Here’s what happened: I was making Friday night dinner plans with my friend Graeme and I said I’d give him some restaurants to choose from, a mixture of places I wanted to review (or re-review) and others I just fancied eating at. My text was all ready to send, and then I stopped for a minute and thought what about Côte? So I added Côte to the list of places I was due to re-review and pinged the message over to Graeme, fully expecting him to pick somewhere else.

Why don’t we do Côte? came the reply. I haven’t been for a while, and it’s such a good chain restaurant.

Appropriately Graeme’s reasons for choosing it were the same as mine for including it in my selection. The last time I went there was something like eighteen months ago, with my family, to celebrate my just having got engaged. But before that? I honestly couldn’t tell you. And yet before the pandemic I used to go an awful lot – it was one of my regular spots.

I do wonder whether the pandemic had something to do with it. Because when Covid struck national Côte did what many restaurants did, diversifying into heat at home options. But Côte did it differently to everybody else, and unlike nearly everybody else they are still doing it years later, when for most restaurants their schemes, entirely born out of necessity, were shelved ages go.

Côte decided to take advantage of the fact that many of its dishes were prepared in a central kitchen and then finished in the restaurant, turning what you could potentially see as a weakness into a Covid-era hidden strength. And it continues today: Côte At Home still offers many of the dishes you can get in their restaurants, portioned for two people, for decidedly less money.

Back when I was reviewing takeaways and meal kits, I reviewed Cote At Home. And the truth was that I didn’t know what to make of it: it was good value, and undeniably polished, and somehow occupied a completely new genre that wasn’t takeaway, wasn’t meal kits, wasn’t eating in restaurants and wasn’t ready meals. What on earth was it, then? I’m still not entirely sure.

But I can’t help feeling that Côte At Home, although it may have saved the chain from going under, slightly changed the way I thought about the restaurant. Because if many of Côte’s dishes were just glorified ready meals you could cook at home, was there still a point to going to the restaurant to eat them there, spending more money in the process? And if that was the case three years ago when the shockwaves from the pandemic started to subside, wasn’t it even more the case now, when eating out is more and more of a luxury?

I didn’t know the answers, and it felt like a return to Côte might provide them. Besides, it was a Friday night at the end of an incredibly long week at work, and I figured I’d earned a good meal, a catch up with a good friend and at least a bottle of wine, and I was hoping for an enjoyable evening irrespective of whether my visit also solved those bigger, thornier questions. After all, nobody can dissect stuff for its deeper meaning 24/7. Not even me.

I always forget how nice Côte’s dining room is. You could be forgiven, eating at one of its former neighbours – Brown’s, or TGI Friday – for thinking that these deep, largely windowless rooms are uniformly unlovely spaces. But Côte’s has always been both a luxe and comforting spot. The tables at the front, that catch the daylight when there is some, are great if you’re having brunch or lunch.

But the rest is equally agreeable once the sun’s gone down. It has a certain je ne sais quoi, there’s something about its banquettes, bentwood chairs, booths and clever lighting that makes it feel like a little oasis amid the Oracle Riverside’s brashness and bluster. I don’t think the room has changed in the ten plus years that I’ve been going there. It’s never needed to.

Graeme was already at a table when we got there, but otherwise the restaurant was close to empty.

“It’s worrying, isn’t it?” he said. “When I went past the burger place I thought it was closed, and even Nando’s was dead. Nando’s!”

“I guess January’s a very long month, and it’s the weekend before payday for most people.”

“I’m so glad we picked Côte though. Wine, meat and cheese – all the main food groups.”

We ordered a drink and began catching up while I tried to work out which of the items on the menu were least likely to have been produced in a central kitchen. I was looking forward to a cider – Côte always stocked proper, old-school Breton cidre – so I was disappointed to see that they’d switched to a brand called, of all things, “Sassy”. I had a beer instead.

If I’d looked at their website, which says that ‘SASSY brings a naughty nature to the world of Cider and sets out to premiumise this wonderful drink,’ with ‘one foot in the traditions of Normandy and the other striding towards the future of cider’ it would have made me doubly unlikely to try it. Apparently it’s “inspired by the cider served at Château de Sassy” which is, to my astonishment, a real place. Unlike premiumise, which is absolutely not a real verb.

