Tag: Lebanese

Restaurant review: Shawarma Reading

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This week’s review came about because of a comment on the Edible Reading Facebook page. I’d posted a link to my do list, as I regularly do, asking if there was anywhere on it that I should prioritise. Somebody chipped in and told me I should check out Shawarma Reading on West Street. “Their mixed shawarma with rice is great on a cold day”, their comment said.

That was all well and good, but the comment wasn’t from just anybody. It was from Mansoor.

Mansoor has been a reader of my blog for as long as I can remember, an early and vocal supporter of what I do. He came to the very first readers’ lunch at Namaste Kitchen, over seven years ago, bringing a blue Toblerone because I’d enthused about them on the blog. He told me that when he was first courting his wife, he used my blog for tips; despite that, it seems to have worked out nicely for him.

He was also one of my very first subscribers, when I launched that last month. “Lifetime subscription please” he said, which moved me more than I can say. And that’s despite the fact that Mansoor, his wife and his beautiful daughter have moved to Bristol now, which makes him one of my few readers who avidly looks forward to reviews from that part of the world rather than ones from the ‘Ding (don’t worry Mansoor, you’ll get some later in the year).

But that’s not why I give Mansoor’s words such weight. Back when he lived in Reading, Mansoor tipped me off about all kinds of places which went on to be favourites. He was the one who told me to check out La’De Kitchen, out in Woodley, and Rizouq on the Wokingham Road. And perhaps most life-changing of all, Mansoor told me once about a little spot doing samosas, also on the Wokingham Road, that I ought to investigate. Years later I still stop by Cake & Cream regularly for their epic samosas and pakoras, and have recommended them to countless others.

So when Mansoor says somewhere is good, I pay attention. And he first mentioned Shawarma to me at a readers’ lunch about eighteen months ago. “Give it six months, and I think it will be worth you reviewing it”, he said. Well, that six months had more than elapsed, and Mansoor’s initial “you might want to try it out” had morphed into a “go here”.

That alone would have been incentive enough, but then I saw a thread on this exact subject on the Reading sub-Reddit. Somebody had posted specifically asking whether Shawarma was good, and where else you might go for its eponymous speciality. The usual suspects – Bakery House, Hala Lebanese and Monty’s – all came up, and their relative merits were debated. But as for Shawarma itself? Well, most people hadn’t gone there. Of those that had, one person said it was good shit, another said it was not good and, the implication seemed to be, shit.

It was time to pitch in on the debate, so I hopped off the train after work on a Monday evening, keen to make up my own mind. But before I got to Shawarma Reading, I went on a little expedition through the very newest part of Reading. Because that evening the pedestrian route had finally been opened up from Station Hill to Friar Street, past all the new apartments. I think it might have been the first night you could cut through, and I kept on walking, along with a handful of other dazed pedestrians, half expecting to find a dead end at any moment.

But it never came, so there I was in this brave new world, checking out the tasteful lighting and no doubt exorbitantly priced flats, seeing the spots where London coffee chain Notes and new Japanese restaurant Kawaii – from the team behind Coconut and Osaka – would be setting up shop. And it was all very agreeable; it certainly beat walking past Zorba’s and Wendy’s, and Siren RG1‘s location made a lot more sense now you can reach it quickly and directly from the station. So did the writing at the front saying that they offered ‘Train Beers’, come to think of it.

Nursing a pre-dinner IPA there I found myself thinking that, for the first time ever, it felt like I’d walked through the Reading of the future, the Reading that the excellent Reading-on-Thames always writes about. In the time I’ve been writing this blog Oxford has opened the Westgate, Newbury has acquired a fancy shopping quarter and Maidenhead is awash with flats and new restaurants, its very own Waterside Quarter. And what has Reading got in that time?

A little bit skankier, I’d say. And looking out from Siren RG1 on the likes of McDonalds, Lola Lo, garish convenience stores and 99p shops, knowing that a bookie and an amusement arcade were just down the road, it did feel like the dividing line between the old and new couldn’t have been much starker. My beer finished, I walked past the Hope Tap, where I imagine you can get two pints for what I spent in Siren. That shawarma was calling to me.

On my way there, I realised that this was probably the year that I would have to revisit a number of sites that held bittersweet memories for me. Many places, once they close, stay vacant for some time – take the spot where Dolce Vita used to be, for example, a long-empty monument to John Sykes’ avarice. But this year I need to try Tanatan, where Clay’s used to live, and at some point go back to the Lyndhurst. Now I live in Katesgrove it’s long overdue that I visit Namaste Kitchen again. It’s been under different management, after all, for nearly six years.

In many of these cases, I’ve put off returning because I know that however good the food is, it might be tinged with sadness, and I don’t want to let that colour my judgment. And of course, that’s the case with Shawarma Reading, because before it was Shawarma it was Cairo Café, a little spot which I liked a great deal. But I last went to Cairo Café over two years ago, and it’s been Shawarma for over eighteen months. Time to lay the ghost.

