Restaurant review: Bombay Brothers

On July 12, 2024July 12, 2024 By ediblereadingIn Reviews5 Comments

I’m grateful for every single one of my readers, but there’s a special place in my affections for people who tip me off about places. Whether it’s my West Reading mole who keeps me posted on the comings and goings of the Oxford Road, my town centre informant who sends me pictures of shuttered restaurants and “coming soon” advertisements, or my other half who is always telling me about new businesses I’ve never even heard of springing up on Instagram, they form an invaluable network helping me keep track of where I ought to try next. I’d compare them to the Baker Street Irregulars, except they’re all very much adults and their catchment area extends far beyond Baker Street.

In particular I very much appreciate people who get in touch to tell me to try somewhere out, whether it’s already on my list or not. When I review somewhere new, there are always a few people who come out of the woodwork to tell me they’ve been going there for ages and it’s great, but only a fraction of those people ever pop up in my DMs raving about the place before I’ve been.

Maybe they like to keep the good places to themselves, maybe they assume I’ll get to them before too long. Or perhaps it doesn’t even cross their minds to contact me, which is fair enough. But it means that when people do recommend somewhere, I’m always especially grateful.

This week’s review came from a message like that, from a reader of the blog who told me to try Bombay Brothers, the Indian restaurant on the ground floor of Kings Walk which opened around the beginning of last year. She specifically raved about Bombay Brothers’ railway lamb, saying it reminded her of the one her grandma used to make. I couldn’t turn my nose up at a recommendation like that, so on a dreary July evening I hopped on the bus into town to give it a whirl.

It’s strange how busy Kings Walk (now apparently called The Village) is these days, and even on a Tuesday night many of its restaurants were doing nicely. Pho looked very crowded, and a fair number of tables were occupied at Fluffy Fluffy, the pancake place opposite. Soju was rammed, and reaping the rewards of doubling its capacity. Even Ding Tea, which is open until a mind boggling half nine at night, was doing a tidy trade; I didn’t go upstairs, but from past experience Chilis, on the top floor, would have been equally bustling.

But at the back of Kings Walk, it was a different story. Jieli Hotpot was closed, as was My Warsaw. And then there was Bombay Brothers. The lights were on, and a man stood outside forlornly waiting to wave people in. But going inside, at just before seven, only one table was occupied. And the interior was a tad strange.

It felt to me like a restaurant that was designed to be full, glitzy and in your face – the way Coconut always seems to be on a Friday night, according to its Instagram account – but without customers it just felt odd. The tables were closely packed into the featureless room in a way that suggested that if it had been full, it wouldn’t have been fun. The chairs looked the part, kind of, but seemed narrow and unforgiving. The music was exceptionally loud, given that I had just increased the total occupancy of the room by 50%, and there was a weirdly synthetic smell in the air.

I was seated at a small table for two by the window. Which was fine, I guess, but I think they could have got away with giving me a bigger table. In the course of my time there – which, as we will see, wasn’t very long – the other table left and a table for four came in. They were far from busy. My server, who was absolutely lovely but if anything seemed a little shaken by having customers, brought over a little wireless table lamp and explained to me that you could change the colour by tapping the top. I saw these quite a lot on my travels in Montpellier a few months ago, but I didn’t see anyone try so hard to turn it into a selling point.

Bombay Brothers’ menu is large and comprehensive, but also quite baffling. There was the standard menu, a set dinner menu (which at £21 for two courses, rice and naan felt like tempting value) and then a little blackboard plonked at the table with specials on it. This was a longish list of additional dishes, most of which you could find in any Indian restaurant, without prices on it.

The drinks menu was incomplete – the two draft beers I could clearly see at the bar weren’t listed anywhere, and nor were the two types of cider I ended up choosing from. I’m well aware that it’s difficult not to sound snippy when you’re critical in this way, but it just felt like the restaurant probably had enough time on its hands to sort mistakes like that.

The core menu definitely featured some Maharashtrian dishes – vada pav, chicken Kolhapuri, Chowpatty bhel puri and fish Koliwada all made an appearance. But other regions, like Hyderabad, were name checked and as is pretty much mandatory these days there was of course a large Indo-Chinese section. For me, the menu felt large and scattergun, and I wish they’d had the courage to live up to the backstory on their website, by zeroing in on dishes from Mumbai.

On the plus side, I didn’t detect any of the strange consultancy so prevalent in Masakali’s menu: no Walker’s crisps here. Like Chilis upstairs, pricing was on a continuum where starters didn’t really cost appreciably less than the mains. Perhaps this is a thing now.

