Pub review: The Drink Valley, Old Town, Swindon

On June 20, 2025June 21, 2025 By ediblereadingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

Devizes Road is about a thirty minute walk from Swindon’s unlovely train station, a building with a whiff of the gulag about it. Or you can take a bus, which winds its way uphill and will get you there in roughly ten. Once you reach your destination, you’re not in Kansas any more. You’re still in Swindon, but in Old Town. And Old Town’s different.

Devizes Road isn’t a looker. It’s not the pretty street in Old Town: that’s Wood Street, around the corner, lined with delis and wine shops, tapas bars and spots for lunch. Devizes Road is another kettle of fish. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, a fantastic place to drink beer, a road literally lined with wonderful spots in which to do precisely that.

You have the Hop Inn, possibly the founding father of Swindon’s craft beer scene, and on the other side of the road you have the Tuppenny, a pub of which I’m inordinately fond that has Parka and Steady Rolling Man in its permanent collection and a beer fridge its own Untappd listing refers to as the “fridge of dreams”.

There’s Tap & Brew, the superb brewpub of quietly excellent local brewery Hop Kettle, with a beer garden that’s marvellous in the sunshine. Hop Kettle also has an upstairs bar called The Eternal Optimist with a speakeasy feel, at the end of the road above the marvellous Los Gatos, a restaurant which in itself would provide ample excuse for a trip half an hour down the railway line,

I’m not finished. You can now drink at The Pulpit, the Swindon outpost for local Broadtown Brewery, a relatively new addition. And as of late last year another option is The Drink Valley, another brewpub and in fact that brewery’s second Swindon branch, having made a success of their first one in the town centre.

Were you keeping count? I make that six great beer spots in the space of a five minute walk, three of them brewpubs or brewery taps of some kind. Forget schlepping all the way to London and dragging yourself south of the river to experience a London brewery crawl, hot and crowded and absolutely rammed with Steve Zissou-style microbeanies. A quick train journey west and you can have an equally terrific time without troubling the capital – why endure the Bermondsey Beer Mile when you can enjoy the Swindon Booze Street?

Besides, a friend of mine was in a pub near Borough Market the other week where the most expensive beer on the list was a mind-boggling £20 a pint: Old Town is far, far kinder on the wallet. I was in Old Town, as I invariably am, to have lunch and beers with my old friend Dave. Dave initially wasn’t mad keen on being a dining companion on this blog but as time has passed it’s turned out that he enjoys it far more than he thought he would. This is a very Dave phenomenon.

But the winds of change are blowing through Devizes Road, and much is different from when I was here last on duty. Burger spot Pick Up Point, which I so enjoyed last year, has closed down. Ice cream parlour Ray’s is under new management, and finding its feet. And The Drink Valley, the venue for this week’s review, has opened two doors down from Tap & Brew, its second branch slap bang in the heart of Swindon’s budding craft beer scene.

First, we took advantage of another welcome development: during the day, Tap & Brew now plays host to excellent local roasters Light Bulb Coffee, and when I joined Dave there just after 11 the place was jumping. Somehow it seemed bigger than when I was there last but in truth it was just packed, every table occupied with the kind of hipsters, families and pursuers of the good life that Dave wasn’t entirely convinced lived in Swindon. And yet there they were, that Field Of Dreams principle in action.

So before lunch I enjoyed a couple of superb lattes and Dave and I began the process of catching up. It’s funny, there are friendships where you don’t see somebody for ages and when you do, it’s as if no time has passed. Dave and I have, at times over the last thirty plus years, had a friendship more like that but these days I see him most months, a combination of great company, his empty nest, our mutual love of beer and good times and our spouses being busy at weekends. And even though I see him frequently there’s never any shortage of things to discuss, in his life or mine.

So we talked about our respective families, his son at Durham, his work and mine (we always conclude, on balance, that working for a living isn’t all it’s cracked up to be) the triumphs of Liverpool Football Club – Dave’s other lifelong passion – and our plans to go on holiday together to Bruges this winter, for the first time in nearly ten years. I fully expect it to be something like a cross between The Trip and Last Of The Summer Wine.

The Drink Valley, a name which would appear to make no sense whatsoever, opened in the centre of Swindon first, and its thing was craft beer and Indian small plates. Dave tried to get me to review it back then and I was tempted, because Reading has never had anything approaching a desi pub and I think it’s a concept that could do well almost anywhere. But he never tried too hard to persuade me, because it was in the centre of Swindon and Dave doesn’t go there from choice. An upmarket sister branch in Old Town was a much easier sell.

It’s hard to get much intel on The Drink Valley – I’ll drop that The from now on, if that’s okay with you – ahead of a visit. Their website used to be under construction, with wording saying “coming soon”, and a picture of their original branch. Now it just advertises a summer festival that takes place next week. The two Facebook pages give you a rough idea of the menu but the two Instagram feeds, much as they list promotions, live music or new beers, fail miserably at what must surely be two of the main functions of Instagram: to show you what the room looks like and what the food looks like.

That’s such a wasted opportunity, especially with Drink Valley’s Old Town branch because it was really quite gorgeous and, I would say, a cut above the decor of any of its neighbours on Devizes Road. Sturdy but tasteful tables were ringed with comfy armchairs in pastel colours, a deep red banquette running along one wall. The walls and wood panels were a beautiful midnight blue (“why does this colour always look classy?”, Dave wondered) and the overall effect was really pleasing.

Craft beer often feels like a bit of a sacrifice – never mind the interior, taste the IPA – and I’m not sure I expected Swindon to be the place that rebutted the idea that you have to choose between substance and style. It felt like the middle of a restaurant/pub Venn diagram, somewhere that wasn’t quite a restaurant or a pub but could quite easily pass for either.

The selection of beers, though, would definitely suggest pub rather than restaurant. Five hand pumps, all serving cask beer brewed by Drink Valley, along with just shy of a dozen options on keg. Four of those were also brewed by Drink Valley and the others featured breweries I knew well, like Polly’s and Vault City, and a couple that were new to me.

