Tag: Caversham

Quattro

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One of the drawbacks of this gig is taking the photographs, especially when I visit a restaurant and find myself sitting in a very empty room trying to take sneaky pictures without the staff noticing (this is more of a problem in some places than others: where the service is poor you could probably get on a table and belt out I Will Survive without anybody batting an eyelid). Empty Room Syndrome happens much more often if I’m dining at quiet times, so Quattro immediately had me feeling hopeful when I rocked up on a Monday night to a bustling dining room.

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The Moderation

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Click here to see a more recent review of The Moderation, from April 2024.

One thing restaurant bloggers often get criticised for is their obsession with the new. You especially see this in London, where new restaurants open all the time. It’s partly because some bloggers get invited to soft openings (a phrase which sounds wrong – wrong on paper, wrong in my head) and partly because it’s too difficult not to in a city where there is always a new trend to embrace or a new cuisine to explore. I can understand how seductive that must be, and here in Reading I can’t help but feel a pang of envy. Reading gets a handful of new restaurants every year. Edible Reading publishes a weekly review, and if I only visited places that had just opened I’d run out of material before you’d finished your leftover turkey and broken your first resolution of 2014.

But also, I don’t believe in it. I like to give places a chance to settle down and bed in, to iron out inconsistencies, for the kitchen and the front of house to gel. I wasn’t always like that – I remember going to Brown’s just after it opened and sitting upstairs, with no natural light while the waiter stumbled over his words and my feet and my forgettable food arrived, was eaten and forgotten. It might be brilliant now, but I’ve never gone back.

On paper, this week’s review should be of the Queen’s Head, the revamped pub on Christchurch Green. It used to be called the Nob, was full of students and was skanky, scruffy and the home to a few of my disgraceful Saturday nights a long time ago. It’s just been done up by Spirit House, who also own the Warwick and the Moderation and have realised that students don’t buy food whereas the people in the gorgeous roads around Christchurch Green (I personally daydream about living on New Road) probably will. I went, and I quite enjoyed my meal, but when push came to shove, I couldn’t review it. So instead, I went to its daddy (or perhaps uncle), the Moderation, this week with a couple of friends.

The Moderation also used to be a grim boozer but you wouldn’t know that now. Refurbished, it’s a handsome building from the outside, slightly incongruous so close to the curry houses, kebab joints, little hotels and undertakers of the Caversham Road (not to mention “Papa Gee”, a strange little Italian restaurant I’ve walked past dozens of times without spotting a single diner). Inside, it was buzzing and all sorts of groups were there, from raucous parties to small gatherings of friends to what looked suspiciously like dates. We were lucky to get a table, which on a school night in a location out of town is no mean feat.

The Moderation’s menu is a funny mix of food. Indonesian, Malaysian and Thai food rubs shoulders with classic pub food, pork belly and black pudding juxtaposed with nasi goreng. I like that range, but it raises a bit of a concern too: could it be equally good at both, or was one what they truly loved and the other something they put on to attract a wider range of punters? I resolved to find out, or get uncomfortably full in the attempt.

We began with the time-honoured sharing platter of mixed starters: I know, so unimaginative. We should have picked three different dishes, and if I went again I would, but the variety was too hard to resist (looking back I’m ashamed to remember that when I reviewed the Warwick, the Moderation’s sister pub, I also went for the mixed starters; I think I’ve let you down.)

It was, in fairness, a good choice and also gave a reasonable idea that the kitchen could handle both east and west. The spring rolls were delicately spiced and eminently dippable, subtly different from those at the Warwick but equally good. The salt and pepper squid, though not quite up to the standard of somewhere like London Street Brasserie, was tasty and avoided the worst fate of all, that of rubberiness (though I’d have liked more crispiness). The prawn crackers were inoffensive and probably not worth the sentence I’ve just given them. The chicken satay was, again, better than the Warwick I thought – a skewer of tender flesh and a gorgeous chunky satay sauce to slather over it.

The most interesting of the starters was the kedgeree arancini – balls of smoked haddock risotto breaded and fried with half a hard-boiled quail’s egg pinned to them, a little dab of curried mayonnaise on top. I loved this; sophisticated party food, and cleverer than all the other staples (no doubt next year Jason Donovan will be wandering past with a tray full of them in the ad breaks on I’m A Celebrity).

Starter

The wine list, though not enormous, had enough to keep us occupied. The sauvignon blanc was decently fresh and easy to drink and the chianti was fruity without being inoffensive and peppery without being brutish. The advantage of having dinner in a pub is that if you go out for a meal with someone who likes beer there’s something for them too; I’m told the Black Sheep was very nice, although my friend had it in a shandy, and even I know that means she probably wasn’t qualified to judge.