I was surprised at first that it managed to feel even smaller than Cairo Café had. Part of that is because of all the kit and caboodle Shawarma has, the two vertical spits revolving inexorably at the front, behind the counter, one for chicken and one for lamb. Cairo Café did its cooking out back, so more of the front room was given over to tables. By contrast, Shawarma had two tables for two, and I was lucky that one was vacant when I was there.

This was far more utilitarian than homely – they’d kept Cairo Café’s dove grey metro tiles, but the rest was chrome and bland ash effect panels. In fairness, when you have the capacity for four people, it would almost be rubbing it in to look like a place where people would want to linger. I heard the distinctive tone of Deliveroo and Just Eat orders landing while I was there, and I suspect that most of Shawarma’s trade is takeaway.

What was surprising about the interior was that it didn’t quite chime with the menu. Because aside from the feature attraction, Shawarma offers a reasonably full Lebanese menu at prices very close to those you’d pay at Bakery House. Shawarma features heavily, as you’d expect, but there are also shish kebabs, mixed grills, koftas, wraps, hot and cold mezze. Main courses were just under fifteen pounds, wraps closer to seven and the starters between five and eight. It felt a little jarring to have this big menu crammed, TARDIS-like, into this small room, but it also intrigued me. And besides, Mansoor rarely steered me wrong.

I ordered a starter and a main and, of course, they came virtually at the same time. And again, this highlighted that you were somewhere that was more quick and cheerful than a place for a drawn-out meal. And again, I thought that this fitted the room but maybe not the prices. Because I simultaneously felt like I had to benchmark Shawarma against the likes of Bakery House but also somewhere like King’s Grill, and it felt like a bit of neither and both.

Anyway, enough comparisons: let’s talk about the food. I loved my falafel – I saw them being formed and fried in front of me so they were as fresh as you like. And they really were gorgeous: light rather than dense, with an excellent sesame-studded shell. The garlic sauce, in a little paper hospital pill cup, was gentle rather than honking, but nice enough: I might have preferred something tahini-based with them, but I wasn’t complaining. And best of all, a decent accompaniment of pickles, including those almost unreal purple ones that I particularly love: they always look photoshopped in pictures, but I assure you they weren’t.

Okay, I haven’t given up comparisons. These were as good a set of falafel as I’ve had anywhere in Reading, and up there with the likes of those at Sam Adaci’s excellent green van Purée, always a welcome sight on Broad Street. Ideally I’d have enjoyed them before my main turned up, but you can probably tell by now that all that tells you more about me, and my inability to get a read on this place, than it does about Shawarma.

I had to go for shawarma as a main, because of Mansoor’s tip off and because – durr – it’s literally the name of the restaurant, even if the logo is a very cheery-looking bow-tied chicken tipping a top hat, seemingly unaware that its friends and family are being served up to punters on a daily basis. I would have had rice with it, but they were inexplicably out of rice, so chips it was. I had a good view of all the ceremony of shawarma, the careful slicing and shaving, collecting it all in that little pan, and it did make me peckish. I guess even that adjective, most likely, is a little insensitive to chickens.

I’d asked for a mix, and it gave me a good picture of Shawarma’s strengths and weaknesses. Generally with shawarma I tend to prefer lamb to chicken: I’d certainly say that Bakery House’s lamb is stronger than its chicken, for instance, as is Hala Lebanese’s. But with Shawarma it was the other way round. Now that could be entirely psychological, because I’ve seen videos on Shawarma’s Instagram showing them painstakingly layering marinated chicken thigh upon thigh, creating a monumental column of meat, and it’s hard not to be impressed by that.

But in reality, both it and the lamb were very serviceable indeed. Both were piles of shredded meat, glistening in a way that seemed entirely unnecessary – could have been oil, could have been a little pomegranate molasses, could have just been sheer juiciness – and both were very enjoyable loaded onto a fork and then speared onto a chip. The chips, by the way, were about as good as bought-in chips get, fried there and then and decanted onto a plate, all brittle rustling, dusted in something I imagined was sumac.

In that sense, Mansoor was absolutely right. Working through a plate of that meat and those chips, dipping in more of that garlic sauce and a chilli sauce that again was pleasant but not especially pungent was a fun, almost meditative experience. It was cold and dark outside, and I found myself thinking again about old Reading and new Reading. Because West Street used to have Vicar’s on it, and Reading’s original branch of Primark, and a Fopp I loved visiting on the way back from the farmer’s market, back when Fopp was a thing. I’d go there and buy CDs and DVDs, back when CDs and DVDs were a thing too.