The most expensive beer maxed out at £8.50 for a pint, but it was a 7.3% sour so I doubt you’d be guzzling the full 568ml anyway, unless you were well and truly on a mission. We started with a half each of Ceres, a very approachable pale from North Wales’ Polly’s, and started the serious business of reviewing the menu. It was an interesting mishmash of small and big plates, of pub food and more leftfield choices.

So, for instance, there were just the four mains, a couple of which – fish and chips, sirloin steak – were the kind of thing you’d get at good and bad pubs across the land. Five burgers, too, mostly conventional fare, although the “bulgogi burger” with bulgogi sauce and kimchi mayo nodded to food trends. A couple of sharing platters and some loaded fries and nachos also felt reasonably mainstream.

But then we looked at the nibbles and starters and many looked like they’d wandered in from a different menu, one that ranged from Spain to Italy to Morocco, before upping sticks and taking a long flight east. Not only that, but some of the things on it were so eccentric that it didn’t feel like a Brakes van could have been involved in their genesis.

Take the first of our small plates – clusters of shimeji mushrooms belted with bacon, cooked in what was apparently an ‘nduja butter until the bacon was crispy and the mushrooms nicely done. This was a real delight, and both Dave and I loved it. The ‘nduja didn’t come through strongly for me, but it did lend a sort of salty funk that reminded me of blue cheese. I thought it was a superior take on devils on horseback, Dave thought it was everything good about a full English in a little package.

Either way it was clever, fun and quite unlike anything I’ve had. By this point I was on small beer number three, having tried a slightly too bitter pale by Rotherham’s Chantry Brewery and then moved on to a passion fruit mojito sour by Vault City which was sweet, boozy and surprisingly good with this dish.

“Try this” I said to Dave, offering him a sip. “It’s the kind of thing where you’ll try it and tell me it might be perfectly nice, but it isn’t beer.”

Dave took a sip and said exactly that. Which pleased me enormously, even though I wasn’t entirely sure I disagreed with him.

Those bundles of joy cost five pounds fifty for three, although as so often I think Drink Valley should work on giving you even numbers of these things to increase sharing and reduce arguments. Equally good, and equally good value, was a little bowl of nuggets of chorizo, cooked in wine, with a great mixture of chewiness, caramelisation and punch. This is such a simple thing to do, and such a perfect thing to have on hand when you’re drinking beer. And yet I don’t think I’ve ever been to a craft beer place, in this country at least, which thinks to serve it.

Drink Valley made good progress towards a clean sweep on the first impression with a very serviceable dish of Moroccan fried cauliflower. The spicing on the coating was impeccable, nicely arid with plenty of interest, and the cragged and crinkled exterior was cooked beautifully. The mayo, speckled with sesame, was a perfect dip, although I didn’t necessarily get the promised mushroom in it. The only fault with this dish was that cooking it perfectly involved getting all bits of it right: for me, the cauliflower had steamed slightly inside its glorious housing, lacking just a little of the bite I’d want to see.

But again, at less than six pounds I didn’t feel remotely robbed. What we were eating here were perfect beer snacks, and I couldn’t think of anywhere in Reading that offered something comparable. Well, except Siren RG1 I suppose, but when I ate there you got a little less for an awful lot more money, and it wasn’t much cop. Had Drink Valley stumbled on something here? Further research was undoubtedly called for, but what about the main courses we’d promised ourselves we would order?

The final dish, though, was decisively brilliant. Dave had insisted on us ordering salt and pepper squid, because he thought it was a really good dish to benchmark with. I was a little resistant to the idea, because I agreed with him and suspected Drink Valley’s rendition would fall short. Well – and Dave reads the blog these days, so I know he’ll especially enjoy this bit – he was right, and I was wrong.

What we got, in fairness, was not salt and pepper squid as I understand it. It didn’t have that distinctive coating, the way the same order at, say, Kungfu Kitchen would have done. But we got something even better. Six pieces of squid, beautifully scored, in a crispy salt and pepper-free coating, fried and brought to our table fresh as you like with some charred lemon and a nicely tangy srirachi mayo.

And my goodness: if you’d told me before the visit that I’d have some of the best squid I can remember anywhere in a craft beer bar in Swindon I’d have replied that you must be on mushrooms. But, would you believe, that’s exactly what this was. So fresh and tender, no twang of rubber, coated so well, cooked spot on, intensely moreish and dippable. And you got six pieces for a crazy six pounds fifty – so affordable and easy to divide up, even if you resented giving away half.

It’s safe to say that at this point Drink Valley wasn’t in any way what I was expecting. And then Dave said something somewhat wonderful.

“You know what, mate, I could pass on the main courses. They all come with carbs, and I’m getting enough of that today with the beer. I could just go another round of small plates, instead.”

What a cracking idea, I said. Let’s do that.

“Won’t that interfere with your review?”

I thought about it briefly and made an executive decision that actually, it could be the making of it. Because you may or may not want to know about burgers, steaks or fish and chips, but you can get those anywhere. And if you go to Drink Valley, which I slightly hope at least one of you will, you can have those then, if that’s your thing. But I couldn’t think of anything better than eating more small plates like the ones we’d had, on a rainy Saturday afternoon with an old friend. So up I went to the bar to order our second wave.

When I did, I talked to the chap who’d served us both our food and our drinks. They’d been open almost bang on six months, he told me, and things were going well. He said the idea was that the original branch was craft beer and Indian food, whereas this follow-up was craft beer and Korean food: I didn’t challenge that, although I wasn’t sure the menu quite bore out that ambition.

He said that they brewed offsite and didn’t currently have a tap room, although in the fullness of time they wanted to can their beers and sell them more widely. I told him how great the squid was, and he told me it was his favourite dish on the menu. I got that little glow of pride from him that always comes with people giving a shit what they do, and in return I felt happiness that Dave and I were in with a fighting chance of being his most gluttonous customers that day.

Our second wave of dishes was maybe not quite as successful as the first, but that’s always the way: you start out picking your must-haves, and trying to repeat your success always risks ordering an also-ran. For me the least successful dish we had were the pork ribs, roasted in miso and barbecue marinade. They were very close to greatness, but not quite close enough: they looked the part, and the marinade came through really well – and was rather interesting, at that.

