, but the whole thing felt a bit clinical. Instead I was at a table with four chairs and four placemats but which felt like realistically it could only have seated two people with elbows. I wondered how much the floor plan had been influenced by margins.

The menu is all very familiar to anyone who’s been to Blue’s Smokehouse, or RYND for that matter – ribs, brisket, pulled pork and smoked chicken, along with a range of burgers and sandwiches (in fairness they also have what looks like a very interesting breakfast menu – itself probably worth a separate visit). Prices are very reasonable: the mains all hover around the ten pound mark and, the menu being what it is, it’s all about mains and sides rather than starters and mains.

I’d heard apocalyptic stories about waiting at the bar, and perhaps on a busier night it would have been horrendous, but when I went it wasn’t too bad. It’s not really set up for queuing though, as you basically have to form a line heading down into one of the dining areas, impeding passing waiting staff and customers. They also only have one till, which feels like a rather devil-may-care decision (perhaps their brisk trade will persuade them to reconsider). Service was pleasant enough but a bit on the gormless side – I had to explain to them what one of the drinks on their cocktail menu was, and they then told me the lager I’d ordered had to be changed and they’d bring my drink over. Five minutes later I went up, jogged their memory and went back to the table with a pint. Everyone was friendly but a bit aimless, as if they’d never expected the restaurant to be this popular and weren’t sure how to cope with it (which may not be a million miles from the truth).

Food came out very quickly – within ten minutes or so. Again, some people have complained about this but I think they just misunderstand what kind of restaurant Bluegrass is. Most things are already smoked and slow-cooked and are just waiting to be dished up (if anything, if it took any longer to arrive you’d be justifiably concerned). And although the meals came on the standard-issue trays I didn’t find this as annoying as usual, possibly because the trays seemed slightly bigger or probably because the paper they were lined with put up more resistance to cutlery than they sometimes can.

So, on to the food: pulled pork was really good. Very soft, cooked to the point of complete surrender, juicy and with a lightly smoked taste that was enhanced by adding a sauce. There are four different sauces on the table but we did need to ask one of the members of staff what they were because there was no description on the label or on the wipe clean placemat-menus. The Tennessee was my favourite – a sweet barbecue sauce with a Dr Pepper base that was nice to dunk a forkful of pork in.

Brisket I wasn’t so sure about – four thinnish slices which tasted better than they looked, but the bottom slice had taken marbling to the stage where the bits of recognisable meat stood out like an archipelago of flesh in a sea of fat. It might have tasted lovely all the same, but squeamishly I left some of it. The burnt ends were the pick of the bunch for me, cubes of beef cooked longer still, sticky with sauce and much more tender and appetising: I had one towards the end with some little crunchy fragments of chip and it was the best mouthful of the entire meal.

Most of the dishes come with fries and coleslaw. The fries were lovely: skin-on with some real crispiness and texture, not wan and flaccid like they can be at many places doing this kind of food. The coleslaw, though, was disappointing; I actually quite like mayo-free coleslaw but this added nothing but contrast. I wonder how many people actually finish theirs.

We shared two other sides. Barbecue pit beans – a portion I’d say was on the small side – had shreds of meat in there but overall had picked sweetness over heat, the wrong choice in my opinion. Corn on the cob, one of my favourite things in the world, was a little underwhelming – a touch overcooked, so that the individual niblets didn’t pop the way I anticipated and the advertised cinnamon in the butter was undetectable. Nice enough but (dare I say it?) Nando’s does better.

I’m sorry to say that the drinks weren’t really worth the trouble they took to order. The lager was quite nice, clean and crisp, but by the time it arrived the food was nearly upon us. The “cherry cola cooler” was a small Amaretto and coke in a jam jar. For four pounds fifty. I watched them pour some of a 330ml bottle of Coca-Cola into the jam jar and then, presumably, throw the rest away.

The general haplessness of the service continued when someone came to ask how the food was. I said it was quite good, which it was, and she put a magnetic bottle cap on the end of the table to show that we had been processed. And you do feel, in an establishment like this, like you’ve been processed rather than served. She also asked whether we wanted any water and I said we’d love a jug of tap water. She returned with a solitary glass of tap water (still, it’s the thought that counts). Actually, if it hadn’t been for the model of ordering at the bar I’d have had a glass of Malbec by then, but I guess Bluegrass has decided it’s happy to run the risk that people will order less drinks: an odd decision for somewhere which prides itself on its range of craft beers. As it was, we left – the advantage of paying up front is that you can do this quickly – and dinner for two came to thirty-five pounds, not including tip.

You’ve probably gathered by now that I wasn’t absolutely bowled over by Bluegrass. But in its defence, many of the criticisms of it are fundamentally missing the point: it’s a restaurant, Jim, but not as we know it. It is not intended to be a place where you settle in for an evening. Bluegrass is set up to have all its food ready to serve almost immediately and everything it does to channel customers is intended to guarantee a speedy turnaround. It’s a different kind of casual dining, and perhaps the shape of things to come – get people in, feed them, send them away and turn the table as many times as you can. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, not an awful lot wrong with the food and nothing wrong with going there, if that’s the kind of meal you want. But, for that reason if no other, it felt like a restaurant many may like but few will love. I still think that restaurants are all about the experience: the service, the comfort, that feeling of taking time away from your troubles (and the washing up!) while someone else looks after you and feeds you. For me, anything else is just one step up from Deliveroo.

Bluegrass BBQ – 7.1
15 Gun Street, RG1 2JR
0118 9599112

http://bluegrass-bbq.com/