But now the centre of gravity has changed, and that end of town is a very different place. Two peri-peri establishments a couple of doors apart, a fishmonger and that butcher that got closed down by the council’s environmental health team, much to the delight of the gammons and ghouls that haunt the comments section of the Reading Chronicle. I’m not for a second saying that this part of town is worse or better than it was, but the gulf between this Reading and the Reading of Station Hill, of urban tap rooms and branches of Notes feels so big you could be in two different towns. And I do miss Beijing Noodle House, come to think of it: still, we’ll always have Rafina.

But none of that detracts from the fact that Shawarma is an asset to West Street, and that it would have been at any time in West Street’s history. If I was being ultra-critical, I’d say that I personally like my shawarma sliced more thinly, a little more caramelised and crisp-edged than this was. But I didn’t feel like being ultra critical, and anyway Mansoor was right, as he often is: a plate of their mixed shawarma is a positive tonic on a cold evening. I did it, as he said I should, so I speak from experience.

That said, I actually think the trick is to have what I saw the owner preparing for a takeaway order. ‘Shawarma bites’ was a wrap packed with shawarma, very carefully rolled and assembled, crisped up in a sandwich press and then cut into slices, a bit like a Turkish beyti without the tomato and yoghurt plonked on top. I mentally made a note to have that next time, and I also made a mental note that there had to be a next time so I could eat it.

The owner, by the way, was lovely. When I settled up – twenty pounds, not including tip – I told him I’d really enjoyed it and that I would be back. He asked me to leave a review on Google, in a way that seemed well practiced, and I said “don’t worry, I’ll write you a review”. That’s well practiced too: I just don’t put it on Google.

As you’ve probably gathered, I couldn’t work out what to make of Shawarma: looks like a takeaway, priced like a restaurant, something somewhere between the two that either has something for anyone or nothing for everybody. And yet I liked it nonetheless. I will go there again on a cold evening, or avail myself of one of the tables they put outside when the weather improves.

And the contrarian in me, the person that loves the underdog, feels like we all have a responsibility to make sure that even if Reading does become awash with gleaming apartments and plush chains, there’s always room for something different. For the Sheds, the Sapana Homes and the Sarv’s Slices: and that’s just the Ss. And I really hope there is always space for places like Shawarma – another S – a tiny shawarma joint, doing its thing quietly and thoughtfully. Just around the corner from all that jazz, yet somehow a world away.

Reading is better for keeping hold of that, I reckon. It’s no good gaining all those shiny things, after all, if you end up losing your soul.

Shawarma Reading – 7.2
13 West Street, Reading, RG1 1TT
0118 9505625

https://shawarmareading.co.uk

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Restaurant review: Hala Lebanese

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Last month, after a very successful ER readers’ lunch at Kungfu Kitchen – a total of fifty-six guests in attendance and what felt like about the same number of different dishes to try – the hardcore lunch-goers were sitting in the luxurious surrounds of Park House up on campus, shooting the breeze. It was early evening and even though it was right at the beginning of December it felt, to me at least, like the start of the festive season.

I always love that bit, when the event has gone well and everybody is full and happy and I get to have a few pints and chat to all the people I haven’t yet caught up with. The readers’ lunches have been going for six years now and although there are always newcomers, many of my regulars have been coming along for a fair old time, a few since the very beginning. 

On this particular occasion I found myself in conversation with Jonathan, a newbie who very specifically wanted to talk to me about a bugbear of his: how come there weren’t any good neighbourhood restaurants where he lived in east Reading? I thought about it, and told him I had to agree. I said that since O Portugues had mysteriously closed in the spring there was nothing that even came close.

You could eat in the likes of Rizouq on the Wokingham Road, I supposed, as it had a few tables, and I’d heard suggestions that a burger joint, Pattie N’ Pulled, was operating out of the Roebuck (it looks like they’ve since moved on). But apart from that, and the artist formerly known as the Garden Of Gulab, restaurants were thin on the ground. I thought that would be the end of the conversation, but Jonathan wanted to talk about it in more detail, as if I had the power to change it.

I do get it though. As a proud East Reading resident myself, albeit one living far closer to the centre, it is an enduring mystery that it’s such a dead zone for restaurants. Caversham is well served, and Whitley and Katesgrove have a handful of places. Tilehurst, with the addition of spots like The Switch and Vesuvio, is seeing a bit of a resurgence and the Oxford Road has always been a crucible of culinary invention. Even dear old Woodley, where I grew up, has a handful of restaurants worth a visit.

By comparison, the Wokingham Road feels like slim pickings. It has takeaways, and two biryani places, and the likes of Earley Café and Chaiiwala, but nothing you could describe as a neighbourhood restaurant. It’s almost as if the people living near Palmer Park are expected to hop on the 17, walk to Kungfu Kitchen, settle for the Hope And Bear or, if all else fails, fall into Ye Babam Ye. If it wasn’t for the likes of Smash N Grab and Cake & Cream, you might struggle to see redeeming features at all. And Smash N Grab, sad to say, has its last ever service tomorrow.