My starter was the best thing I ate, and was pretty promising. Achari chicken tikka was as tender as billed, but still had a little char where it was needed. Plenty of yoghurt in the marinade, I suspect, and the texture was hard to fault. It looked the part too, I liked the fact that it came with a properly dressed salad and came out beautifully plated, without some kind of sizzling gimmick. But I wanted bolder flavours: the menu talks about ginger playing a starring role but I didn’t get a lot of it. And the chutney that came with it was watery and bland, not singing with mint and coriander as one from Clay’s or, say, Kamal’s Kitchen would do.

Even so I rather enjoyed this, and the cider I’d ordered – Peacock, an Indian collaboration with Aspall which was allegedly designed to complement spicy food – went nicely with it. When another server, the chap that had been standing outside trying to lure people in, took my plate away he said “it wasn’t too spicy, was it?” which seemed to me to be part of the problem. I’d have liked it to be unapologetically spicy, rather than have this kind of question as my empty plate was taken away. “No, it was nice. Spicy isn’t a problem” I said, but I’m not sure whether he heard me or believed me.

Now, at this point I have to mention possibly the biggest problem with Bombay Brothers – and frustratingly, one of the easiest ones to fix. I reckon my starter came out no more than ten minutes after I placed my order, which to me is on the quick side.

I feel like I’ve said this many times before on this blog, but although I understand that when a restaurant has very few customers it’s tempting to bang out orders fast it’s a temptation they ought to resist. People don’t go to a restaurant to be rushed in this way, or at least not a restaurant of the kind I’m assuming Bombay Brothers is trying to be. If I wanted to eat that quickly I would go to Shree Krishna Vada Pav, or Marugame Udon, or any of a number of other places in Reading. And I’d spend a lot less money in the process.

And I’m afraid it didn’t stop there because honestly, no more than five minutes after my starter plate had been whipped away, along came my main. And again, I’m trying to be constructive rather than chippy or snarky, but a restaurant that has been open since early 2023 has had quite long enough not to be making this kind of mistake. But never mind, because this was the railway lamb. Did it live up to all that promise?

Unfortunately not. It looked attractive – to Bombay Brothers’ credit presentation is not a weak suit – but it flattered to deceive. The sauce managed that rare combination of being oily and watery at the same time, and although it did have some heat I didn’t find it compelling in the way that dishes from Clay’s, Chili’s or Pappadams are.

But also, you had to like the sauce a lot because there wasn’t much meat: I think I counted half a dozen pieces of lamb cloaked in that sauce. Perfectly pleasant pieces of lamb, but not especially big ones. But what was even weirder is that there were about four big pieces of bone in there, too. It was striking, because the menu hadn’t mentioned that the railway lamb was on the bone.

But the thing is, it wasn’t. All the pieces of lamb – all six of them – were floating around unattached to the bone, and the pieces of bone didn’t have any meat on them. I’ve had curry off the bone, I’ve had curry on the bone. I know this probably marks me out as a flavour heathen, but the former is my preference. But curry with the bone? That’s a new one on me. If that had had the effect that the gravy was thickened and boosted by all those shreds of slow cooked lamb, I might have been all for it. But that wasn’t the case.

All in all, from taking my seat to finishing my main, thirty minutes had passed. And that might have been okay if the food was an absolute steal, or if it was utterly magnificent: well, maybe only if it was a steal, because it’s a crying shame to rush magnificent food. But the truth is that this was neither, and as I asked for my bill – which came as swiftly as everything else – I found myself wondering what Bombay Brothers was like at its absolute best, because I couldn’t shake the feeling that I hadn’t seen that.

My dinner came to thirty-six pounds, not including tip. That’s just over a pound a minute.

I really hate writing reviews like this, because I’ve read so many indifferent reviews of independent restaurants that have a sneering tone – Bristol reviewers specialise in this – and sneering is the last thing I would want to do. But it’s hard not to see all the problems with Bombay Brothers rather than the potential. The room lacks homeliness, comfiness or charm. The music needs to be turned down. The menu – or rather multiple menus – feel large and unfocused. And the timing issues, for me, are one of the most basic mistakes you can make. I’m trying to be constructive in pointing these things out, I promise, but it feels like a lot to sort out.

