For childfree people like me, the tail end of August is possibly when you most keenly feel the disconnect between you and the rest of the world. At work everyone’s back from their holidays, preparing for the beginning of the academic year, already mourning their week or fortnight on a sunbed, by a pool or in a villa. My Instagram has been full of holidaymakers squeezing the last few drops out of the month. They have got excited, packed and prepared, touched down, drunk cold beers or glasses of rosé, topped up their tans, raced through some novels. And now they’re all coming back, like migrating birds, refreshed but, most likely, a little sad.

I’ve watched everybody embark and return, seen the Instagram posts and stories, and told myself each time that my time will eventually come. And it will, soon, but not quite yet: by the time you read this I will be hours away from setting my out of office and closing the laptop, but as I write this I’m running on fumes. The rhetoric at work will all be about how everybody is full of beans and ready to go, to close out the year: I am depleted, and ready to go to the airport. Our timelines won’t synchronise until I return, when we all prepare to put the clocks back, put the central heating back on, contemplate the end of the year.

Anyway, the last day of August found me with a day on my tod, feeling a little melancholy and looking for some feeling of escape. So I decided to make my way to Mon Chéri, the Greek café on West Street, to see some Hellenic sunshine might illuminate my mood. It opened at the end of last year, I think, and has been on my list ever since, but it’s taken a little while to reach the top of it.

And when I say Mon Chéri is open, I mean that it’s very open indeed: if Google is to be believed, they start trading at 6am every day, not closing until 8 in the evening. When I commute to work, my bus trundles down West Street around half-seven. Mon Chéri is always open by then, awning out, with some customers in already. Is any hospitality business in Reading open quite that long, with the exception of Gregg’s and Wetherspoons?

So. yes, I partly picked Mon Chéri this week because I’m so very ready for a holiday and, for me, Greece is the place I most powerfully associate with holidays, even now. The first time I ever left this country I was thirteen years old and my parents, heady with the rush of having remortgaged our suburban semi-detached, took us to Corfu to share a villa with some friends. I had never been on a plane, never known sunshine like it, was fascinated by the way Greek lemonade tasted different, couldn’t get enough of the music of the cicadas – when I could tear myself away from a book or my chess set, that is.

Early on in our stay we found a taverna, run by a chap called Tassos, and it was love at first sight. The food took forever to arrive, but nobody cared because we were sitting outside, on those balmy evenings, and my parents had access to a steady supply of Retsina. Tassos had an ancient stereo that played Greek music, but it was on the blink so it was always randomly speeding up or slowing down, some kind of weird bouzouki remix. The overall effect was of an establishment inches from collapse.

Sometimes customers at a neighbouring table would be so angry about the interminable wait that a blazing row would ensue. My parents’ friends Carol and Frank wanted the earth to open up and swallow them; my dad found it hilarious. We went every night, and by the end we were such regulars that after other customers complained, as they often did, Tassos would come to our table and say something to the effect of What was their problem?

As a trip, it had a lasting effect on me. It was the only time I remember my family going out for dinner more than once a year, and I think it made me fall in love with food and restaurants. Specifically, it made me love Greek food. My dad was keen that we enjoy ourselves but not go financially mad, so we were limited to the least expensive things on the menu, the souvlaki, the sofrito – veal in garlic – and the stifado. And I became addicted to the last of those, the rich stew of beef braised to surrender with tomatoes and soft, whole shallots. I can’t remember if it was Tassos’ wife or mother in the kitchen – or even his grandma – but whoever it was, the chef was a genius.

Since then I’ve been to Greece many times. I’ve done Rhodes, which I liked even more than Corfu, although I’ve only once managed to stay in Lindos, the bit of it I adored the most, once. I went to Kefalonia just after the Captain Corelli film, and had dinner with a pre-fame Simon Pegg, sporting a Beckhamesque mohawk, at the next table. I’ve stayed in Mykonos, which I loved despite a nagging feeling that I didn’t see the best of it. I’ve holidayed in beautiful, scruffy Athens, walking among the city’s ruins just before my first marriage went the same way.

And then there’s my very favourite part of Greece – Parga, just around the coast from Preveza airport, a beautiful harbour town full of winding lanes where you can completely forget about the world, sit in one of the many tavernas, eat fresh fish and drink sweet rosé and, for a little while at least, become a twenty-first century lotus eater. One one holiday there I took a boat trip to Corfu Town, strolled the Napoleonic esplanade of the Liston, felt the whole thing coming full circle.