The menu at Côte hasn’t changed significantly in over a decade, which again I find oddly comforting. Not for them attempts to modernise, introduce fusion flavours, or provide low calorie options. Prices are definitely higher than they used to be, which mainly signifies that it’s 2025: starters are between seven quid and a tenner, the mains approach the twenty pound mark but are careful, for the most part, not to overstep that.

All that said, Côte’s prix fixe is available all evening on weekdays, which I’m not sure was always the case. At eighteen pounds for two courses or twenty-two pounds for three, it’s roughly the price that LSB’s set menu used to be back in the day, another barometer of how eating out has got more costly in recent years. Côte was also offering some Alpine specials, a range of small plates which sorely tempted Graeme – especially the tartiflette, combining the holy trinity of spuds, bacon and cheese.

I was impressed by how resolutely French the wine list was. With the exception, of port, you won’t find a single wine on it from any other country. The one concession to modishness was a solitary orange wine, which seems also to be an Alpine special. Graeme gave to job of choosing to me and I was delighted to see a Alsatian producer on there, Trimbach, that I liked. I’ve always had their whites before, but their pinot noir was a real treat, with plenty of depth. At thirty-seven pounds, it was something like twice the retail value, a relative bargain.

People started trickling in and taking up tables as we had those beautiful first sips and carried on setting the world to rights. Graeme told me that the last time he’d been to Côte was something like a couple of years ago for his daughter’s eighteenth birthday, and I told him that I too had been here last for a family event.

“But that’s the thing about Côte” said Graeme. “I’ve been here for family events and with a big group of friends, or just with Amy, and it’s really, really good for all of them.”

I thought about it and I realised that it was true for me too. I’d been here with big groups and small groups, with a partner or on my own. I’d descended on it with a gang for a pre-beer festival brunch, back when Reading had a beer festival, and I’d taken up a sunlit table outside with the prix fixe, a bottle of cidre and a good book, back in the days when I lived in the centre and had a spouse who was overseas with work. It was hard, really, to think of an occasion which I hadn’t marked at Côte.

“Back in the early days of the blog when I first started doing features I did one about the best place for al fresco dining, and another about the best place for solo dining. And Côte ended up on both of them. Actually, with pretty much any feature I wrote – al fresco, solo, pre-theatre – it was hard not to pick Côte.”

This was the point when I began to worry. Because the review I really didn’t want to write was the one where the overarching narrative was this: Reading’s favourite chain used to be Côte, but then Honest and Pho came to town and everything changed. What we wanted from a chain became different, and Côte got sadder and sadder, a shadow of its former self, all on its own on the Oracle Riverside as each of its neighbours gradually gave up the ghost.

Don’t get me wrong, I still would have written that review if it had turned out to be that kind of meal. But my relief began when the starters arrived, and gradually became replaced with something else – if not euphoria, then definitely delight. I’m sorry if that removes the element of suspense, but I didn’t feel like leaving you hanging. And besides, I know a lot of you scroll down and look at the rating at the bottom first anyway, don’t you?

Graeme was set on the tartiflette from the moment he saw it on the menu, and it didn’t disappoint him. Côte’s menu says that its Alpine specials are small plates, but there was nothing small about this. It was an enormous bowl, filled with a brick of potatoes, cheese, onions and bacon and looking at it I was simultaneously sad I hadn’t ordered it and worried about how far I’d have made it through the meal if I had. 

That said, the forkful I tried was excellent.Everything was how you wanted it to be, from firm, almost waxy potatoes to the liberal quantities of Comte and Tomme de Savoie in the mix. Now, I’m always a bit dubious about people who refer to a single dish, especially a starter, as a “meal in itself”. Partly because I’ve never felt that way about any single dish, and partly because I feel it lacks ambition. But if you were ever going to say that about something that was supposed to be a starter, you’d say it about this.