And I was hoping I could say something to the effect of “But never mind! All that can be fixed, but the food is amazing”. But I can’t, sadly: the food I had was a mixture of the quite nice and the nowhere near good enough. I should say, in the interests of balance, that this is one review where I really wish I hadn’t been dining solo, because two different starters and two different mains could have revealed a very different restaurant, and I might well have been wrong. I might well be wrong anyway: it’s been known to happen.

But I worry for Bombay Brothers. Because when you’re in a mall with Chilis upstairs and Bhel Puri House round the corner, on a road which also boasts Pappadams, Madras Flavours, House Of Flavours and Shree Krishna Vada Pav, you simply have to be better than this.

Even the person who recommended Bombay Brothers and that railway lamb to me – and I feel profoundly sorry that I didn’t agree with her about it – told me that she only went to Bombay Brothers in the first place because Chilis was full. I fear that tells its own story. And the thing is, it’s true that Bombay Brothers may get some new customers that way. But I’m not sure, on this showing, that they’ll be able to hang on to them.

Bombay Brothers – 6.2
3-4 Kings Walk, Kings Street, RG1 2HG
0118 9566666

https://bombaybrothers.co.uk

Restaurant review: Chilis

On May 31, 2024May 31, 2024 By ediblereadingIn Reviews8 Comments

The week after you get back from holiday is the absolute worst, isn’t it? One minute you’re loafing in the sun, you can have a lie in if you want to, your hardest morning decision is where to grab coffee and then where to have lunch, your post-lunch coffee, maybe a snack, your pre-prandial drink, your dinner, your post-dinner bar of choice. On and on it goes until you’re a modern-day lotus eater, free of cares, a flâneur and a gourmand, carefree and arguably in need of detox. Little, if anything, is finer than reaching that stage.

And then it’s over. The plane touches down at miserable old Shatwick, and you’re reintroduced to the M25. When you get home your clothes all need to be washed, the fridge is bare and there’s this thing called work you have to get up for at something ridiculous like half-seven in the morning. Just like that you’re back in a life of dreary cold packaged sandwiches and cobbling together a meal plan, of not drinking during the week, watching your calorie intake and hanging in there until payday.

And even though it’s May, it seems to be raining most of the time. I don’t care how much you might love your job: objectively speaking, if you compare it to a holiday there’s only ever going to be one winner. Why does anybody do it?

This year, for me at least, that comedown has been even more of a cliff edge than usual. Because not only was I back from holiday, but I was back from honeymoon – I got married, although I haven’t talked about it much – and my next trip away won’t involve planes, trains or automobiles but instead a white van and the removal men as I burn a week’s leave next month moving house.

So although Zoë and I did the supermarket shop as usual, with a sense of resignation, sticking to the plan wasn’t easy last week. Instead there were accidental takeaways, or wanders over to Bakery House or Honest, anything to make real life just a little more unreal, even if only for a short while. You could call it a transition phase, you could call it a soft landing. You could even call it a cry for help: probably it’s a little of all three.

On the plus side, it meant there was a slight role reversal. In the run up to my nuptials it was more difficult to persuade Zoë to come with me on duty, a combination of trying to shed that last couple of pre-marital pounds and save those last few pre-marital other pounds. Now that I’ve been elevated to the dizzy heights of husband? It turns out that Zoë can be persuaded to eat out during the week, especially if it happens to be her turn to cook.

I may have used this to my benefit, in truth. Bet you can’t be fucked to cook the salmons tonight I messaged her, as she was on the train back from London. How did you guess? came the reply. Failing at this, aren’t I. After a bit of plea bargaining – it was raining, so nowhere too far out of town (my wife does not like the rain), and nowhere that involved walking away from home only to head back (my wife also doesn’t like going back on herself) we settled for Chilis: central, a short walk from the station, potentially interesting.

It opened late in 2022 upstairs in Kings Walk, where Art Of Siam had closed something like seven years previously, a slightly incongruous second branch of the Indian restaurant right next to Newbury station. When I worked in Newbury I must have walked past it a hundred times and never considered going in, but I’d heard some decent reports of it. And between Christmas and New Year last December I’d had dinner there as part of a big and group with Zoë’s schoolfriends and their respective husbands and boyfriends: I’d enjoyed what I had but was deliberately enjoying myself without critically appraising it. Besides, that time of year is never the best one to judge any restaurant.