I did remember, though, talking to Jonathan that there was one possible contender in the form of Hala Lebanese. It opened last June on the Wokingham Road, just past the stretch of shops, in a spot formerly occupied by another Lebanese restaurant, Alona. I still remembered Alona, partly for the astroturf but mainly for the wobbly shawarma that had slightly traumatised my dining companion John and me. I told Jonathan I would get to Hala as soon as I could and, what with Christmas and Covid, I think I’ve pretty much kept my promise: last Saturday Zoë and I trekked up the Wokingham Road to give it a whirl.

First things first. They’ve kept the astroturf, with a couple of pub garden tables outside that might come into their own once we make it to summer. But if you look at the picture at the top of this review it looks cold and clinical, harsh bright lights, big glass doors and windows that say this is a takeaway. So actually I was really pleasantly surprised, when we went in, to find that it was on the homely side. Nothing spectacular but decent sized tables, comfy seating and lighting which was just the right side of too full on (not that I was complaining – I like to be able to see my food, and this meant it photographed pretty well).

The panelled walls had a feeling of shipping containers about them, but I found all the framed art on the walls eclectic in a good way: I didn’t expect to see pictures of Princess Diana and Amy Winehouse adorning a Lebanese restaurant, that’s for sure. The welcome was warm and immediate, and as soon as our server ascertained that we wanted to eat in she ushered us to a table.

I think most people choose to get their food delivered from Hala, as evidenced by the regular sounds from the till and steady flow of riders with their blocky insulated backpacks. But based on my experience they might be missing out because I found it quite a lovely little space, even if we were one of only two tables eating in. I put that down to being pretty early on a Saturday evening. The couple next to us told us to move to their table after they left because it was right under the heater and they were right: it made for a cosy place to eat, especially looking out on the bitter cold beyond the door.

The menu is largely devoid of surprises, so if you’ve ever been to a Lebanese restaurant in Reading – or indeed anywhere else – you pretty much know what to expect. That’s by no means a bad thing but the usual suspects are all present and correct, like houmous, baba ghanouj, kibbeh, shawarma and dishes from the charcoal grill and a section of wraps for the lunchtime trade. Hala doesn’t bake on site the way Bakery House does, so those elements are dialled down in the menu.

The other noteworthy thing about Hala is its sheer affordability: the prices are reminiscent of Bakery House shortly after it opened, so almost no starters bust the five pound mark and most of the mains are well south of fifteen quid. In what must surely be a random typo, unless they love palindromes as much as I do, houmous will set you back £4.24.

We stuck to old favourites on this visit, which you could see either as sheer laziness or a diligent attempt to benchmark Hala against its peers. In truth it was probably a bit of both but it was a very effective tactic. Hala allows you to have houmous with either chicken shawarma, lamb shawarma or diced lamb and we went for the latter. It was a superb start, the houmous thick and rich with tahini, the crater in the middle piled with hot little nuggets of lamb.

All of it was impressively savoury and the lamb in particular was spot on. This can easily compete with Bakery House and ironically one of Hala’s drawbacks – shop-bought pita – worked in its favour here. It may have been rigid and lacking in the fluffy give of Bakery House’s balloons of pita, but that structure made it much more suitable for dipping, loading and shovelling. I know that doesn’t paint an elegant picture, but we both enjoyed it far too much to even pretend to be elegant.

Equally good, if not better, were Hala’s chicken livers. By weird coincidence it’s almost a year ago to the day that I published a review of Lebanese Village by Caversham Bridge, having been lured there by a report that the chicken livers were something else. As it happens they were something else, other than good, but Hala’s rendition was everything I could have hoped for. Big old bastard things, cooked beautifully, with a little bit of caramelisation outside but not mealy or grainy inside.

And the sauce they were swimming in was knockout. Although there were pomegranate seeds strewn on top, Hala doesn’t fall into the trap of leaning on the pomegranate molasses or killing you with sweetness. Here, whatever sweetness there was had been held brilliantly in check with a slow, glowering heat. Just perfectly done, and, with the exception of Clay’s Kitchen, arguably my favourite chicken livers in Reading. We dredged our remaining pitta through that sauce, loading up with red onions, until not a drop remained. And I had that thought I often have at times like this: please don’t blow it with the mains.

That was needless worrying, as it turned out, because my main was a real star turn. I’d chosen the mixed grill, to try as wide a range of food as possible, and it was simply brilliant. For fifteen pounds you essentially got a greatest hits package: chicken shish, lamb shish, lamb kofta and, underneath that big pile of meat, a bottom layer of both lamb and chicken shawarma. For one person I can’t think of anywhere like this – not Bakery House, not Lebanese Village, not Tasty Greek Souvlaki for that matter – that gives you so much for so little.