But they weren’t big enough specimens and the meat took some pulling away from the bone, lacking substance and tenderness. Again, there was an odd number and I left the spare rib – pardon the pun – to Dave. He loves ribs, and is threatening to take me to a place in Bruges called Mozart where they do bottomless ribs: he told me, with great pride, how his son got through quite a few of them on his visit earlier in the year.

More successful was the wild mushroom bruschetta: two halves of toasted ciabatta roll topped with mushrooms that packed an impressive intensity of flavour, although – and I know this is a bugbear of mine – I really don’t think they were wild at all. I do wish people would stop making wild claims about their non-wild mushrooms, but I’ve been moaning about that for years and it shows no signs of abating. And while I’m moaning – everything we had at Drink Valley was excellent value, which made the nine pounds fifty conspicuously irrational pricing. Nothing this small is worth that, however good it tastes.

The remainder of our dishes restored the natural order. I had been sniffy about ordering the honey and mustard chipolatas, because in the immortal words of someone (I think it might have been John Inman), I don’t generally go near a sausage unless I’m confident of its provenance. To quote another famous person, my ex-wife used to say that cheap sausages are made up of, and this was her exact phrase, “eyelids and arseholes”.

I’ve always thought she was right about that but, again, Dave talked me into this one. And again – he’s going to be insufferable after this – he was right. The texture of these, in any other context, I might have found a little homogeneous but they were just coarse enough, just herby enough, just sticky enough to be a treat, especially dredged through the honey and mustard gathering at the bottom of the bowl. Also, just to say – these were allegedly cocktail sausages. I’d like to see the cocktail that went with them. It would be a tiki bowl and a half.

We also had something that, by this stage, was a bit of a variation on a theme. Strips of crispy chicken, served sizzling in a hot skillet, cooked in garlic butter, topped with slices of jalapeno and sitting on a bed of beansprouts and carrots. It’s a well-known fact that, unless you happen to find yourself in TGI Fridays, nothing that comes to your table sizzling can be entirely bad, and so it proved here.

The chicken was quite pleasant, but it came into its own towards the end of the dish when the bits we were slow getting to got crispy-crunchy, almost blackened. And by that point the julienned carrots and beansprouts, conversely, had softened and taken on the garlic butter, become a treat in their own right. This was a dish that required patience to get the best out of it. In that respect, I think I rather identified with it.

Oh, and we had some more squid. I couldn’t resist ordering that.

I’d like to tell you what Drink Valley’s dessert menu is like, but I mostly failed in that endeavour. They do a Basque cheesecake, like everybody else, and ice cream and a brownie and a chocolate orange torte, but none of that interested me and I had half an eye on ice cream at Ray’s later on. But they did have something that served as an excellent dessert: a chocolate caramel brownie stout, brewed by Drink Valley themselves. Two halves of it cost us £7.60, so less than two desserts would have cost, and it was twice as fun.

“Time for dessert, is it?” said the man behind the bar when I ordered these, and then he told me that when Drink Valley brewed it they invited staff to the brewery to test drive it. “I don’t remember much of that evening!” he told me, and after a half I could understand why. It was almost nitro-smooth, with a depth of flavour and thickness that belied its 7% strength. If they’d had it in cans, I’d have come away with a couple.

We were preparing to grab our brollies and go out and brave the heavy rain, and I was inwardly congratulating myself for how we’d tackled the menu when I saw our man heading past to an adjacent table with the fish and chips, made with batter using Drink Valley-brewed beer. I couldn’t help rubbernecking as it went past our table, an unbreakable bad habit of mine I’m afraid, and the chap gave me a little smile. Next time, it said. Next time indeed. Our meal – a total of nine small plates and seven halves of beer – had come to just under eighty-five pounds.

The rest of the day was every bit as winning as the start it got off to. I trudged mutinously round the Town Gardens with Dave while he literally stopped to smell the roses and told me how he and his wife had got into wandering along canals. “What have you become?” I said to him, adding “Do you know, I think you’re the only person I’d walk round a park in the pissing rain with when there are amazing pubs five minutes away?” It’s not Fleabag’s sister running through an airport, but it’s close.

After that, there was beer. Beer at the Tap & Brew, beer at the Hop Inn (Dave mentioned their Korean chicken burger was excellent: “now you tell me”, came my refrain). Then there was beer at the Tuppenny, and more beer at the Tuppenny, and then Dave’s wife kindly picked us up and gave me a lift to the station. And then the perfect end to a perfect day: catching the same train as my very own wife, coming back from Bristol with a tin of leftover goodies from the work bakesale. I maintain that the injection of sugar saved me from a brutal hangover – forget Dioralyte, I’m stocking up on cornflake cakes from now on.

Anyway, that’s enough about my minutiae: back to Drink Valley. I remember when I returned from Montpellier thinking that the French understood how to eat with beer in a way that had eluded us Brits. I had beer with karaage chicken, or padron peppers, or charcuterie and cheese and amazing bread, and all of it was magnificent. And what do we get in the U.K.? Inevitably it’s a street food trader – burgers, pizza or fried chicken, it’s nearly always one of those three – and you eat it on a bench or on your makeshift chair and think this is the life.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it is. Those things can be great, and when I’m next at Double-Barrelled eating something from Anima E Cuore I won’t feel like I’m slumming it. But Drink Valley reminds me, in the words of Frank Costanza, that there had to be another way. How I would love somewhere comfy and stylish that does an excellent range of craft beer and has a menu optimised for exactly that. Snacking, sharing, small plates and huge amounts of variety. I don’t want to keep going on about them, but Drink Valley is at the standard I really hoped Siren RG1 would attain.

Siren RG1 might well get there, as I’ve said before. But in the meantime, if Drink Valley is thinking about opening that third site I would implore them to think big and move further east. Until they do, Reading has nothing to match Old Town for such a concentration of great places to drink. It turns out you can also caffeinate superbly there and, crucially, eat well too. I’ll be back, because it turns out that Swindon is a destination in a way Reading isn’t quite. Their tourist board can have that one for free.