So I made a mental note to get to it in 2024, and here we were. Walking through Kings Walk – or the Village, as I think it’s technically called – I was struck again by the proliferation of restaurants on the ground floor. Bành Mì QB was still going strong and there were a handful of people in Jieli, the hotpot restaurant which opened last summer. By contrast Bombay Brothers, another newish Indian restaurant, seemed to have no more than three customers. But upstairs, in their big back room, Chilis was doing a roaring trade – plenty of tables were occupied, including a huge group of twenty diners who seemed to be having a marvellous time.

The interior of Chilis looked a little bit thrown together. Some of that was about me knowing that they’d inherited a fair amount of it – the wooden lattice on the ceiling, the panelled walls, the faux shuttered windows facing out onto the top floor of Kings Walk – from the previous occupants. But also the chairs didn’t match: some said restaurant, some said function room and only the ones in the smaller front room looked like recent purchases. And while I’m in full-on restaurant curmudgeon mode, I’m not sure about the wisdom of putting a giant TV on the wall, even if it’s showing attractive vistas on a loop. The only other place I can remember that did likewise was Bagheera, and I didn’t hugely like it there either.

But never mind. This might be a consequence of Chilis’ first branch being out West Berkshire way, but they had Maharaja IPA by Renegade on their drinks list – in bottles not draft, but a welcome sight nonetheless – and it slipped down beautifully as I checked over the menu. Again as a jaded restaurant reviewer, although it could have been the post-holiday blues, it felt like it covered too much ground. I counted over thirty starters and even more mains, curries and biryanis and kottu parotha of every persuasion, along with fried rice and noodle dishes.

It was all a bit much, and the pricing was interesting too: most of the starters were north of ten pounds, many of them barely costing less than the main courses. I think part of that was because a lot of dishes, including Indo-Chinese small plates, were all lumped together as starters, when what they really were was dishes that were not curries, but the overall effect was that nearly everything cost between ten and fifteen pounds and it wasn’t necessarily easy to structure a meal.

The one thing that reassured me, though, was the restaurant’s confidence. A sandwich board outside said that if you didn’t like a dish, you didn’t have to pay for it. And the menu said something similar, that if you didn’t enjoy any dish they’d make you something else. If you didn’t enjoy the replacement either, they’d take both off the menu. That, and the general hubbub, made me think that there might be more to this place than met the eye: either the crowd at that long table were regulars, or they were about to game the system in a big way.

The last of the inauspicious signs was the delay. Now in fairness to Chilis, there’s not a lot that can be done when you turn up at a restaurant without a reservation and a table for twenty has got there just before you but not started eating yet. So although my stomach thought my throat had been cut, I also appreciate that this was just bad luck and bad timing. I found myself looking at the other, smaller groups dotted round the restaurant, thinking they were here before me, they were here before me, were they here before me?

And under those circumstances, I guess our starters turning up about forty-five minutes after we ordered wasn’t terrible going. It felt it at the time though – a combination of post-work peckishness, post-holiday blues and racing through that first beer. But here’s the thing: when they arrived, they were everything I could possibly have wanted them to be. Sizeable, piping hot and far, far better executed than I had expected. Although Chilis menu appears to span quite a lot of India, from my limited understanding, I’d tried to go for options that served as reference dishes.

I often order gobi Manchurian, hoping against hope to find something that even vaguely approaches the high water mark of Clay’s version of this dish. And I never do, finding instead something that is mulchy, oversweetened, lacking in complexity and usually a little overcooked. But what was going on here? Chilis version was good. I mean, really good. Deep, dark and sticky with good poke of heat, but also with plenty going on and, crucially, some crunch which hadn’t been dampened down by the sauce.

Ironically it cost ever so slightly more than Clay’s rendition, but it was a far bigger portion and, for my money at least, almost impossible to fault. If you gave this and Clay’s gobi Manchurian to people in a blind taste, I think it would do very well indeed.

Could it have been a fluke? It didn’t appear so from its companion. Chicken 65, appropriately, is also a dish that used to be on Clay’s menu, right at the beginning, although it’s since been removed. Again, it’s a dish I’ve ordered in many places without ever feeling like it hit the spot – I particularly remember the middling pellets of chicken which passed for this dish at Biryani Boyzz – but this was terrific. It got that slightly acrid flavour right, giving it fire and interest without being one note, and the chicken was dry, tender and rather marvellous.

I might have liked a little texture, maybe some cashews to mix things up slightly, but perhaps that’s what the shredded cabbage was intended to achieve. Zoë certainly thought so, because she ate some of it and said that it added something to the dish, but I had my eyes on the prize and didn’t bother. And as with the gobi Manchurian, this was a generous helping: if this is what having a £10 starter actually means, in 2024, I’m all for it.

