Tag: momo

Restaurant review: Taste Tibet, Oxford

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Magdalen Road in Oxford is a 20 minute bus ride from the train station, out east, down the High and over Magdalen Bridge. It connects two of the three great thoroughfares of east Oxford, Cowley Road and Iffley Road, and you can walk from one end to the other in under 10 minutes. One side of it, at the Cowley Road end, is fairly unremarkable – a general store advertising Lycamobile, a letting agent, terraced houses of various vintages.

Only a huge shop called The Goldfish Bowl, advertising “EVERYTHING FOR THE FISHKEEPER” in big orange letters has even a hint of quirkiness. But then you reach the halfway mark, cross over to the Iffley Road side, and find yourself in Oxford’s most incongruous gastronomic microclimate.

Suddenly everything is very different, and both sides of Magdalen Road are full of independent outposts for food lovers. There’s Wild Honey, an “organic health store” advertising local produce, next to a little pink-awninged spot called The Magic Cafe. There’s a pub, The Rusty Bicycle, owned by the same group as Reading’s Last Crumb. Further down, there’s a little shop selling Scandinavian homewares – earthenware cups, sheepskin rugs, scented candles and room diffusers.

Just opposite that, plant-based café Green Routes stands next to Elle’s Deli, which used to be home to Oli’s Thai, for a long time Oxford’s most critically acclaimed restaurant (you had to book a table months in advance). The deli still serves Thai food, and people were sitting outside on a coldish Saturday morning eating it, but it also sells Superbon crisps, vermouth and jars of every kind of deliciousness from romesco to gochujang.

Travel a little further and you get to another cafe called the Larder, with attractive-looking loaves on sale in the window: again, on a day that wasn’t the warmest people were already sitting outside. And next to that, there’s the roastery for Oxford’s Missing Bean, who do some of my favourite coffee and supply to Reading’s Coffee Under Pressure. And then finally, at the southern end of Magdalen Road you reach the Magdalen Arms, which has long been one of my favourite places to eat in the city.

That little stretch of Magdalen Road seems to come out of nowhere, a strange and wonderful little oasis. Just imagine: in the space of five minutes, out in east Oxford, you can visit as many independent delis and cafes and bakeries as you can find inside Reading’s IDR. If anything, with its joggers and dog walkers, its air of bourgeois contentment, it was almost like a micro-Caversham.

At one point a mum cycled past me on some kind of cargo trike, a contraption with two wheels up front and a big box between them, her kid standing up in it and looking out on the world; the Cowley Road’s scruff and bustle was simultaneously a few minutes and a world away.

I found myself in this neck of the woods to check out Taste Tibet, a restaurant that’s been on my to do list for some time. It’s a no-reservations Tibetan restaurant, owned by married couple Yeshi Jampa and Julie Kleeman. They met in India, fell in love, and moved back to Oxford where Kleeman had a job with OUP. They started out running a street food stall over ten years ago, and during the pandemic they opened this spot on Magdalen Road. Since then success has followed, with a cookbook in 2022 and an honourable mention in that year’s Observer Food Monthly Awards as one of the best value eats in the South-East.

Not only that, but Taste Tibet also provides dozens of meals to vulnerable people in its community every week and its thoroughly charming website links with an excellent weekly blog, beautifully written by Kleeman, that is very frank about the challenges hospitality in general, and its little restaurant in particular, continue to face. I’d challenge you to read a couple of posts and not find yourself rooting for them: I certainly came away from it surprised by how invested I was in their project. As I got there at noon – because you can’t be too careful – Jampa was opening up and he cheerily told me to come on in.

The interior is a lovely, tasteful room but very much in a canteen style, which fits with the lack of reservations. Long tables and benches, which I imagine are communal at busy times, were like a posh reimagining of the furniture you find at every tap room in the land, but the overall effect was very pleasant. There were also seats up at the window, which tempted me, or facing the wall, which didn’t. Jampa told me to hang my coat up on the hooks, which I did at first, but given that the door was left open to attract passing trade I quickly changed my mind and put it back on.

The menu, which changes weekly, is up on a blackboard behind the counter, and many of the dishes are already cooked, in chafing dishes up at the counter. Taste Tibet cannily also offers frozen meals for its customers to enjoy at home, these are in a separate freezer near the front and are a clever way to make sure nothing is wasted. They also had a decent range of drinks, soft and alcoholic, including wines in cans. I was a little disappointed, as always, to see Brewdog as one of the options but I got myself a verbena-infused pale by Earth Ale, a little brewery just outside Abingdon, which I really enjoyed for its fresh citrus and slight bitterness.