The Drink Valley, Old Town – 7.8
53 Devizes Road, Swindon, SN1 4BG
07827 484649

https://www.instagram.com/thedrinkvalleyoldtown/

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Bar review: Siren RG1

On June 28, 2024June 28, 2024 By ediblereadingIn Reviews16 Comments

The closure of Pepe Sale last week – temporarily or permanently, nobody knows for sure – rounds off the most brutal six months I’ve ever experienced in covering Reading’s hospitality scene for over ten years. At every price point, with every kind of venue, whether your tastes are more Cici Noodle Bar or Coco Di Mama, the Lyndhurst or TGI Fridays we’ve seen unprecedented levels of closures in town. There will be bright spots ahead – I anticipate quite a lot of people celebrating on the fifth of July, for instance – but you wouldn’t bet against the second half of 2024 being as gruelling as the first.

Normally closures are a part of life in hospitality, and for nearly every one there’s an equal and opposite newcomer. But that‘s slowed to a trickle this year, with only three significant new venues opening in Reading so far. The first is Zia Lucia, on St Mary’s Butts, which I recently reviewed here. And the most recent, which opened literally this week, is the Rising Sun on Castle Street, a fancy-looking gastropub by Heartwood Inns, a group which also owns Brasserie Blanc. Given that we’ve lost the The Corn Stores and Bel and The Narrowboat already in 2024, it’s a bold move.

But the single biggest opening of the year – which would have been the biggest opening of nearly any year – is Siren RG1, Siren Craft’s keenly awaited town centre taproom on Friar Street which opened in May. It’s been in the pipeline for some time and its arrival has generated the kind of excitement you only occasionally see in Reading without being associated with some American chain or other. For a town still grieving the loss of the Grumpy Goat, this felt like a reason to be cheerful.

It’s been very busy since it opened, which is heartening to see, and going there on duty as soon as it had bedded in was a high priority for me. Last week, meeting Zoë off the train after a hard day working in the big smoke, I finally managed to make it there for dinner.

Before I begin, for reasons that will become clear before too long, I have to take the unusual step of trying to convince you that I hadn’t taken against Siren RG1 before I even ate there. Part of that is because in the run up to their opening, I reacted slightly waspishly to their social media announcement that their new menu was going to centre around none other than burgers.

Really? I thought. It’s a tried and tested trope, but a trope nonetheless. Honest pairs local craft beer with burgers, the Phantom tap room now has 7Bone running the kitchen there. You could see Siren thinking it would work, but it didn’t feel like an exciting choice. Anyway, Siren ever so nicely replied to my Tweet pointing out that they would also be doing small plates and Sunday roasts. That made me feel a little snide and unworthy, so I decided to reserve judgment.

And then I’m afraid I did it again. Zoë and I tried to visit a couple of weeks after it had opened (I don’t normally do that, but such was its pull). And it was rammed and cacophonous, and they told me there was a 45 minute wait for food. So I went to Honest, which was almost empty, and had a lovely burger and some gorgeous beers from Two Flints and, because I can’t hold water, I Tweeted about that.

Again, Siren very graciously picked up on the Tweet and said how grateful they were to be so busy. They were right, whereas I – hot and tired after a long day capped by visiting my dad in hospital – just sounded like an entitled tosspot. Siren also said how much they liked Honest and Two Flints and, again, they were right with the implicit sentiment that we are lucky to have that as another option in town.

I’m getting all of this out of the way up front, and owning my utterances on the subject, for two reasons. One is because, even with all those things said, I think it’s marvellous that Siren has chosen to open a flagship site in the centre of town at such an awful time for hospitality. Like most people – apart from the at those prices you’ll find me in Wetherspoons instead merchants who comment on the Chronicle’s Facebook page – I would very much like it to succeed.

The other reason, which we’ll get to imminently, is that the food offering at Siren is incredibly disappointing, and if I’d just written the review without acknowledging all of the above some tiresome contrarian would have popped up and said “ah-ha! But you’ve had it in for them from the get-go, just look at this”. So there you have it: from here on in you can make up your own minds.

The interior of Siren RG1 is a big and impressive L-shaped space, broken into zones. The area to the far left felt like the dining room, although I think you could order from the food menu anywhere (it wasn’t entirely clear where table service started and bar service began). The central part, opposite the very striking bar, felt more for drinks, although I saw menus and saw customers eating there. And off to the right is a more casual area with high tables and stools, leading out to a partioned-off terrace which looked nothing special but which I imagine will come into its own now that the summer has finally decided to grace us with its presence.

We sat in the dining area and had table service throughout, although not before Zoë took a picture of the board so we knew which beers were on offer. Eighteen taps were given over to Siren’s beers as you’d expect, with plenty of Siren’s core range – Lumina, Yulu, Santo, Soundwave and the like. A further 7 lines featured “friends and local” breweries, again with familiar names like Double-Barrelled, Indie Rabble and Wiper & True. There’s also one cider, a couple of wines on draft and two cask pumps. As ranges go it slightly reminded me of the Nag’s, with less cask, or the Weather Station, but with fewer exciting guest beers, but nonetheless it was a very solid list.

Now, to cover the price thing: I really struggle with people who moan about the price of craft beer without considering the quality, not to mention the effort, work and thought that goes into running an innovative brewery in Britain in 2024. And I saw plenty of comments about this online, especially on the Reading Chronicle‘s Facebook page: my favourite was a comment that just said Bring back the Bugle ho yer England pub is it aloud, from a gentlemen who had obviously spent some time in a pub before putting pen to paper.

But I do have to say that Siren’s pricing seems sharp even if you are completely on board with craft beer costing more. The price list shows the price for the “largest size” without specifying what it is, but presuming it’s a pint some of the pricing seems eccentric even if you accept that the real SI unit for these beers is the two thirds. To give you a concrete example, Everyone, an excellent 5.2% pale from Double-Barrelled costs £8.50 a pint, on the steep side. Later in our meal Zoë had a half of an excellent pale from Track – it was lovely, but I think £6 for a half is again a little bit stiff even for people who regularly drink this stuff. I imagine I can expect some patient comments from somewhere telling me how and why I’m wrong: I probably am.