But this isn’t just about quantity because lots of what I had was genuinely stop-and-notice excellent. The lamb had a lovely tinge of char and had clearly been marinated and cooked well because although it wasn’t pink inside it was superbly tender and positively delicious. The chicken, big hefty chunks of it, had a lovely colour and was cooked so well, without any drying out. The lamb kofte was equally good – big, uneven, coarse and exceptionally tasty. I thought at the time that this was probably the best mixed grill I’ve had in Reading, and further reflection hasn’t changed that.

Wanky food bloggers would talk about “grill work” at this stage, when they just mean cooking on a grill, in much the same way that they praise a restaurant’s “pasta work” when they just mean making pasta. I’m sure they think it makes them sound dead professional. Anyway, the bottom line is that this kitchen really knows how to grill meat.

The shawarma was also excellent. Normally I prefer lamb shawarma to chicken, and Hala’s lamb shawarma wasn’t bad but it was sliced a little thicker than I personally like; I like it ribbon-thin and caramelised, like Tasty Greek’s beautiful gyros meat. And I was slightly put off by the fact that the first couple of pieces I had were bouncy, but it was plain sailing after that. The chicken shawarma though was another standout – surprisingly fragrant, with lemon in the mix playing an important role.

Zoë went for a whole plate of the lamb shawarma and loved it, so it’s quite possible you might too. But I couldn’t help looking at that plate and thinking about everything you could get on the mixed grill for a mere three pounds extra. Either way, by this stage I wasn’t convinced you could order badly at Hala. Their garlic and chilli sauce – both potent and a little more three-dimensional than their equivalents at Bakery House – rounded things off beautifully.

You can have anything off the grill with chips or rice and we asked for something listed on the menu as “Lebanese lamb rice”. It was beautiful too – warming, spiced and shot through with little pellets of minced lamb. I expected them to charge a little extra for this, but when the bill arrived for whatever reason they hadn’t. The lamb rice is a real beauty. If you go to Hala, ask for the lamb rice.

Service was really lovely throughout, looking after us – for most of the meal we were the only customers eating in – asking if we wanted more pita and generally making us feel welcome rather than a distraction from the stream of Deliveroo orders. Our meal came to £44.44 exactly (another palindrome!) for all that food, a bottle of water and a Pepsi Max, and when we tried to tip they wouldn’t let us. It’s worth adding that Hala, like Bakery House, doesn’t have an alcohol licence, but it does serve some fruit juices along with ayran and conventional soft drinks. I didn’t miss alcohol at all during my meal, for what it’s worth.

I’m on a bit of a lucky streak when it comes to Reading reviews – if I’ve ever had as good a three venue run as Minas Café, Filter Coffee House and Hala Lebanese I certainly can’t remember it. But everything about my meal at Hala, from start to finish, made me smile and I’m so happy that I ate such gorgeous food in a brilliant, welcoming place that didn’t put a foot wrong.

On the walk home we stopped in at Chaiiwala and I grabbed a sweet, milky, perfumed karak chaii for the rest of the journey. And I thought to myself that East Reading really wasn’t all bad – I hope if nothing else this review gives Jonathan and any of my other East Reading readers another option to consider that doesn’t involve voyaging into town. It definitely gives me another place to go when I want a casual, really enjoyable evening meal.

Here’s something I only remembered when I sat down to write this: Hala Lebanese actually contacted me on Facebook a couple of months after they opened, asking me to come and try their food. I wasn’t clear if they were offering me a comped meal or not but I replied, as I always do, saying that I don’t take freebies but that I would be in at some point before too long. I asked them what dishes they recommended, and they told me to try their houmous, chicken livers and mixed grill. I must be very susceptible to (not especially) subliminal messages because of course, five months later, that’s exactly what I ordered.

I also asked them to tell me something about their restaurant and what made it different from Reading’s other Lebanese restaurants. The response was humble, simple and nondescript: it’s a family run business, we have low prices on every meal and everything is fresh. Now that I’ve eaten there – and I really wish I’d done it sooner – I am convinced that they were selling themselves short. Hopefully this review explains what their reply didn’t, because I thought there was something endearingly special about Hala Lebanese.

Hala Lebanese – 8.2
133 Wokingham Road, Reading, RG6 1LW
0118 9667000

https://halalebanese.uk

Restaurant review: Lebanese Village

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The reason behind this week’s review is simple: I got a tip-off. About chicken livers.

It came off the back of the World Cup Of Reading Restaurants I ran on Twitter just after Christmas – congratulations to Kungfu Kitchen for winning the title, by the way – when I received a message from a reader. She and her partner had been debating the merits of the various competitors, and they’d agreed that in their considered opinion the closest rival to surprise package Tasty Greek Souvlaki was not Bakery House but in fact Lebanese Village on Caversham Bridge. It served some of the best Lebanese food she’d ever eaten, she said, and their chicken livers were second to none.