On the day I visited, Taste Tibet was offering momo – four or eight, vegan or beef – and four curries, with a mix of sides. They also served a biryani, or a feast option where you got a couple of dishes, dal, rice and a solitary momo for about fifteen pounds. If that pricing sounds keen, it wasn’t unrepresentative -curries weren’t much over a tenner and rice only two pounds fifty. Sides clustered around the five pound mark and momo were four for eight pounds. I ordered some momo, a curry and rice: that, with a tip included, cost me thirty pounds. “I’m in no rush” I said, “so it’s okay to bring the momo out first and the curry after that.”

My momo came out five minutes later, and weren’t at all what I was expecting. Although momo apparently originate from Tibet rather than Nepal they’re so prevalent in Nepalese cuisine, and Nepalese cuisine is so prevalent in Reading, that I thought these would be a known quantity. And with that in mind, I thought four for eight pounds felt a bit steep. But Taste Tibet’s momo were a very different beast to the ones I’ve eaten at Sapana Home or Kamal’s Kitchen.

For a start, they were big: impossible to eat in one go, and challenging even in two. Crimped like jiaozi, they were steamed and made with dough that was thick verging on too thick, but that gave them structure and a pleasing, carby solidity. The beef inside – beef, not buffalo, although whether that’s the difference between East Oxford and Reading or Tibet and Nepal I couldn’t tell you – was properly lovely, coarse and delicious.

This came with a little handful of leaves whose main function was to serve as a bowl for a red sauce which was apparently a home-made chilli sauce: I found it a little meek. But what I did love was the bowl of a darker dipping sauce with a kick of soy. Again, I wonder if that’s the influence of Tibet, because I’ve never had Nepalese momo served with that, and it really did make me see the momo in a slightly different light. I can see the appeal of coming to Taste Tibet, as I used to with Sapana Home, and just going to town on the momo.

Later on, as I came to the end of my meal, couples and families were braving the outside tables and I saw big plates of momo going past on their way to the little terrace. Perhaps that was the way to do this place, or to come with a big group and try everything. One of the reasons I hadn’t ordered the “feast for one” was the presence of that single momo. It felt stingy, but looking at what had been put in front of me one would have been plenty, paired with an exploration of more of the menu.

My request that my curry come out after my momo had been taken a little too literally. Perhaps I should have said “after I’ve finished my momo”, although I didn’t think I’d needed to, but instead the rest of the meal arrived when I was halfway through what I thought was my starter. Really, though, that was me misjudging the place and its similarity to a canteen rather than a mistake on the restaurant’s part. Everything is there ready to dish up, and if you order something that’s exactly what they will do.

I had chosen Taste Tibet’s “famous chicken” because I took famous to mean signature, and I figured that if I was visiting a restaurant on my own I owed it to myself to check out the signature dish. And having eaten it I suspect it’s the restaurant, rather than the chicken, that is famous. It was a big portion with plenty of chicken, plenty of sauce. The chicken was all good and tender, and it was impossible to take exception to the dish.

But although not being offensive is a good thing, being inoffensive isn’t, and that’s what this was. Perhaps if my expectations had been lower I would have seen this as a comforting bowl of food, and celebrated what it was rather than noticing what it wasn’t. But this was like curry from a bygone age, before we got into regional food, started to discover the difference between Kerala and Hyderabad. It felt a bit like a Vesta curry, from forty years ago, and for something famous I expected more: I expected it to be famous for something.

How to make it more interesting, I wondered? I tried spooning in my perfectly cooked basmati rice – Taste Tibet serves both curry and rice in bowls that are just big enough for each, rather than giving you a plate to dish them up onto – but that bulked it without being transformative. I tried adding a spoonful of the dried chillis in a ramekin out on the table, but it lent an acrid pungency without elevating anything. The difference in heat levels was like the difference between sleeping on one pillow and two, going from not enough to too much.

I didn’t want to leave it like that, and I fancied dessert, so I went up to order the only thing on the blackboard that looked like afters. Chocolate tsampa truffles – as seen on TV! sounded absolutely like my sort of thing, and only cost three pounds. I was too full to have the chai that should have accompanied it, but never mind. 

By this point the restaurant was far fuller, with people taking tables outside and the long table opposite me occupied by a group of impossibly young, animated east Oxford types. I looked on them indulgently, remembering a time over thirty years ago when that could have been me: not that I would have had the money to eat in a place like this.