With that log jam sorted and our initial ravenousness sated, with the large table ploughing contentedly through industrial quantities of food (and not, as far as I could see, asking for any replacements) the pace settled down to eminently civilised.

The Chilis selection of curries, as I said, is huge but it isn’t, at least, an infinitely configurable mix and match of protein and sauce: some dishes can be done with lamb, chicken, prawns or paneer, but not all of them. And it has more interesting regional dishes on it, alongside the less exciting kormas and jalfrezis, including some – sorry to mention them again – that I’ve only previously seen on the Clay’s menu, like chepala pelusu.

My choice was a dish I do vaguely remember from the restaurant I’ve mentioned quite enough already, gongura lamb. It’s a curry made with sorrel, or hibiscus as the menu puts it, and I remember it being fascinating and a little out of the ordinary. And again, backing up the promise on their menu, I cannot imagine anybody sending it back. The gravy was a thick, deep, savoury lipsmacking thing, equally delicious scooped up with a nicely done, thin but pliable garlic naan or swirled into rice speckled with cumin.

And the lamb – well, it’s rare that I eat lamb in Reading’s Indian restaurants without a little trepidation that, like Russian roulette, you’ll chance upon the one gristly, bouncy bit that taints all the ones that are left. No such worry here – every piece was tender enough to break under a fork, and to mix in with that sauce. I’d got there a tad grumpy, through the rain, I’d waited a fair old while for the food to start coming – and yet here I was, definitely smiling.

Of course, the best restaurants are good at giving you something off the beaten track, if you want it, or letting you have the tried and tested if that’s what you need. After a day working to the core of the bone in the capital, followed by a train trek back home, Zoë was in the mood for the latter and so she went for butter chicken, many people’s benchmark for Indian restaurants across the country. And again, judged on its merits, for what it was, it was difficult to fault. The sauce had enough about it not to be a bland, sweet thing, and although it had a real feel of cosseting comfort about it, it wasn’t boring.

Zoë couldn’t finish it – because the portions at Chilis are so generous, not because it was disappointing – so I ate enough to understand why it’s my Australian family’s go-to choice when they hit an Indian restaurant in Reading. And crucially, this dish and my dish didn’t share a base sauce that had just had chunks of meat plonked in at the death. They didn’t both rely on chopped tomatoes and a generic masala mix. All four dishes we’d had were distinct, distinctive and interesting. And they represented the tip of the iceberg, in terms of what was on the menu.

Although Chilis does offer dessert – including gulab jamun, kheer, kulfi and nine different home made ice creams – we were just on the right side of obscenely full by then, so we paid up. I’ve not mentioned service, which does them a disservice because everybody who looked after us was uniformly lovely, interested and attentive. I don’t know if they felt like they had to be extra nice to make sure we didn’t feel like an afterthought with that massive, profitable table in the middle, but it didn’t feel like that.

No, I felt as special and welcome as I have anywhere, and I really felt like they cared that I had a good time, cared whether I liked the food. Our meal – all that food and four beers – came to ninety-six pounds, including a 12.5% optional service charge which they thoroughly deserved. Not cheap, but I left feeling full and happy, the post honeymoon comedown briefly at bay.

I’m aware that I’ve mentioned Clay’s a few times in this review and I can imagine this might attract predictable eye rolls from the usual suspects. In a way, I know it’s unhelpful – Clay’s is a proper outlier both in Reading and further afield, a restaurant that has been lauded in the national press and which, for my money, is better (and better value) than at least one Michelin starred Indian restaurant that I’ve been to. It is, in Reading terms, a once in a generation restaurant.

But it’s relevant here because I ordered a few dishes that I’ve had at Clay’s – and, sometimes, elsewhere. And if Chilis’ versions of them didn’t match that standard they really weren’t anywhere near as far off as you might expect. Masakali, for instance, tried to emulate Clay’s look and menu (and colour scheme) but, when I visited, never came close on quality or value. So having got that piece of benchmarking out of the way, where does Chilis sit among the rest of Reading’s Indian restaurants?

Well, that’s where it’s interesting. Comparisons with the casual, exclusively vegetarian options – SKVP, Madras Flavours, Bhel Puri House and Crispy Dosa – are tricky because it’s hardly like with like. Ditto for the plethora of biryani options available in town (and there are a lot). But when you look at Chilis’ actual peers and competitors, the likes of House Of Flavours, Pappadams, Royal Tandoori, even Masakali and Bagheera, the mid-market Indian restaurants across town, it’s hard not to conclude that, for food at least, Chilis can match any of them.