“And the bacon is amazing” said Graeme. “Really smoky.”

I had chosen an old favourite of mine, the calamari, mindful that I wanted at least one thing you couldn’t eat from the Côte At Home menu. This is a dish I feel like I’ve ordered a lot in recent months and often, at the likes of Maidenhead’s Storia or Reading’s The Cellar, my main reaction to it has been relief that it wasn’t as bad as calamari can sometimes be. And when these arrived I wondered whether I’d be talking in those terms again – they seemed too big, too regular and homogeneous to be anything more than adequate.

And then I tasted them, and I felt bad about doubting Côte. Because they were far and away the best calamari I’ve had in a long time, belying their unassuming appearance. They were properly tender, no rubberiness whatsoever, cooked so the coating adhered, a real joy to eat and dip in what was apparently Provençal mayonnaise. Fair play to them for not pairing it with aioli like literally everybody else, but I seem to remember that Côte used to serve them with tartare sauce, which I always liked.

Graeme smiled, as did I. Any fears I had appeared to be unfounded: we were still in safe hands. And I wondered what was going on here – I must have had Côte’s calamari many times over the years, so was it that it had improved, or had I forgotten that it had always been this good?

Although the menu is extensive, Graeme had warned me in advance that it was pretty narrow for him, as far as main courses were concerned (“I only ever order the beef bourguignon or the Breton chicken”). That gave me a free hand, but I saw duck confit on the menu and I always find that hard to resist. Virtually impossible on a chilly winter evening miles from your last payday, so my choice was made.

When it arrived, a well-paced half hour or so after our starters, it was good but still the only misstep of the meal. The duck itself was beautiful – duck confit is one of my favourite things in the world (I ate it on my wedding day, after all) and I’ll never understand why more restaurants and pubs don’t offer it. And I liked the red cabbage it was served on: it probably wouldn’t ever have been my choice of accompaniment, but it went just fine. “It looks a bit forlorn, doesn’t it?” said Graeme, and he had a point, but that’s because the potato gratin came separately in a little cast iron casserole. It was a bit like a Tesco Value version of the tartiflette, but I liked it all the same.

But where this fell down was those plain weird orange segments that felt like they’d escaped from a tin. The menu talks about the whole thing being served with a bitter orange sauce, but there wasn’t a drop of sauce to be seen. Three bits of citrus fruit is no substitute for a sauce. It’s the rail replacement bus of sauces. It was irksome, but I still loved the duck.

Graeme, true to form, chose the bourguignon and, as with the tartiflette, I think he picked not only the thing that was perfect for him but the dish that was perfect for the occasion. A single slab of beef, an enormo-quenelle of mash and a sea of rich sauce, the kind of dish that keeps winter properly at bay. I didn’t try a forkful of this, but Graeme had no regrets about his choice.

It did mean that in one evening Graeme probably ate more potato than most people get in a week, but I imagine that suited him just fine. The man’s from Middlesbrough, for goodness’ sake, and he hasn’t lost the accent: so much so, in fact, that when he told me that last time he’d been to Côte I honestly thought he’d said the last time I went to court, which raised all sorts of interesting questions. Graham has not, as far as I know, been in court.

“It’s mental” said Graeme. “This is a main course, and I swear it’s about the same size as my tartiflette was.”

Graeme’s spud consumption was not helped by the fact that both of us saw confit potatoes on the menu as a side order and decided we needed to have some. I was wondering whether this would be anything like the legendary potatoes at Quality Chop House, much in vogue in recent years, and I made the mistake of describing them to Graeme, which meant that anything which turned up could only disappoint.

And they slightly did: there was no layering or pressing involved. Instead you got four cuboids of potato, nicely fried and golden, with a pot of serviceable béarnaise for dipping. They were like hash browns for Guardian readers, which meant that I rather liked them. Just over a fiver for these, and I should add that Graeme’s and my mains were the two most expensive on the menu. But crucially, nothing felt like bad value.