Initially I tried to order a 125ml glass of wine, but the waiter turned up with what looked suspiciously like 175ml. I was about to quibble when he said “It’s the same price for 125ml, so I brought you a bigger glass. Leave some if you like”. I liked that; I’ve been to places where they would have brought the smaller glass and trousered the cash, so it was nice to be told. Service was like that in general – a tad brusque (they were busy all night, in their defence) but helpful and prompt. Considering how much they had going on, and the size of some of the other tables, I was impressed to get served at all.

For the mains we decided to give both halves of the Moderation’s menu a chance. In the red corner, representing pub food, was a mutton and onion suet pudding with mashed potato and roast root veg. It was nowhere near perfect, but just close enough to it that I could have wept. The jus that came with it was rich, the soft sticky roasted carrots and parsnips were delicious, and the sauce inside the pudding was a cracking jumble of slightly sweet onion and tangy tomato. But the errors were glaring. The mash had big chunks of what felt like uncooked spud lurking in it. The suet pastry didn’t have the slightly soggy, gooey feel I was looking for and, if anything, was more like a pie in pudding’s clothing.

Most unforgivably, the mutton was undercooked and unappealing – bouncy in places, sinewy in others. None of it fell apart under the fork the way it should have done, and most of it resisted a knife in a way it really shouldn’t have. The moment the first chunk twanged under my molars I knew the rest of the meal would be spent prodding and chopping, when a meal dish this should be about scoffing with carefree, reckless abandon. The gulf between what you think you’re getting and what you end up with has rarely felt so cruel, or so huge.

Mutton

The beef rendang, in the blue corner, suggested that I’d have been better off sticking to the eastern half of the menu. This was a bowl of beef in a rich, spicy coconut sauce with enough of a kick to balance out the creaminess but not so much that your lips tingled. On the side was a dome of white rice and a couple of those decent enough prawn crackers which have now taken up an undeserved sentence and a half of this review. All good, you might think, and it almost was, but for one thing: the beef had the same problem as the mutton. The first few mouthfuls were properly boast-to-your-friends-good, but then followed a piece of beef the consistency of jelly that made me swallow quickly to avoid having to come to terms with the texture. Such a shame that such a great dish can be ruined by only a few chunks of beef, but there you have it: if only the kitchen had been a little pickier about the pieces of meat that went in the dish versus what went in the bin (or cooked it for longer, or both).

Rendang

We skipped dessert and dinner for three people, including three drinks each, came to a fairly reasonable £83.

Another reason to envy bloggers who only go to restaurants just after they’ve opened is that it’s easier to review those places because you have no preconceptions. You can compare them to other, similar restaurants but that’s as far as you can go because ultimately, you’ve only visited that restaurant once. I on the other hand have been to the Moderation many times before and always really enjoyed it. And I so wanted them to have a good night the night I visited on duty, because what they do in Reading isn’t quite like any other independent and it’s admirable that they are expanding, albeit slowly, and rolling out a set of attractive pubs across Reading where you can drink nice wine or (I’m told) good beer and eat interesting, inexpensive food.

I want to rate them well for that, and for being brave enough to try something different, and I’d like people to go there and order the nasi goreng, which I happen to know they do really well. But, on another level, I can only review the meal I had on the night I went and, on that basis, it just wasn’t up to scratch. So it gets the rating it gets, and a suggestion from me to approach with caution. I know that might seem a bit harsh, but that’s the way the meat bounces.

The Moderation – 6.6
213 Caversham Road, Reading, RG1 8BB
0118 3750767

http://www.spirit-house.co.uk/moderation/

Round-up: September

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Well, Edible Reading has been going for over a month and I thought it would be a good point to stop for a moment and say thanks to everyone who has followed on Twitter, commented on a review or passed on a link. I’ve been really wowed by all the support, which is fantastic (in fact I even got my first hater – or are they called trolls now, I can never remember – which is proof that I’ve really made it!) In case you’ve missed anything in the first six weeks, here’s what’s happened on the blog so far…

Pepe Sale, 8.3 – Lovely food, superb service and crab ravioli to die for. Read the full review here.

ZeroDegrees, 5.4 – Reading needs a place that does great pizza and delicious moules but Zero Degrees, with its cut corners and wonky service, isn’t it. Read why not here.

London Street Brasserie, 6.8 – The elder statesman of Reading’s restaurant scene still offers some really good food, but you have to pick carefully and you’re better off staying on the set menu. The full review’s here.

Picasso, 4.1 – When is a tapas restaurant not a tapas restaurant? When the tapas in question is massive, costs almost a tenner and feels like it came from a bad supermarket. The worst rating so far, see why here.

Five Guys, 5.5 – It’s just a burger… or is it? The much-hyped latest addition to Reading’s restaurant scene has attracted lots of attention. I chip in (pardon the pun) with my two pence here.