It’s by no means perfect: the room needs a little love, and the timings were a little skewed on the night, albeit for understandable reasons. But the welcome, the food – especially those small plates – and that Maharaja IPA redeemed practically all of that.

I keep coming back to that confidence in the menu, a confidence you see for the first time on the board outside before you even set foot through the front door. If I’d been a small print (or a big sandwich board) merchant and asked them to swap out one or more of my dishes, Chilis’ service is so good that I’ve no doubt they would have done it without batting an eyelid. But also, based on what I ate at least, I can’t imagine they get that request often.

Chilis – 8.2
The Village, Kings Walk, RG1 2HG
0118 9500446

https://reading.chilisrestaurant.co.uk

Café review: Filter Coffee House

On January 19, 2024October 19, 2024 By ediblereadingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

As of October 2024 Filter Coffee House has changed its interior layout and so is now takeaway only.

Filter Coffee House, a tiny café on Castle Street offering authentic South Indian coffee, opened last August. It occupies a unit which as far as I can remember used to be home to a very small, rather unsuccessful produce store by the people behind Tamp Culture (remember them?). I found myself stopping in last year a couple of weeks after Filter Coffee House opened and, slightly bending my usual rule to wait a month, I talked about it on social media.

I couldn’t help it. I waxed lyrical on Instagram about their coffee and, in particular, their banana bun, a confection quite unlike anything I’d ever eaten before. Not quite sweet, not quite savoury but glazed, complex and moreish, it was not the kind of thing you eat and forget. Quite the contrary: you want to tell the world about it. I loved it so much that when I put together my list of Reading’s 50 best dishes last September, as part of the blog’s 10th birthday celebrations, I snuck it in at number 47. I called it a little miracle.

Maybe I was jumping the gun but I had a feeling it was going to be huge, and I wanted my admiration of that banana bun to be a matter of public record as soon as possible. Because there are few four word combinations in the English language quite as satisfying, if you ask me, as I told you so.

Anyway, the amount of praise that bun has garnered on social media since has borne out my hunch. But not only that, if you follow Filter Coffee House’s hugely winning Instagram feed you’ll see that they’ve really flourished in the last five months. The month after they opened they teamed up with nearby Rise to expand their range of baked goods. In October they introduced a menu of Saturday specials, and in November they brought in a sandwich menu.

In December, naturally, there was a Christmas menu – the “Mistle-Toast” is still available, if you’re tempted – and now Filter Coffee House also stocks goodies by Cocolico, Reading’s vegan pâtissière. The overall picture is one of constant forward movement and innovation, and it shows no signs of stopping: last Sunday, for the first time, they had a stall at Caversham’s Artisan Market.

And yet, shamefully, with one thing and another I had not been back since that first visit back in August. Of all the places I’d neglected in the latter half of 2023, sorting this one was right at the top of my list. So last Saturday, lured by that specials menu and fresh from the elation of having bought our wedding rings in town, Zoë and I sauntered over, keen to see how things had progressed.

It was definitely compact – on a par with the likes of Mama’s Way – but Filter Coffee House is really cosy and welcoming. Just the four stools, three of which are up at the window where you get a big, sturdy ledge for your food and drink and a view out on to Castle Street. The pastries were all on display under perspex with an interesting mix of the conventional stuff Rise does – the last surviving pain au chocolat looked very enticing – and the more unconventional.

It was only later that I discovered that the “masala bomb” was Filter Coffee House’s take on a vada pav, but with the whole roll stuffed with masala rather than a deep fried potato fritter: if I’d known I’d have ordered one. Prices are extremely competitive throughout – that banana bun costs £1.50, the masala bomb £2.50, sandwiches start at £4. And the sandwiches are an interesting bunch too – they’re not wild combinations, and they skew more European than some of the menu, but I was tempted by the Arabian Prince, with falafel and pickled onions. Maybe next time.

But I was there for the specials, because I’d seen them crop up on Filter Coffee House’s Instagram stories on several Saturday mornings and they always looked really appealing. The menu proudly proclaimed that they all cost less than a fiver, which if anything didn’t do them justice as none of them topped four quid. All were vegetarian, a few were vegan, all were tempting. Most were savoury but one, steamed rice cakes stuffed with jaggery, was sweet.