Positively 4th Street was playing over the speakers, and I remembered that thirty years ago I loved that song, and suddenly it was back in vogue. Time can play unkind tricks, and all the things that made me so deeply unfashionable as a student – being a geek, listening to Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, playing chess and Dungeons & fucking Dragons – are acceptable now, too late for me. Even some of the shit I wore back then might be in now, I thought.

I felt a little tug of envy and regret, and then I let it go. It was as close to Buddhism as I got in Taste Tibet.

The chocolate tsampa truffles, plural, turned out to be a truffle, singular. A big thing designed, like the momo, to be taken on in multiple bites. I enjoyed it and, again, it wasn’t what I thought it would be. Its texture wasn’t dense or glossy, being more gritty with a feel of granulated sugar to it. Again, that’s down to me for misunderstanding – tsampa was not something that flavoured the truffle, but instead is a kind of flour made from ground, roasted barley, so it was the thing lending that texture.

In any event, the truffle reminded me of the brigadeiros at Minas Café, and I liked it without entirely understanding it. That’s fine, by the way: now I’m in my fifties I realise that provided you like things you don’t always need to understand them.

The rest of my day in Oxford was positively joyous. I stopped at Missing Bean, which was absolutely packed, to buy beans for the weeks ahead; I’m drinking a cup of their coffee as I write this. I strolled down the Cowley Road, past its plethora of Turkish restaurants, past the now closed Gamekeeper that used to meet all my Dungeons & fucking Dragons-related needs as a teenager.

I stopped in Truck Records to get inspiration, I stopped in Peloton Espresso to get caffeination. I bought cheese in the Covered Market, had time for a beer in Tap Social before my train home. It really is a gorgeous city, and it says something about the place that Magdalen Road is one of its little oases but far from its only one.

As you may have gathered by now, although I liked Taste Tibet I wanted to like it an awful lot more than I did. And a bit of me wonders if I’m the one in the wrong. It is a gorgeous spot in a gorgeous neighbourhood in a gorgeous city. It has a great backstory, is clearly loved by the community it’s part of and does tireless and admirable work to support that community. It is run by a committed husband and wife, where he works in the kitchen and she advocates, powerfully and eloquently, online and in the media. They want to tell the stories of where he comes from, through food.

On paper, I should love it: it sounds like other restaurants I love, closer to home.

But perhaps that’s okay. Perhaps Taste Tibet makes perfect sense in its context, in that city, on that little stretch of food and drink heaven. Maybe it doesn’t need people like me travelling to and across Oxford to try it out. It’s a neighbourhood restaurant – its neighbourhood is lucky to have it, and it’s lucky to have found its place in things.

If I lived closer I’m sure I would go back, try other dishes, fill my freezer and become part of their story, as they would become part of mine. But other places have got there first, for me at least. My train home pulled in at Gare du Ding and I thought about Kamal’s Kitchen, my favourite Nepalese restaurant, a short walk from the northern entrance to the station.

Its dining room doesn’t have the stripped-back elegance of Taste Tibet, it doesn’t have a narrative the way Taste Tibet does. I think Kamal and his family do a magnificent job, but much as I’d love them to I can’t imagine them gracing the pages of Observer Food Monthly. They don’t write beautiful blog posts, they have no plans to produce a cookbook that I know of and they won’t be at Hay Literary Festival this year. They let their food do the talking, and for what it’s worth I think their momo beat Taste Tibet’s. A restaurant can succeed in so many ways, but food and service are always king.

Magdalen Road in Oxford is a really fantastic place, and I do dearly wish Reading was a little more like it. But I wouldn’t swap their restaurant with ours.

Taste Tibet – 7.0
109 Magdalen Road, Oxford, OX4 1RQ
01865 499318

https://tastetibet.com

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Restaurant review: Momo 2 Go

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We’re on the home stretch now: Halloween and Bonfire Night are in the past, Christmas is on the horizon. This review is published on Black Friday, a day many of us would prefer not to acknowledge. It all adds up to one thing – we are close to having survived another year of interesting times, of pay cuts and price rises, of soaring expenses and the spectre of Covid, still lurking in the background. The future is uncertain – for our electricity bills, for our weekly shop, for keeping global warming below 1.5C, for our Twitter profiles – but for now, we’re all still here. Group hug, anybody? Actually, scratch that: who else needs a drink?

