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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