I asked how big each of the dishes was and was told they were on the small side, so we ordered two each of our favourites and took our seats up at the window. That was, as it turned out, an error because they were both very well proportioned for sharing and, next time, I’d probably order more singleton dishes rather than doubling up.

But never mind – the food was easily good enough to make said next time a “when” rather than an “if”. The first of those dishes was a couple of the now legendary banana buns with a little cup of sambar. The cooking takes place in the basement, and these came up about a quarter of an hour after we placed our order. Five minutes later, the second portion materialised.

Eating the banana buns in this context was interesting, like seeing an old friend in a new place. On their own, that time back in August, I was struck by the interplay between the sweet and the savoury – sometimes it feels like only European cuisine so rigidly separates the two – the banana on one hand and the speckling of cumin seeds on the other. All those things were still present and correct, the whole thing with a fantastic glazed exterior and a doughy inside, hot enough that you needed asbestos fingers and with just enough oiliness to leave you requiring a napkin.

But having them with the sambar transformed them, making them more out and out savoury. And the sambar was excellent: I’m used to having it in some places in Reading and finding it a little watery and bland. This looked like it might be too, but it packed a punch with dried chillies in the mix. Tearing and dipping the bun made for a potent, warming experience not quite replicated anywhere else in town. If I was being critical, ever so slightly, I might have liked more sambar (they do charge something like 20p for extra) but what I really wanted was a better vessel more suitable for dipping and teasing out the last of it than a tiny, flimsy paper cup.

The second dish also came out in two waves, about five minutes apart, and for me was even better. From the moment I saw goli baje, fritters, on the menu I knew I would order them when I visited, but they exceeded my high expectations. The epitome of cooked then and there, they were irregular, knobbly, piping hot spheres of dough – golden on the outside, again too hot to touch and completely addictive. They were like doughnuts, or like doughnuts would be if they were savoury, just airy enough and shot through with little chunks of green chili. Hot, in other words, with a brilliant level of spice which built and built.

But of course there was coconut chutney – cooling and fresh – to dab the fritters in, over and over again. If the banana buns were how Filter Coffee House broke into Reading’s food consciousness, this wonder of a dish gave a pretty clear sign that they intended to stay there. In this case, even though you could happily have shared a portion of these with someone, I was absolutely delighted to have them to myself. Zoë felt the same way, although the way she phrased it (“these are really fucking good”) was all her. Personally, I’ve half a mind to go back tomorrow and have them again, although that sandwich menu is also calling to me.

Our first drink, also from the specials menu, was equally outrageously good. Masala hot chocolate was just an awesome drink – indulgent, sweet but not too sweet, packed with ginger and cardamom. “If they stuck a slug of espresso in this it could give C.U.P.’s mocha a run for its money” was Zoë’s verdict. I could see what she meant, but I thought it was perfect just as it was. I didn’t realise until later that it was also completely vegan, having been made with soya milk. If I’d known, I might have turned my nose up at it, so I’m glad I missed that detail. Even if the dishes I ordered and the others I’ve talked about don’t float your boat, it’s worth going on a Saturday just to try this.

We got talking to the owners when we’d finished eating, and they told us that business had been pretty good since they opened in August. They’d been really lucky with word of mouth, they said, and they had quite a lot of custom from the magistrates court opposite. The owners were exactly as I would have expected from their social media – enormously engaging, friendly and passionate about what they were doing. And, as so often, I found myself thinking how lucky we are in Reading that people like this still set up businesses that bring so much to the town.

Hearing about people from the magistrates’ court coming in to order their coffee made me realise we’d been remiss in not trying it ourselves, so we ordered a couple of filter coffees with milk just for completeness’ sake. I really enjoyed mine – totally different from the standard latte you can get in many other places in Reading, with a certain condensed milk sweetness that felt more cafe con leche than flat white. Our two drinks apiece and two small plates each came to a total of twenty-seven pounds, which is a bargain and a half.

I wish I’d got to Filter Coffee House sooner, and that I’d reviewed it last year. But actually, everything has turned out for the best – partly because they have spent five months doing really impressive work making their business realise its potential, knitting it into the fabric of Reading’s food scene and offering something genuinely unique.

But also I’m glad I waited because this is a really fitting review with which to kick off 2024. The blog has always been about celebrating independent businesses and people who are passionate about adding something to Reading, helping to challenge our reputation as a town full of featureless chain restaurants. Around five years ago that reputation was deeply unfair, but in the last five years I’m afraid the scales have tipped. So it’s positively life affirming to see that we can still attract places like Filter Coffee House, and that the situation is far from hopeless. My last review of last year, of the deeply charming Minas Café, went a long way to restoring my faith. Filter Coffee House – small, plucky and brilliant – may well have finished the job.