You could tell we were having a good time, because we threw caution to the wind when it came to dessert. They had a few traditional options on there – a Paris-Brest, or a crème caramel – although they also attracted Graeme’s ire with an piste macaron (“I’m not eating anything with yuzu in it”, he said). But perhaps more interesting was Côte’s cheese selection.

I remember back when I ate at Côte pre-pandemic and the cheese selection was a bit of an afterthought, three or four of them to choose from, which meant that I almost never had it. But nowadays Côte has really pushed the bâteau out when it comes to fromage – an impressive ten to choose from, all French, with the option to assemble a cheeseboard for sharing.

We did exactly that, and carried away by just how enjoyable Côte was we also ordered a bottle of dessert wine to go with it, a muscat from the Languedoc. I’d had it before, so I thought it was probably a banker but even so, it was so straw-coloured that I was relieved when it turned out to be just the thing, sweet and zippy. Fearing for the worst and ending up delighted seemed to be the theme of the evening, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

I won’t list all the cheeses, because Côte’s website does that, but you have a great range of soft and hard, of blue and goat, and it’s hard to go wrong. We ended up choosing eight of the ten, so we got an excellent selection. Highlights for me included both of the blues – we got Roquefort and Fourme d’Ambert, and our otherwise impeccable server didn’t tell us which was which – and the Delice de Bourgogne. I love a triple cream cheese, and always order one if spot it on a menu. It also gave me an opportunity to enlighten Graeme about one of my favourite life hacks, namely that a slab of triple cream cheese atop a ginger biscuit knocks the socks off many cheesecakes.

It also meant we got to enjoy a few slices of Côte’s baguette, which – at the risk of repetition – was also as good as I remembered. When my blog celebrated its first birthday, I wrote a list of the ten best things I’d eaten in that first year. Côte’s baguette made the list: like I said, Côte always seemed to nab a space on my lists.

“It’s funny, looking at that cheese down there and thinking about how much was on my cheeseboard over Christmas” said Graeme.

“I know what you mean. This is probably how much cheese you’re meant to have.”

All that cost seventeen pounds, which to me felt like a very reasonable thing for two people to share. By this point a couple of very companionable hours had passed, and all the nagging fears had been dispelled. Côte was doing very nicely on the last Friday before payday on the longest month of the year, and people were at most of the tables – a big group just behind me, the booths in front of me all occupied with people celebrating the weekend.

“It’s still a really good restaurant, isn’t it?” I said to Graeme as we contemplated getting the bill.

“Such a good restaurant.”

Our bill came to one hundred and seventy pounds, including tip. Now, I know that isn’t cheap – and by way of illustration, three courses, a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses of dessert wine would set you back roughly half that when I reviewed Côte eleven years ago. But we did go for it, and it is 2025, and you could eat there more cheaply if you wanted to. I know some people will see that number and just think it’s too expensive, but nowadays everything is. I had a lovely meal, I had brilliant company, I was in a gorgeous room looked after by very good, very hard-working people and I strongly believe that the people who make that happen should be recompensed for that.

I started this review wondering if Côte’s lockdown diversification had somehow cheapened what they do. But actually, I should have paid more attention – specifically to my own review of Côte At Home, where I said that although the food was nice at home, something was missing. And eating here again, after too long, I understood that. Because Côte truly fulfils the promise that many nationwide restaurants make but so few keep, and a meal here reminds you that restaurants are never just about the food.

I can’t tell you how glad I am that this review is that kind of review, and that I can remind myself, if not any of you, that Côte is a little special, in its way. This felt like the latest in a long chain of happy evenings in a restaurant for which I feel a surprising amount of affection.

And the truth is that Côte’s fate is far from certain: as I said earlier, its neighbours on either side of the canal have gradually turned out the lights and shut the doors as their leases have come up, conscious that the Oracle is going to be redeveloped and much of it turned into flats. That might well happen to Côte before too long.

It’s a good argument for eating there while we can. Nice though they are, it would be sad to have to travel to Newbury or Wokingham to be reminded of this place.

Côte – 8.0
9 The Riverside, The Oracle, Reading, RG1 2AG
0118 9591180

https://www.cote.co.uk/restaurant/reading

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