All that said, I’ve not been to Greece in nearly a decade. At first it was Covid’s fault – my trip to Lindos, booked in hopeful ignorance at the start of 2020, was shifted back again and again until we accepted, reluctantly, that it just wouldn’t happen. But the world has gone back to normal since then, something has stopped me returning and I’m not sure what it is.

Analysis paralysis, possibly: I am never able to pick the island, pick the resort, pick the accommodation. I see everyone else going there and I envy their certitude but that magic combination of the right airport, the right flights, the right place to stay has never jumped out at me. I’ve contemplated Chania, or Agios Nikolaos, or going back to Parga, but I’ve always chickened out and booked a city break instead. For many years I wanted to go to Hydra – because Leonard Cohen – and someone I knew on Instagram who went every year even sent me her guide, but the sheer faff of getting there just put me off. You’d need to be there two weeks for that journey to be worth it, and I never take two weeks off.

So the closest I would get, this year at least, was Mon Chéri. It’s always saddened me that Greek food has never really gained a foothold, either in this country or in Reading: we had Kyrenia, which I revered, but since then it’s been Spitiko, which I ought to visit. We had The Real Greek, which left the Oracle before it could be pushed, and we still have Tasty Greek Souvlaki which is indeed tasty, and Greek(ish), but not the full taverna experience.

But Greece is better represented by cafés, with our branches of Coffee Under Pressure and now with Mon Chéri. And I truly love Greek cafés and bakeries – in Parga, most mornings began with breakfast at a place called the Green Bakery, on a sun-dappled terrace with coffee, pastry and a paradisiac, indolent day ahead. When I came in off the drizzle-spattered pavement of West Street, I guess that’s what I was hoping to recapture.

The interior had nothing of the Ionian Sea about it, which wasn’t to say that I disliked it. The plush dusky pink chairs and marble-effect tables were actually quite tasteful, although on a clement day – which this wasn’t – you’d want to be out on the terrace, under the awning, taking it all in. But actually, from the next set of tables back, looking out, you had much the same experience.

So I could see the tables under the shelter of the awning, all smoking and chatting and drinking their freddoes, and beyond that all the comings and goings of West Street, a richer pageant than I’d expected. Did it matter that the horizon had Mleczko Delikatesy on it rather than some cerulean vanishing point where the sea met the sky? It should have done, but I found I didn’t mind. The music was both Greek and relentless, and I rather loved the overall effect.

I asked at the counter if there was a menu and my server pointed to the coffee menu on the wall. Otherwise, it was a case of looking in the cabinets, under the fluorescent lights, and deciding what you fancied. Most of the space was taken up with sweet stuff – some very Greek, like big triangles of baklava sitting in a sticky puddle of honey, or kataifi with its golden combover. Others were more generic – red velvet cake, croissants, individual portions of millefeuille or tiramisu. If you had a sweet tooth, you would feel spoiled for choice.

When I asked about savoury options, she told me it was “Greek breakfast” and pointed to the smaller cabinet in front of her. That was mostly the kind of pastries I used to so love at the Green Bakery all those years ago – cheese pies, sausage pies and the like. I was tempted by a peinirli – a boat-shaped pizza a little like a Turkish pide, or a Georgian acharuli khachapuri – but in the end I decided the right thing to try was the classic, the spanakopita, the spinach and feta filo pie I must have eaten dozens of times on holiday. I asked for a latte with it and prepared for some top notch people watching.

I found it strange that the spanakopita came in a paper bag, with no plate, but I reasoned that it was after all finger food and I didn’t want to be like David Cameron, eating his hot dog with a knife and fork. But actually once I started tucking into it, it made even less sense. The filo pastry is meant to be light stuff – a quick Google found flowery phrases like “shatteringly crisp” and “perfectly flaky”. What it shouldn’t be, which this was, is tough. It’s supposed to release its contents joyously, but this pastry felt like it was trying to protect them. When somewhere describes itself as a café and bakery, that’s not ideal.

I soldiered on with it, but even as you moved past that overly chewy perimeter it didn’t reward perseverance. The filling – and filling suggests more generous contents than were actually the case – was thin, bland stuff. I so wanted to like this, and a good example of this Greek classic would be a very welcome discovery in town, but it was beyond me. So was finishing it. I could feel the slight coating of grease on my fingers and I became very aware of empty calories. I’m almost reluctant to say this, because I don’t want to cause a diplomatic incident, but C.U.P.’s spanakopita is miles better.