In terms of restaurant news, apart from Five Guys, the main place to open since Edible Reading opened its doors is Tasting House, on Chain Street, in a rather unlovely location round the side of John Lewis. It does a small selection of charcuterie and cheese boards, a dozen or so wines by the glass and a large range of wines to take home. I’m not generally a fan of reviewing places just after they’ve opened (although in the case of Five Guys the temptation was too great to resist), but maybe a bit further down the line. It’s only open until eight though, so don’t plan on settling in for the evening if you do go.

Also, Thai Nine has closed and reopened as Sushimania, which means it will be part of a small chain with other branches at Golders Green and Edgware. Presumably this is a takeover, like when Sahara closed and reopened as BeAtOne. It’s an interesting move, because every time I’ve been to Thai Nine I thought the Thai food was much more popular than the sushi (and I say that as a sushi lover). I imagine I’ll review Sushi Mania in due course, so watch this space.

Another piece of news is that I like to think we’re having an effect on the Reading Post. They published a review earlier this month which wasn’t one hundred per cent glowing – of Wild Lime Bar & Kitchen, which you can read here (apparently it was “pleasant enough”).

Best of all, I’m also happy to say that another local restaurant blog has started around the same time as Edible Reading (I know, I know! We’re like buses). Stuff In My Face is a lot of fun, a cracking read and I’m looking forward to seeing what he makes of places round here. His very entertaining review of Pierre’s, here, is a great place to start.

Finally, thanks too to everyone who has recommended a restaurant for me to visit. Suggestions so far range from some of the Reading classics like Mya Lacarte and Sweeney & Todd to newish places like The Lobster Room, Bhoj, and House Of Flavours. I’m keeping a list and will try to get to all of them eventually, I promise.

Right, better go – I’ve got some meals to plan.

Picasso

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Picasso closed in October 2019. I’ve left the review up for posterity.

One of the editorial decisions I had to make when I started Edible Reading sounds like a minor one, but it prompted much deliberation. Not where to eat, or which font to use, or whether to put captions underneath my terrible pictures, but something more basic: where do you put the mark out of 10? I quite liked the idea, like Pitchfork for example, of putting the mark right at the top so you knew before reading whether I thought the restaurant was any good. In the end, I went with the conventional method of putting it at the bottom. The idea is that people read on to the end, curious about whether I’m going to turn out to be a fan of Pepe Sale, ZeroDegrees, London Street Brasserie etc.

Most of the time this works out fine, but the only exception is when you give a bad review. People love bad reviews, and I’m no exception; there’s a certain pleasure to be had from reading one. So I think I should warn you from the outset that this is a bad review. Picasso is not a good restaurant. I won’t go again, and I’d actively encourage you to follow my example. Got that? Right, on we go then.

I started out reviewing places I’ve been before – not new places, not unknowns – partly because I wanted to find my feet and partly because I wanted to pick places you might have been, so you could get an idea whether we liked the same stuff and you trusted my judgment. But this couldn’t go on forever, so I asked for suggestions about where I should go next. “Try Picasso”, someone said on Twitter, “I’ve heard mixed reviews and I’ve never been able to bring myself to try it.” Good idea, I thought. What’s the worst that can happen?

It turns out the worst that can happen is eating dinner at Picasso.

It’s one of those places, ironically, that ought to fill a gap in the market. Reading has never had a decent tapas restaurant, unless you count La Tasca (and, having eaten there before it closed, I don’t). Picasso has been going a long time, tucked away in a quiet little spot just over Caversham Bridge, so it must be doing something right. So I booked a table for 8 o’clock on a Saturday night and wandered across town, stopping in the Moderation for a pre-prandial gin and tonic. Eating somewhere you’ve never been before always has that feeling of excitement and anticipation, like that point at Christmas when you sit on the sofa, ready to unwrap a present in front of all your relatives.

The inside of Picasso, I would guess, hasn’t changed in over thirty years; basic furniture in a long thin room, pictures on the walls, cloth napkins, tables not too close together. A few tables were in dark corners, and I carefully avoided being led to one of those. Although it was unprepossessing I was determined not to judge the book by its cover: after all, Pepe Sale does great food and is never going to feature in Elle Decoration. The interior Picasso reminded me most of was the recently departed Nino’s, in Market Place, in fact, another old school restaurant where I’ve somehow never managed to have an inspiring meal.

Everything started well: the service in Picasso is very good, authoritative, old-fashioned service. The waiter recommended a Ribero Del Duero which was not on the wine list, was only £22 and was probably the best thing about the whole evening. He also – and this has to be a first – cautioned us against ordering too much food. Two tapas per person was enough for an evening meal, he said, so we should go easy on them.