The food menu, for better or worse, is as Siren said it would be, nearly exclusively burgers and small plates. There are a handful of salads and some loaded fries options, but otherwise you had better fancy one of those two things. I can’t say that fazed us, but when we tried to order we had our first slightly surreal moment.

“You’re ordering some small plates and burgers, so I have to tell you it will all come out at the same time” said our server. Neither of us fancied that, because it just meant some of it would go cold when really we wanted to treat the menu as a starters and mains kind of proposition.

“What if we don’t want them to?”

“Well, I can have a word with the kitchen but I can’t guarantee it. We get busy later on.”

So in the end we just ordered our small plates, deciding that we’d order mains separately further along the evening. That was accepted without quibble, but the whole thing was still distinctly weird; the Wagamama approach of supplying all the dishes you’ve ordered in a timeline and sequence that only suits the restaurant is bad enough, but the only thing I can think of that’s worse is bringing out everything you’ve ordered all at once. But what I was most surprised by was that this policy was still in place over a month after opening and that nobody had challenged it before.

Anyway, about twenty-five minutes later our small plates came out and Siren RG1’s approach to starters and mains was no longer the most surprising thing about them. I’d had my eye on their sticky pork belly, glazed in a sauce using Broken Dream, their award winning stout, for quite some time so it was the first name on our team sheet. What arrived though was poorly executed, and incredibly disappointing. The fat was bouncy, the meat springy, the whole thing not rendered or cooked skilfully enough to get that contrast of textures right. And the glaze was unremarkable, offering no real depth or interest.

I often think the saddest thing about a small plate is when nobody wants to fight for the last remaining piece. But this was even worse – there were four or five cubes of pork belly and after I’d tried one I was more than happy to leave the rest to Zoë, who was equally unimpressed. We have been spoiled with pork belly dishes in Reading – for months the Lyndhurst did an outstanding one which showed how incredible it can be in the right hands, and Clay’s still does an almost unimprovable pork belly with jaggery and ginger. Both those kitchens understand how to get the very best out of that cut of meat: on this showing, Siren’s kitchen doesn’t.

Better, but still very flawed, were the cauliflower wings. Siren offers chicken or cauliflower wings as a small or large plate, and what was frustrating was how good the coating was – crunchy, salty and well-seasoned, giving the Colonel a run for his money. But the pieces were more the size of ostrich wings than chicken wings – huge slabs of cauliflower, with the knock on effect that they were far too firm, al dente verging on uncooked.

A missed opportunity here – if there had been more, but smaller pieces, with a better surface area ratio and with better cooked cauli underneath this could well have been a knockout dish. As it was, it was a great coating still in search of something worthwhile to coat. Perhaps the chicken wings would have been better, but I know a fair few people who would dispute the benefit of coating chicken wings in the first place, unless it’s with sauce.

Last but very much least, and easily the worst thing I tried that evening, were the chicken bites. I should have figured that out, really, from the description: crispy BBQ Korean chicken bites. It was muddled from the off – Korean chicken is a wonderful thing, so is Korean barbecue, but crispy BBQ Korean chicken just felt like throwing words together because they sounded good, rather than because they made sense.

If I’d had that suspicion before ordering, it was fully justified once the dish turned up. Here’s what we got.

Well, it was chicken. And I suppose the sizing was such that you could describe them as bites. But beyond that, any resemblance to anything described on the menu would have been hopeful at best. There was no evidence that a barbecue had been anywhere near them, let alone a Korean one. There was no evidence of Korean flavours anywhere to be seen, no unmistakeable whack of gochujang. And crispy was pushing it a great deal. Instead, you got some faintly soggy, stodgy chicken goujons in an unlovely batter with a stingy dribble of what tasted suspiciously like soy, topped with finely chopped spring onion.

What got to me about this dish, almost as much as its sheer mediocrity, was that it made me wonder about the thought processes of how this menu was put together and whether it had really involved a chef or rather just some consultancy or a focus group. It seemed to say “Korean food is really in right now, so lets have some crispy Korean chicken. No, crispy Korean barbecue chicken! No, we don’t know what that is either.” It felt to me like something you could buy at Iceland.

WIth that lot put away, and a growing sense of dread when I contemplated what kind of review this was going to be, we ordered a couple more beers and our main courses. In a way, having the starters and then a pause to reflect was a mixed blessing. Ordinarily I’d have ordered the chicken burger but given the small plate I’d endured – again, one we didn’t bother finishing – didn’t give me confidence that they cooked chicken well. Or I’d have been tempted by the beef burger with pulled pork, but the pork belly I’d had suggested the kitchen shouldn’t even be chatting pork up, let alone pulling it.

In the end, I nearly went for the beefburger with anchovy and mushroom ketchup, a nice nod to Cocks’s, the original Reading sauce from Victorian times. But our server told me I really should try the chicken burger and so I put my faith in her and followed her advice. And when it arrived, again, it was inconsistent and showed how close the line can be between getting it right and missing the mark. The coating was crunchy, crinkly and gnarly, but to me a little overcooked. And underneath, the chicken was still slightly bouncy, not breaking into shreds on collision with a ravenous set of incisors. This was soaked in buttermilk like the wings, but something had gone wrong here.

And it was a pity because it had the makings of an excellent burger. Arguably with tweaks to the chicken and the coating, given the nicely proportioned bun and the very well done buffalo sauce, this could be a chicken burger to rival the one at Honest. But as it was, again, the execution let it down. If you’re going to set out your stall to do the best burgers in town, a town which has seen many burger contenders come and go over the course of over a decade, you have to get it more right than this.

Zoë’s beefburger was easily the best dish of the night, although that was a low bar in this very fancy bar. She’d chosen the “Cheese Eyes” – no idea what that name is even meant to refer to – and it came not so much with a cheese skirt as the full fromage maxi dress, a truffled cheese sauce bursting its banks and escaping for the plate in every direction. Zoë absolutely loved this dish, from the patty to the cheese, to the truffle, to the onions and roasted garlic butter and beyond. I didn’t get to try any, but as I didn’t I asked what felt to me to be the most pertinent question.