It was appropriate, too, because I never liked chicken livers before I tried Lebanese food. Actually, it would be closer to the truth to say that I didn’t know I liked them until then. But the first time I had them, at Bakery House, experienced that contrast of caramelisation and silkiness unlike anything else, with sweet, sticky fried onions and a whisper of pomegranate molasses, I was hooked. And that was just the start of it – then I tried the chicken livers at Clay’s, dark and delicious, dusted with an intriguing spice mix including, of all things, dried mango and I became even more of a convert. 

Then there were the happy occasions when the Lyndhurst served them – simply, on sourdough toast with a bright pesto. By then chicken livers were well and truly one of my favourite things, so the idea that somewhere in Reading served a reference version I’d yet to try was an aberration I needed to remedy, as soon as possible. So on what felt like the coldest night of the year so far, Zoë and I schlepped off to Caversham Bridge, stopping only for a fortifying beer at the warm, welcoming, wintry Greyfriar.

I’ve written about Reading’s history with Lebanese restaurants before, so I risk rehashing all that here. But in the early days, back in 2015, we had two and they were about as different as could be. La Courbe was a grown-up restaurant with sharp furniture, square plates, fancy glasses and an extensive list of Lebanese wines (true story, on my second or third visit there the English waitress, when clearing our glasses away, said “it’s not bad is it, the Lesbianese wine?”: bless her). And then came Bakery House, closer to the kind of thing you’d see on the Edgware Road, more informal, more casual, with no alcohol licence. 

Bakery House won the war. It’s still going today, and has proved the more influential blueprint for Lebanese food in Reading: Palmyra and the not-too-sadly departed Alona are very much in that mould. La Courbe lasted a couple of years, though whether that’s because of their business acumen or the fact that they had John Sykes as a landlord we’ll never know. The owner moved on to run a Lebanese night at a café in Pangbourne for a little while, and then disappeared without trace. But I hope history is a kinder to La Courbe, because their food was absolutely terrific. Their skewers of lamb and chicken, their lamb koftas were, in truth, a level above anything that came off the grill at Bakery House, wonderful though Bakery House is. I still remember their taboulleh. 

Looking at the menu at Lebanese Village in the run-up to my visit I wondered which kind of restaurant it would turn out to be. It sold alcohol – two Lebanese beers and a decent selection of Lebanese wine, including a couple I’d tried at La Courbe. The menu was more limited than Bakery House’s and potentially less casual, with no shawarma, no boneless baby chicken, fewer mezze. And I’d heard good things about Lebanese Village from a few people, so was it going to be the spiritual successor to La Courbe?

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Café review: Monty’s Café

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At the end of our lunch at Monty’s Café, the owner came over to our table with a little plate for my friend Jerry and me. It had a little macaroon and a baklava on it, a neat touch. So I asked him how long they’d been open, and he said that it was just about two years. And, as so often lately, I thought about what a gruelling two years that must have been for him. I thought that the summer of 2019 would have seemed so full of hope, because the beginning of things is always exciting. And the following winter might have been challenging, as winters often are, but then suddenly, as spring was almost around the corner the bombshell dropped that nothing would be normal again for a very long time. 

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Takeaway review: Palmyra

On By ediblereadingIn Reviews3 Comments

One of the defining moments in the evolution of Reading’s restaurant scene happened in summer 2015 when a new place opened halfway up London Street, where a Nepalese restaurant used to be. I lived nearby at the time, and when I heard it was going to be called “Bakery House” I was excited: finally, Reading was going to get a decent bakery in the town centre! I was a bit nonplussed when it turned out instead to be a Lebanese restaurant, but then I saw that they baked all their own pitas and the name made more sense. And then I ate there, on duty for this blog, and I knew I was trying something special.  

It wasn’t Reading’s first Lebanese restaurant: the ill-fated La Courbe, in Kings Walk, had that honour. And La Courbe’s food was very good indeed, but the whole approach was different. La Courbe looked like a grown-up restaurant, albeit a dated one, with square plates and sharp-edged furniture, where you effectively ate in a glass box and tried to ignore the smoke coming from the open kitchen. It had an extensive list of terrific wines from the Lebanon, and was determined to showcase that every bit as much as the food. 

But Bakery House – although from the front it might have resembled a standard kebab joint – was a very different animal. It was more functional, and it had no alcohol licence, but it had infinitely more more heart and soul. It was often busy, with a hugely varied clientele, and remains one of my favourite places to go for a sit down lunch or have dinner with friends. Some of their dishes, like their boneless baby chicken, their lamb shawarma and their chicken livers, have pretty much attained iconic status. 

One of my most enjoyable pre-Corona rituals – one I very much look forward to resuming, one day – was to spend the day in Nirvana Spa and then take a taxi to Bakery House for dinner. It sounds so decadent, over a year down the line. And before I started reviewing takeaways, that restaurant was the only reason I had the Deliveroo app on my phone.