Filter Coffee House – 8.3
33 Castle Street, RG1 7SB
0118 4376484

https://filtercoffeehouse.sumupstore.com

Restaurant review: Pappadams

On July 28, 2023November 25, 2025 By ediblereadingIn Reviews5 Comments

Pappadams closed in November 2025 and is due to reopen as a new restaurant called Anjappar. I’ve left the review up for posterity.

I got an email from WordPress the other day confirming that they were renewing my domain name for another year and that, more than anything, reminded me that a significant anniversary was coming up: next month my blog turns 10 years old. What started as a little hobby has become, well, a slightly less little hobby but I can’t quite believe that a decade later I’m still reviewing restaurants and that people are still reading those reviews. There will be more about that in the weeks ahead – for which I apologise in advance – but it has left me in rather a reflective mood lately (and I apologise for that, too).

In the first year of the blog, back when Alt Reading and the Evening Post were still a thing, I published a total of 38 reviews of places in Reading. Of those 38 restaurants just over half are still trading today – a statistic which surprised me, although it does include the likes of Zero Degrees, Côte, Five Guys, Mission Burrito, Malmaison, Bel And The Dragon: chains who are still going, many years later.

But when I look back at the independent restaurants I visited in the first year of the blog, the ones that remain open in 2023, there are only three that I’ve never returned to since. Pau Brasil, although I know it has its fans, has never tempted me back. I’ve never got round to Coconut, although I did review their takeaway at the start of last year. And last but not least, there’s Pappadams, the subject of this week’s review.

Restaurant review: Bagheera at the Spread Eagle

On March 17, 2023October 12, 2025 By ediblereadingIn Reviews3 Comments

One of the best things to happen to Reading’s food scene during Covid wasn’t the influx of American chains blighting the town centre, complete with inexplicable queues for weeks. Rather it was the return of a welcome trend, with independent businesses setting up shop in the kitchens of established pubs, offering interesting menus in a way which minimised the commercial risk for all concerned. Everybody won, particularly Reading’s diners.

The notable proponents of this were in West Reading. At the Butler on Chatham Street you had Chef Stevie’s Caribbean Kitchen cooking up a storm, with beautiful dumplings, bronzed jerk chicken, moreish slabs of macaroni pie, plantain and so much more; I visited in the summer of 2021 and adored practically everything I ate. Further down the Oxford Road at the Spread Eagle, just next to Kensington Park, there was Banarasi Kitchen, offering an Indian menu with some regional specialities. I reviewed a takeaway from them early in 2021, and loved it.

All good things must come to an end, and by the end of last year both pubs had parted company with the businesses that had made them brilliant places to eat. At the Butler, it was Chef Stevie’s choice – he left to cook at Liquid Leisure in Windsor, only for the water park to close later that month in tragic circumstances. Now the Butler plays host to a business called The Toastily that serves toasties, breakfasts and that retro staple, the jacket spud. As for Chef Stevie, so far as I know he’s yet to turn up elsewhere, but if he ever does I will be there, ready and waiting to order.

The story with Banarasi Kitchen is a little more opaque, and began very curiously indeed. Last October the Spread Eagle made an announcement on Instagram. “We’re restructuring our management team” they proclaimed, language that sounded more IT and telecoms than hospitality. What did that mean for Banarasi Kitchen, somebody asked? It’s now called Bagheera, they said. But was it? Their next post had the old Banarasi Kitchen logo on it.

A couple of days later, the panther out of the bag, the pub said again that the restaurant would soon be known as Bagheera. Along with the new name came a new menu, new signage, a new chef and a new kitchen team. As further announcements came out, you could be forgiven for wondering whether we’d gone past the point of rebranding alone. The logo looked snazzy, the mock-ups of the dining room (or, as they put it, the “design concept” – more corporate speak) looked classy. Was this a conscious attempt to go upmarket?

Things continued to be baffling. In early November the pub confirmed that they had officially rebranded as Bagheera. But for some reason they didn’t announce their official opening until early December, even though they did continue posting about their menu and dishes during the intervening time. All clear as mud, but it seems that the business is one hundred per cent Bagheera now (although at the time of writing they still have the link to Banarasi Kitchen in their Instagram bio: go figure).

Edible Reading

Tag: indian