“How does it compare to Honest?”

“This is every bit as good as Honest. I’d come here and have this again.”

Siren charges extra for fries, just under three quid, which potentially pushes the price point above Honest – although at least it gives you the option to order one portion between two, which is what we did. Siren’s fries, as it happens, are excellent: skin on, crispy and golden and thoroughly agreeable, even if they dish them up in a metal cup which just means they’ll go cold quicker. But none the less, I liked them a lot. I have no idea if they make them themselves, but it would be nice if they did.

We could have stayed for dessert – there are three on offer, which include a sticky toffee pudding with Broken Dream sauce and a cheescake – but I don’t think we could face it by that point. We’d seen enough, and been disappointed by enough, and already in the back of my mind I was thinking “oh brother, this review is going to involve going near a sacred cow” so I didn’t want to make matters worse by finding another thing not to like. I always rely on Zoë in these instances, my Jiminy Cricket, to rein me in if I’m going too far or saying something impolitic. But I asked, and she felt as underwhelmed by it as I had. Our meal for two, including a 12.5 service charge, came to just over eighty pounds. That’s a lot of money to spend eating food so middling.

So, did I convince you that I wanted Siren RG1 to be good and that I went without fixed ideas, as far as I was able? Maybe, maybe not, although I’d hope that after reading me for long enough you’ve seen enough instances where I expected something to be good and went away aghast, or turned up to a venue with no great expectations and left utterly delighted. If you do find me guilty, I have a number of other offences you’ll need to take into consideration. But the fact remains that, for me, even if you strip away the expectation and the hype, Siren RG1’s food needs to be a lot better than this.

It made me think – sorry to mention them again – that I wish Siren had someone like Sheldon Fernandes, formerly of the Lyndhurst, in their kitchen. He’s a man who instinctively knows how to do small plates and casual dining, and every rendition of anything even remotely like Siren’s menu I saw from the Lyndhurst’s kitchen was leagues ahead of this. Great burgers, flawless pork belly, Korean fried chicken that actually uses Korean flavours and cauliflower wings you’d flog your grandma to taste. By contrast, Siren’s food is exceptionally lacklustre.

But let’s not compare Siren to a business that’s no longer trading, because that helps nobody. What’s more of a concern is that not far from Siren are places that do much of this better. I’ve already mentioned Honest, but it’s worth doing so again: their chicken burger is far better than Siren’s, their beef burger apparently on a par. They don’t sell a huge amount of beers, but the ones they do are excellent and considerably more reasonably priced than Siren’s.

Even more concerning, though, is that although the beer offering isn’t even in the same ballpark as Siren’s, when it comes to food I would probably pick the Oakford Social Club over Siren. Their fried chicken is good, their range is decent and if they don’t take as many risks at least they don’t fail as singularly as Siren has with its chicken bites and its pork belly. And again, we’re back to where I came in: I was disappointed when Siren decided to centre on burgers and slightly mollified when they also had a focus on small plates. But this menu, with an okay burger and some iffy small plates, doesn’t bear out the quality that was promised by Siren’s social media enthusing about their painstaking research and love of burgers.

I keep thinking, too, that the bricks and mortar craft beer places I’ve been to – not the likes of Phantom or Double-Barrelled, but permanent sites – do this far better. In Bristol Small Bar, Left Handed Giant’s equivalent to Siren RG1, offers fried chicken from Wings Diner which is absolutely excellent. Next door they have taken over a place, Renato’s, that pairs beer with great pizza. Earlier this year I went to Mikkeller’s brewpub in Farringdon, where they offer outrageously good fried chicken by Lucky’s. The quality of the food at Siren RG1 doesn’t match any of those places: the issue isn’t that they’ve chosen largely to focus on one thing, just that they haven’t done it well.

I feel, more than usual, that I’m sticking my head above the parapet saying all this. And I expect that if Siren responds at all to this it will be in a reasonable and balanced way that makes me look (and feel) very small indeed. But I think I’m right on this one. They have a great spot, great beer and a great concept. They could do very nicely even just serving middling food. But I don’t think that will be enough – for me, for their customers and for Reading as a whole. But more importantly if I know anything about Siren, given what I’ve seen in over ten years of watching their brand, I don’t think it will be enough for them either.

Siren RG1 – 6.4
21 Friar Street, RG1 1HR
0118 4027573

https://www.sirencraftbrew.com/our-venues/reading-bar

Bar review: The Grumpy Goat

On February 17, 2023November 23, 2023 By ediblereadingIn Reviews5 Comments

The Grumpy Goat closed in October 2023. I’ve left the review up for posterity.

As I will probably say many times more before the year is out – apologies in advance for that – my blog celebrates its tenth birthday this year. August 2023 will mark a full decade since this website was registered and the first blog post went up, promising weekly independent reviews of Reading restaurants. I’m still trying to decide whether to do anything to mark the occasion, although I’m well aware that it’s far more meaningful to me than it probably is to any of you.

In most respects, 2013 was a year much like any other in Reading’s restaurant scene. Many of the establishments that opened that year have long since gone the way of the dodo – Kyklos, La Courbe and the Lobster Room, for instance, are now mere footnotes. And the landscape has changed significantly since those pre-Brexit days; some of the town’s institutions, like Mya Lacarte and the Reading Post, indelibly part of the fabric of the town back then, have since been consigned to the history books.

But my blog is not the only survivor of that year. Lincoln Coffee continues to trade on Kings Road and will celebrate a decade in December. A few minutes closer into town, House Of Flavours also hits the ten year mark this year. As does Five Guys: remember how excited everybody was about Five Guys, back in the day? And last but very much not least we have the Grumpy Goat, the subject of this week’s review.

Not that I would describe the Grumpy Goat as a survivor, because that doesn’t remotely do it justice. It has thrived over the last ten years, taking a chance on its little site in Harris Arcade well ahead of the growing interest in craft beer. Back then, two of its best selling breweries were Bingham’s and West Berkshire: neither is still going today. You have to remember that Grumpy Goat opened pre-Double-Barrelled, pre-Phantom, pre-Elusive Brewing, the year after Wild Weather started; Reading’s beer scene was in its infancy, to put it lightly.