Mon Chéri’s coffee can’t match C.U.P.’s either, but on this occasion you aren’t comparing like with like. Mon Chéri has no interest in doing third wave stuff, so instead it offers a more classic option bought in from Hausbrandt, a company I’d never heard of. Would it surprise you to hear that I quite liked it, though? It had that slightly rugged, almost-burnt taste of less fancy coffee, but was perfectly drinkable and I could imagine it giving just the jolt you needed first thing in the morning. It reminded me of the coffee at De Nata, which is not a criticism.

By then I was nicely settled and enjoying myself more than I thought I might, despite that pastry failing to live up completely to either my expectations or my memories. But perhaps that wasn’t important: I had a lovely comfy seat, Europop was wafting through the room and life’s tapestry was parading past. I decided it wouldn’t be right to judge Mon Chéri on a pastry and a coffee alone, so I went up again to get something sweet and – because I was thoroughly getting into the swing of things – a freddo. I remembered sitting out on a square in Athens once, loving how much everyone just sat and chatted and drank coffee seemingly all afternoon long. Maybe the freddo was the way to pull that look off in Reading.

I decided to go for the mosaiko, a chocolate and biscuit confection which reminded me a little bit of tiffin and my server – a different chap this time, friendly and authoritative – told me which kind of freddo I wanted, espresso rather than cappuccino. He was excellent, as was his colleague from earlier on, which made me love the place even more and widen the gulf between how much I liked being there and what I made of the food.

It turns out that mosaiko is effectively a Greek take on chocolate salami, a no-bake slab of dark chocolate and biscuit. You might say that only an idiot goes to a place that describes itself as a café and bakery and orders that, and in my defence I would say that yes, I probably am an idiot but, to be fair, the spanakopita had been baked and that was no great shakes.

Anyway, the mosaiko was everything I should like, on paper. All either chocolate or biscuit and, in theory, more chocolate than biscuit, like those enormous chocolate-coated Bourbons M&S sells that are like Penguins on steroids. But again, the theory and the practice weren’t on the same page. This time you had to use a knife and fork, teasing through the fault lines of the biscuits to find a place to cut, producing a solid wodge to eat without sending the rest careening across the room.

And once you’d done all that, it just felt resolutely unspecial. The biscuit was soft rather than crisp and buttery, as if it had gone a little stale before meeting its fate. And the chocolate was very basic and flat, oddly chewy with no richness at all. The whole thing made for a strangely homogeneous slab of what should have been indulgent but was nothingy instead. I think this cost just shy of a fiver. Those M&S chocolate coated Bourbons are something like three quid.

Again, the irony was that I really enjoyed the freddo. It would put hairs on your chest and was best sipped slowly, but it was a lot of fun and it had been sweetened, as I’d asked, really nicely.

I felt like the most indecisive traitor of all time as I thanked my server, got my bill and settled up. Two coffees, a pastry and that mosaiko cost me £14.20, and whatever you think of the quality you do have to also bear in mind how easy it would be to rack up a bill that size at Picnic, or Gail’s, or any of Reading’s many other more chichi cafés. Was I airbrushing the bad bits of my time at Mon Chéri because I wanted to like them and, even more, because I really wanted to be on holiday in Greece? Or did it have something going for it that the wonky food couldn’t completely outweigh?

I’m still not sure, but I hope this is a salutary counterpoint to the rare times when I go somewhere like Vino Vita and put the boot in. I don’t enjoy going to bad places, writing bad reviews or leaving bad ratings. I especially don’t enjoy it when it’s somewhere that I really wanted to like, that has created a lovely little spot in one of Reading’s less salubrious places which plenty of people clearly love. It feels churlish to say yes, but the cakes and pastries, and I wish I wasn’t doing it, but if I gave it a rave review I’d be leading at least some of you to dietary disappointment.

But if I just say but the cakes and pastries that misses the fact that Mon Chéri has real charm, that I liked it there, and that maybe I could forego eating there just to have a coffee, and enjoy that view, and feel like part of something. Perhaps I need to go back and try some of the other stuff, even if it looks very generic indeed, to give it more of a chance. Sometimes writing reviews is very easy and sometimes, somewhere like this comes along and I wish I hadn’t made the decision, many years ago, to be reductive about restaurants and cafés to one decimal place.

So there you go, that’s Mon Chéri: pick the bones out of that one. I don’t know, maybe I just need a holiday. Where in Greece should I go next year? You strike me as the kind of people who might have some excellent suggestions.

Mon Chéri Café & Bakery – 6.6
18 West Street, Reading, RG1 1TT
0118 3533761

https://www.instagram.com/monchericafebakery/

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