Anyway, poor La Courbe was Betamax to Bakery House’s VHS: it closed less than a year after its rival opened, whereas Bakery House is still going strong (my 2015 review of the place remains one of the most widely read reviews on the blog). And since then, various restaurants have sprung up to try and take advantage of the increasing popularity of Lebanese food, without significant success. We still have Comptoir Libanais on the Oracle Riverside (I ate there once: never again), but Alona down the Wokingham Road barely made it to a year before closing down. Having eaten their shawarma, I can see why.

More recently, two more Lebanese restaurants have opened further from the town centre. Late in 2019 Lebanese Village opened just over Caversham Bridge, in the site that was previously occupied by Spanish non-tapas restaurant Picasso. I never got round to reviewing them before lockdown, although that’s largely because for much of that time their hygiene rating left something to be desired (they’ve fixed that now). And then in February 2020, possibly the worst imaginable time to open a restaurant, Palmyra opened at the top of the Oxford Road, opposite the Broad Street Mall.

The stories I’ve heard about Palmyra since then definitely suggested that it was worth investigating. A reliable source told me when they opened that the chefs were ex-Bakery House employees, and later that year I heard suggestions that the owners of Kobeda Palace might have a financial interest in the restaurant. That alone was enough of a pedigree to pique my interest, and then a reader told me on Twitter that she’d been a regular takeaway customer of Palmyra. “Brilliant customer service, food really tasty, gives Bakery House a run for their money” she said. “I know that’s fighting words” she added. Fighting words indeed, and only one way to find out if they were justified: time to fire up the phone and place an order.

Palmyra is on all the delivery apps (or you can order through their website which goes through Foodhub) but, as so often, the experience is slightly different through each one. I got as far as building a basket on JustEat, which offered 20% off on the night I was ordering, only to find that it wasn’t that specific about some of the dishes. So for instance, you could order shawarma but it wouldn’t let you specify lamb, chicken or mixed. It also wasn’t clear about what everything came with, so when you check out and it asks you whether you need rice, chips et cetera the only honest answer is I really don’t know. So if you like surprises, or getting 20% off is more important to you than knowing what shawarma you’re eating, JustEat is the one for you.

I instead went for Deliveroo where I could specify what I wanted, although I did order some garlic and chilli sauce because I couldn’t tell whether they came as standard (it turns out they did, so I wound up with far more than I needed). That aside, the menu had plenty of old favourites that fans of Lebanese food would recognise: cold mezze, including houmous, moutabal and baba ghanoush; hot mezze such as chicken livers, falafel and kibbeh; dishes from the charcoal grill (shish and the like); shawarma and wraps. There were also a few burgers, which felt slightly incongruous.

Prices were very reasonable, with most starters stopping short of a fiver and main courses costing less than twelve pounds: on a par with Bakery House and slightly cheaper than Lebanese Village. I didn’t spot many dishes that I hadn’t seen before, but I decided to take a two-pronged approach, ordering starters I hadn’t heard of and main courses I knew and loved, trying to do a mixture of discovery and benchmarking against the tried and tested. Two starters and two mains, along with Deliveroo charges, came to thirty-six pounds, not including tip. And Palmyra look after the deliveries themselves, so you tip the restaurant rather than the rider (and you should always tip the rider, if you ask me).

Because Palmyra do the deliveries, Deliveroo tells you that the order has been received and when the rider is on their way, but beyond that you don’t get to track the delivery. I wasn’t even sure if they even confirmed that at first, because the food took a fair old while to leave the restaurant: I ordered at 7.15 and the app said it would be with me in forty minutes, but in reality the driver was on his way about an hour after I placed the order and it took him less than ten minutes to reach me.

He was lovely and friendly and apologised that it had taken a while. “We’ve been snowed under”, he said, and it wasn’t until later that I realised we’d ordered on the first day of Ramadan, about half an hour before the sun was due to set. No wonder they had their hands full. That made me prepared to overlook a lot – similarly our food wasn’t exactly piping hot, but I thought it was well worth making allowances. Everything came in recyclable foil and plastic, and portions looked like they’d be pretty generous.

Palmyra’s starters were probably the weakest part of the meal – not bad per se, but maybe not as exciting as they sounded on paper. Lamb sambusek were meant to be deep fried pastries filled with minced lamb, but they felt as if they had been baked rather than fried, pasties rather than pastries. Not that that’s a bad thing: I enjoyed the slightly doughy pastry, but the meat inside felt bland, especially considering the sheer amount of flavour Lebanese cuisine can usually get out of lamb. Maybe I have nobody to blame but myself; with hindsight, I look at some of the starters I order – these and samosas in particular – and I think I ought to be more versatile. Anyway, Zoë liked them more than I did, and so I didn’t fight her for the fifth one.