Many years later the Grumpy Goat is one of the main players in a craft beer renaissance in Reading, plugged into all our local breweries, stocking fascinating stuff from further afield and running the hugely successful Craft Theory festival at South Street showcasing beers from Berkshire and beyond. In April, in collaboration with Blue Collar, it is bringing Cheese Feast back to Forbury Gardens for the first time since the pandemic.

It’s not just that, though. The Grumpy Goat outgrew its initial premises and in a bold step, and a boldly timed one at that, it moved across town to Smelly Alley in November 2020. You remember the winter of 2020, right? When Christmas was cancelled with about a week’s notice and we didn’t know what tier we were in? A brave time to open a much bigger shop, and no mistake.

Yet the Grumpy Goat got through that, and the following summer they started serving toasted sandwiches. They were everywhere on social media, it seemed – I saw photo after photo of golden crusts and oozing middles, all of which made me peckish. But they only had seating at a couple of barrels at that point, and for one reason or another I never got round to reviewing them.

And then the final piece of the jigsaw came last August, when the Grumpy Goat opened its long-promised upstairs bar, open daytimes and evenings, with plenty of seating and eight beers on draft. Shamefully I didn’t manage to visit it last year, but it was always high on my priority list for this one, so Zoë and I made a beeline there on Saturday to see how its toasties ranked in the pantheon of Great Reading Toasties, amid the likes of Shed and Madoo.

First things first, I love what they’ve done with the space. Whoever designed it has a terrific eye and it has a simple, sophisticated colour palette: gorgeous racing green panelling, crisp white tiles and dusky pink walls. It’s broken up into zones and split level – the big tables nearest the window have tasteful banquettes and the lower level, nearer the bar, is a mixture of high and low tables. When I saw pictures I wasn’t sure it would be a place to linger, but in the flesh it truly is. What’s more, it’s emphatically grown-up and really nicely done.

During the day, the menu mainly revolves around toasted sandwiches and a handful of cheese and charcuterie boards. They stop serving toasties at 4, and from 6 they add a handful of small plates to the options. All of this, again, seems well thought out and the choice is reassuringly compact. In the evening the items on the menu don’t feel like the main event – they’re something to have with beer – whereas at lunchtime it’s all about those toasties. It’s worth adding that for both the toasties and the cheeseboard, vegan options are available.

Prices, for the town centre, are slightly higher than average so a toastie will cost you between eight pounds and eight fifty, the boards are between ten and twelve. Bread and pastries are from Rise, and coffee is by Anonymous so the Grumpy Goat has done a bang-up job of teaming up with local independents.

Let’s start with the coffee, because it was revelatory. Anonymous not only provided the coffee but also trained the staff, and the end result was a latte which was right up there with any you can get in central Reading – glossy, beautifully made and wonderfully balanced. I don’t know whether the Grumpy Goat would necessarily want people using its upstairs as a cafe, but the coffee is worth a trip in its own right.

And credit to them for fully embracing Anonymous’ coffee – unlike, say, Café Yolk who started out using them before switching to the inferior Kingdom Coffee, no doubt for financial reasons. Speaking of financial reasons, the coffee was a little more expensive than at the likes of Workhouse but, for me, it was worth every penny.

On to the toasties, then. The menu lists five, one of them vegan, and there was a monthly special on too, although we didn’t try it. Zoë had earmarked The Blue, made with stilton, walnuts, apple and honey, before we even crossed the threshold and that probably tells you quite enough about it. I wasn’t offered a single bite, but the vocal enthusiasm it was greeted with was enough encouragement to order it next time, although I can take or leave walnuts. Similarly, if blue cheese isn’t for you I imagine you’ll give this a wide berth. All I can tell you is that it looked pretty good from where I was sitting.

I’d chosen The Classic, because I thought it was as good a place to begin as any. This was all about simplicity, so there were just the two ingredients – toasted Winchester cheese (one of my favourite hard cheeses) and candied jalapeños from the Preservation Society. The Grumpy Goat sells the latter, incidentally, by the jar and I highly recommend taking some home as, in my experience, they pep up pretty much everything.

It has to be said that the Grumpy Goat believe in doing a limited number of things extremely well, and if more restaurants and cafés adopted this approach the world would be an infinitely better place. So it was impossible to fault the toastie – perfectly done, burnished on the outside and a molten mess in the middle. Not for them the lukewarm centre or the schoolboy error of sticking a napkin underneath it.

In a way, it has to be perfect because it’s so visually unprepossessing – and although the bread is local sourdough it somehow looks a little unspecial, which is a pity. But the flavours were knockout; I might have liked more candied jalapeños, but I can eat the bastard things out of a jar, so my view on this is probably not to be trusted. Was it worth eight pounds? That’s a tricky one. Who knows what’s worth anything any more? Personally, I was more than happy to pay eight pounds for it.

And in that Reading toastie hall of fame, it definitely earns a spot on the podium. The best cheese toasties I’ve ever had were from a pair of sisters who used to knock them up at Blue Collar’s events under the catchy name of Gourmet Cheese Toasties. This was pretty close – perhaps not quite as big, rugged and hefty but still a deeply, deeply enjoyable lunch. I wasn’t sure about the celery with it: it made me wish for some pickled celery, really, to add a little sharpness, but the toastie was fantastic none the less.

We’d saved room for dessert so we had a couple of chocolate brownies, also made by Rise with the genius addition of a little of Siren Craft’s award winning Broken Dream breakfast stout. If I’ve had a better brownie in Reading, I honestly can’t remember it – this was a generous, fudgy, indulgent slab of sublimity with just the faintest whisper of coffee from the beer. Yours for three pounds thirty, and a steal at that price.

All told, our coffee, toasties and brownies came to just over thirty quid. In terms of Reading’s indies, that price probably puts it in the same bracket as Shed and Picnic, with better coffee than both and better value than the latter. Service was extremely good, very likeable and largely from owners Anne-Marie, who was working behind the bar, and Charlie who was behind the counter downstairs.