In hindsight, I should have known at this point that something was amiss. Tapas are not meant to be big. That’s the whole point of them, and their whole appeal because it means you can try dozens of little things without being stuck with a giant portion of anything. After all, if you wanted that you’d go to a restaurant that served starters and main courses, wouldn’t you? A look at the menu proved that either the tapas were far too big or they were far too expensive: most of them were between eight and ten pounds. This is definitely the point where alarm bells began to ring, just as other couples started to take their tables. A lot of them had clearly been here before, though, so I must just have been worrying unduly. Mustn’t I?

When the tapas turned up it became apparent that they were both too big and too expensive, and worse still just not very good. A plato combinado of jamon serrano and chorizo was limp and insipid. The chorizo was barely an evolutionary step up from luncheon meat with a sun tan, bouncy and tasteless. The jamon serrano was even more of an insult, with the shiny dampness of something that had spent the previous few hours in a plastic catering pack of some description, each slice sandwiched between leaves of plastic. I wasn’t expecting them to have a leg of jamon hanging over the bar (hoping maybe, but certainly not expecting) but I did at least want to feel like this was good quality stuff. I could have walked back into town, gone to Marks & Spencer and got more, better, jamon for under three pounds. I finished it out of sheer stubbornness and almost immediately regretted it.

If the jamon was sub-M&S, the mushrooms with garlic butter were sub-Iceland, and even then I am probably being kind. A huge bowl of breadcrumbed mushrooms with a few visible patches of melted garlic butter was plonked in front of us, with a wedge of lemon in case you had pretensions about that kind of thing. Cutting them open they were flabby and damp, and the whole thing had the feel of party food at a party you wished you didn’t have to attend. A funeral, perhaps. We didn’t eat them all.

I looked again at the red wine. It was good, but it wasn’t that good.

Picasso 1

The mains came almost as quickly as the starters had done, and were no better. Cerdo Asturiano was billed as pork fillet cooked in cider and cheese sauce. I was hoping for tenderloin, what I got was two thick slabs of steak with another slab of cheese melted on top of them. The sauce had no evidence that either cider or cheese had been used in it at all, it was the sort of anonymous red sauce that used to be made by Homepride and is now made by Dolmio. For all I know it could well have been. Accompanying it was a gigantic pile of fried cubed potatoes (presumably exactly the same thing you’d get if you ordered patatas bravas), some carrots which either came from a tin or had been cooked to closely resemble those that do, and some broccoli. It was clear that nobody left Picasso hungry, but that it was unlikely they left it satisfied either.

Swordfish in a cream, onion and mushroom sauce was just as disappointing. The swordfish was bland and flavourless and the sauce managed, if anything, to be less than the sum of its parts – thin, watery, with a hint of dill that might well have come out of a Schwartz jar. Swordfish, done well, is a beautiful thing but this was just boil in the bag cod in parsley sauce with delusions of grandeur. It came with the same piles of forgettable vegetables as the pork; in fact, I only took a photograph of one of the main courses but they were virtually identical, the single difference being which inadequate protein and sauce combination you’d been unlucky enough to plump for. The only things worth finishing in the whole restaurant, it seemed, were the wine and the experience.

Picasso 2

It’s worth stressing what bad value Picasso is. Most of the tapas, as I said, were just shy of a tenner. The two mains were eighteen and sixteen pounds respectively. You can eat better for the same money in Reading without having to try very hard, and I’ve already reviewed two places where you can do exactly that. I couldn’t quite believe all the other diners in the restaurant didn’t appreciate this, to the extent where I wanted to stop by their tables on the way out and actively encourage them to go somewhere else next time. As I didn’t do that, I’ll have to console myself by doing it here instead.

I’ll say one thing for Picasso, it was mercifully quick. From sitting down to deciding to pass on the dessert menu took an hour and twenty minutes, on a Saturday night, a peak time for restaurants when people want to sit down and have an enjoyable, leisurely meal. The high point of the weekend when we want to sit in lovely cosy room somewhere, escaping from X-Factor and the contents of our fridge and being spoiled and taken care of by other people. There were lots of things about Picasso that were very very wrong, but the worst of all is how it betrayed that promise that every restaurant implicitly makes, that it will whisk you away from all that. It was like eating in a friend’s house, if your friend wasn’t a very good cook, had gone to about four downmarket supermarkets to get all the ingredients and tried to charge you eighty quid for the privilege. If you had a friend like that, you’d stop seeing them. If you knew a restaurant like that, you’d stop going. Believe me, Picasso is that restaurant.

Picasso – 4.1
6 Bridge Street, Caversham, RG4 8AA
Telephone 0118 9484141

http://www.picasso-tapas.co.uk/