Similarly, I’d never seen shanklish on a menu, so I was intrigued. The menu described it as goats cheese topped with thyme and mixed with onion, pepper and tomato. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it was pretty close to a Greek salad in practice, with cubes of cheese, onion, tomato and plenty of lettuce. If I’d known it was a salad, I mightn’t have ordered it. But more to the point,  the cheese – the headliner – didn’t knock my socks off. It didn’t have a strong taste of goat, and the herb coating was very fine and a bit too mouth-coatingly gritty. It felt a lot more like feta, but with the salt mysteriously removed. 

Having now done my research, I suspect that this was pretty authentic (with the exception of the iceberg lettuce), so just not my bag. But the salad itself was also carpet-bombed with herbs, to an extent where I found it offputting. You got salads with your main courses as well and these had the same problem, without the cheese to redeem matters: Bakery House’s salad accompaniment, always so well dressed, is far better.

The mains we ordered – boneless baby chicken and lamb shawarma – were definitely picked to compare with the market leader. Palymyra’s boneless chicken was close in standard, but fell ever so slightly short in a few respects: a little smaller, not quite as moist and without that wonderful smell of the chargrill when you took the lid off. But these are minor quibbles, and if it came second it certainly wasn’t second rate, with good flavour and plenty of evidence of marination. I’m also aware, too, that many people aren’t quite as greedy as I am and on the “enough is as good as a feast” principle Palmyra’s baby chicken is definitely a feast.

You didn’t get a choice of rice or chips with the meat, so comes served with some lovely buttery rice speckled with wild grains, which had a subtle hint of something sweet and comforting, almost like vanilla. The rice was particularly good with the lamb shawarma, which was my favourite dish of the meal. This was a really hefty portion of lamb, in beautiful slices with just the right blend of meat, of fat and of wonderful caramelisation. There was quite a bit of clove on the nose, which brought on unwelcome flashbacks of the wobbly version at Alona, but once you started eating it the flavours all came together harmoniously, and the whole thing was pretty damned wonderful. Even slightly more warm than hot, it was a winner. 

“It’s really good, but imagine eating a whole portion to yourself” said Zoë, unaware that I was imagining exactly that and making a mental note for next time. I also thought briefly that any leftovers would make for a fantastic sandwich filling before ruefully realising that I never have leftovers and that if I did, I might have a less depressing waist measurement. Leaving food, like going camping or overpaying your mortgage, just seemed to be something other people did: I knew from social media that there were people like that out there, in a better, more virtuous tribe than me. 

Never mind, I thought, looking down at my plate, empty except for a little smudge of the (very good) chilli sauce and a few stray grains of rice. I hadn’t eaten much of the salad, but that wasn’t to my credit: I knew that was the bit you were meant to polish off. In fairness, we didn’t finish the pita breads either. They were pleasant enough, although I wouldn’t necessarily have put money on them being made in house. I should probably face the fact that La’De Kitchen’s wonderful balloon bread has ruined me for other pitas. 

The thing I almost feel guilty about, in writing this review, is that I’ve mentioned Bakery House as many times as I’ve mentioned Palmyra. They were the spectre at this particular feast. But that’s what happens when a restaurant becomes the benchmark, the standard for others to reach. That’s the way of things, just as every Italian restaurant in Reading will be compared to Pepe Sale, or every street food venture will be weighed up against Blue Collar. The trailblazers are there to give the newcomers something to aim for, and to want to surpass. 

Success breeds imitators: it’s always been the sincerest form of flattery. It proves you are good, and it tells you to be better. Because that’s the other thing: Bakery House will be looking at this newcomer, the way Bette Davis looks at Anne Baxter in All About Eve, not wanting to be superseded. After all, La Courbe was the future once, and look what happened to them. The tension between the established and the new is what drives everybody forward, stops people from resting on their laurels. Restaurants need that, or they get stale: I like to say that a rising tide lifts all boats, and being shaken from your complacency is no bad thing.

And I think Palmyra has enough about it to generate that tension: if we were playing Top Trumps I’d say that Bakery House won on the starters and edged it on one of the main courses, but Palmyra’s shawarma is a thing of beauty and worth the price of admission alone. But anyway, that binary way of looking at things does nobody any favours. If I lived in West Reading I would be absolutely delighted that Palmyra were at the top of the Oxford Road, and I would take full advantage of them being so well located for my end of town. Besides, you’re bound to avoid my rookie mistake of ordering from them on one of the busiest nights of the year. Even though I fell into that trap I have no complaints, and I imagine they made a lot of households very happy that night. They definitely did mine.

Palmyra
40 Oxford Road, Reading, RG1 7LA
0118 3277546

https://palmyralebanese.co.uk/index.php
Order via: Direct through the website, via Deliveroo, JustEat or Uber Eats