I did also try some of the beers, so for completeness’ sake I should mention that too. I loved the fact that everything was available in thirds or two-thirds – no big bloating pints here – and that there’s always an alcohol free option on the wall. I tried Elusive’s Brave Noise, which was a little too harshly piney for my liking, and a beautiful sessionable pale from Herefordshire’s Odyssey, a microbrewery I’d never heard of, before finishing off with a third of Good King Henry, a stunning imperial stout which set off that brownie perfectly.

Imperial stouts in particular always amaze me – that you can get a third of a pint of something so carefully and superbly made for less than the cost of a glass of crappy wine in most pubs. That said, the Grumpy Goat looks to have an excellent selection of wine too (although most of it by the bottle only) and if you want a beer from downstairs there’s a modest surcharge to drink it in. We were pretty much the first customers at noon and by the time we reluctantly headed back out onto Smelly Alley, a couple of hours later, every table was occupied and buzzing. Nearly every one had taken delivery of multiple cheese toasties.

I suspect many of you have already been to the Grumpy Goat, and so your reaction to this review might be a combination of what took you so long? and didn’t I say it was great? If so, well done: you win. Even so I was delighted to love the place as much as I did. If this was the end goal – and given the Grumpy Goat’s ambitions so far you wouldn’t bet that it is – it’s the culmination of ten skilful, patient years.

They’ve spent that time building a customer base and a huge amount of loyalty, experimenting, branching out, finding producers and partners, innovating through lockdown, expanding despite the dismal headwinds and finally, not a moment too soon, creating a beautiful space slap bang in the centre of town that isn’t a pub, isn’t a bar, isn’t a shop and isn’t a café. Why limit yourself, when you can do all four things so well at the same time?

So hats off to the Grumpy Goat for what really is an impressive achievement: it’s hard not to argue that the Grumpy Goat is easily the most significant thing that happened to Reading’s food scene back in 2013. As a fellow survivor of that year, I have to hand it to them.

The Grumpy Goat – 8.3
7 Union Street, RG1 1EU
0118 9581765

https://www.thegrumpygoat.co.uk

Pub review: The Dairy

On July 29, 2022September 28, 2025 By ediblereadingIn Reviews3 Comments

Three months ago I wrote about the quiet revolution taking place at Reading University’s bars. Park House, always one of Reading’s best kept secrets for an al fresco drink, underwent a surprising but convincing transformation this year: out went the cheesy chips and in came a menu that made all the right noises – listing suppliers, talking about provenance and using both local producers and the university’s own beef.

I went, I tried it and I was pleasantly surprised – so much so, in fact, that when I put together my updated list of Reading’s best spots to eat outdoors Park House bagged a place. Some people missed the cheesy chips, apparently. But there’s no accounting for taste: some people are going to miss Boris Johnson.

But could lightning strike twice? That was the question Zoë and I asked ourselves after I met her from work and we ambled to the Dairy on a golden midsummer evening. We strolled past the Turks Head (you can tell it’s glorious weather when even sitting outside the Turks looks tempting), past the sedate, leafy thoroughfare of Kendrick Road, and I thought to myself that it was moments like these I should be storing up in my head, so I could turn them over in my mind when the clocks went back and the feeling of sun on my skin was a distant memory.

The Dairy also revamped its menu in 2022 and makes the same claims as Park House when it comes to where they get their ingredients from. Bread from Waring’s, eggs from Beechwood Farm, all the right noises, all that jazz. But I was particularly keen to see if the Dairy had raised its game because, to be honest, it could easily have done so just by buying in some ready meals from M&S.

Or, for that matter, Asda. My previous visit to the Dairy on duty, back at the start of 2019, had been a grim experience with lukewarm, chewy curry and a chicken burger which, underneath its modish charcoal bun, was as wan and tasteless as Jacob Rees Mogg. So, did lightning strike twice or was it more a case of fool me twice, shame on me? I can honestly say I approached the Dairy with no real hunch as to how this one would play out.

Pub review: Park House

On April 29, 2022September 28, 2025 By ediblereadingIn Reviews3 Comments

I try my best, doing this restaurant reviewing lark, to visit places I think are likely to be either good or interesting, or ideally both; with a few notable exceptions, I don’t go anywhere where I think I’m definitely going to have a bad meal. And even if I have my reservations, I try to turn up with an open mind, ready to find the positives in my experience, however difficult that is. Sometimes the gods smile on me and I have a run of beautiful meals, one after the other. And that’s brilliant – exceptional meals are easier to write about, and people enjoy reading about them. Conversely, the worst thing is a run of bad meals. A succession of stinkers. That does rather break the soul.

The worst run I can remember started at the end of 2019. It began with a truly awful dinner at TGI Friday, and continued with the grisly spectacle of doner meat nachos at German Doner Kebab. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was going to the Dairy, the university bar and kitchen just down the road from the MERL. I’d always loved drinking there, especially on a hot day, but the food was bloody awful. That made three cruddy meals on the spin and nearly two months without enjoying a meal on duty: it was the kind of vale of tears that makes you seriously think about chucking the whole thing in.

Then at the start of this year, there was a surprising development: the Dairy published a completely new menu on Instagram. And it made all the right noises – beef came from the University’s farm four miles down the road, eggs were from Beechwood Farm (did you know that Beechwood Farm was run by Reading University alumni? I didn’t) and all the bread was supplied by Waring’s. Not only that, but the menu was full of the kind of things you might actually want to eat. Crispy fried chicken and pickled watermelon burger? Brisket and blue cheese ciabatta? Jerk spiced plantain and halloumi skewers? Count me in!

Something was clearly afoot at the University because a week ago Park House, its bar on campus, published a brand new spring menu. Again, it all looked distinctly tempting, and again the provenance was called out, with the beef coming from the University’s farm and name checks for the excellent Nettlebed Creamery and the Cotswolds’ Hobbs House Bakery. (Not everyone was overjoyed, mind you: I really can’t believe you won’t sell cheesy chips any more, said one comment). Park House has always been one of my very favourite places for a pint in the sunshine, but was it possible that it also offered great, affordable food under the radar? Zoë and I ventured out on a sunny spring evening to put it to the test.

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