The New Year is always a time to look ahead and make great plans, but as a perpetual glass half empty type I find this time of year is when I look back and can see all the things I didn’t achieve over the last twelve months – the pounds I didn’t lose, the money I didn’t save, the books I never finished and the exercises from my physio I always found very good reasons not to do. But I never mope for too long – the sweet release of the socialising season, the festive beers waiting to be drunk and all the people to catch up with soon sweep all of that away. Besides, by Christmas Eve ITV4 (yes, it’s a thing) is pretty much wall to wall Carry On films, and you can’t mope watching one of those. I can’t, anyway.

As we approach the end of the year I also find myself looking at my to do list here at the blog. Forget shopping days: there are only a handful of reviewing Fridays left til Christmas and so many places I’ve not made it to yet. So how do I decide what to prioritise for the tail end of the year? Should I go back and try one of the interesting places that have sprung up in Wokingham, or another of Reading’s new sushi joints? Is the Secret Santa present my readers really want a piece where I go to Jollibee and dutifully endure that weird spaghetti dish with chopped frankfurters in it? And how about that new kebab place on the edge of the Broad Street Mall, immortally described by the Reading Chronicle as “Slow-roast Dubai restaurant Donor and Gyros”?

But there’s a particular subsection of my list that I feel deserves particular attention as 2022 shambles to an end. At the start of this year, when the weather was shite and our booster jabs hadn’t kicked in, I was still reviewing takeaways. But I know that what people really want, especially now life is a little more as it was, are restaurant reviews. And there are a handful of places where I had decent takeaways over the past couple of years but have never returned to try out the full eating in experience, blind spots that I ought to rectify.

In some cases there are reasons for that – Banarasi Kitchen has recently left the Spread Eagle pub to be replaced by a new Indian kitchen called Bagheera, for instance. I probably would have gone to Osaka by now, but for the fact that they had a one star hygiene rating for four months over the summer. Palmyra, which did me a very nice takeaway in the spring of 2021, only takes cash which rules it out of contention. Cash only in 2022, after two years that have all but killed cash as a going concern. “Fuck that” grizzled Zoë, as we walked away from it recently.

But I also had a fantastic takeaway from the subject of this week’s review, little Momo 2 Go down the Oxford Road, back in February – so good, in fact, that I’ve ordered from them several times since. Surely it was time to try it in the flesh? So Zoë and I wandered over on a midweek night to pay it a long overdue visit.

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Competition: Kamal’s Kitchen

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I’m delighted to announce an ER readers’ competition in partnership with Kamal’s Kitchen.

I can probably count on the fingers of two hands the truly game-changing restaurants that have opened in Reading since I started writing Edible Reading. That’s probably a feature in itself – maybe I’ll write it to mark ten years of the blog – but without question Namaste Kitchen would belong on that list. When I visited it, back in 2017, I knew I had eaten somewhere so good that it changed the terms of reference for what it meant to be a good restaurant in this town.

Namaste Kitchen was one of those fantastic places where everything came together. Operating from the Hook and Tackle in Katesgrove, it was a pub that served great food rather than a gastropub, with a menu of Nepalese small plates that meant you could turn up and eat yourself into a coma or pick at the most incredible bar snacks while watching the football. And it was unapologetically Nepalese too, offering some dishes – like bara, spiced lentil pancakes, or pangra, fried gizzards – that you just couldn’t get elsewhere. It wasn’t watered down, and it was all the better for that.

The chef was amazing, but the icing on the cake was Kamal, the affable front of house who kept everything ticking. He always recommended new things, he always sounded surprised when you loved the food (and you always loved the food) and he always stopped you from ordering too much. That was Kamal in a nutshell, and it’s something so many restaurateurs get wrong: he was more interested in making sure you’d come back next time than he was in making shedloads of money out of you this time.

I’ve written about this before, but that dream team lasted less than a year. Kamal left Namaste Kitchen, the chef went back to Nepal and the restaurant raised its prices and installed a tandoor. A couple of years later, Kamal opened Namaste Momo on the border between Woodley and Earley, this time teaming up with an ex-Royal Tandoori chef. The early signs were good (and the momo were never less than excellent) but the menu, split between Nepalese and conventional Indian food, never quite felt like a cohesive whole. A couple of years later, Kamal left the business.

Anyway, fast forward to 2022 and Kamal has opened his own restaurant on the Caversham Road, next to Flavour Of Mauritius in part of the building where Standard Tandoori used to live. This time, he’s been brave enough to put his name on the door, and this time it’s a family affair: Kamal and his wife are in the kitchen, and Kamal and his equally charming daughter run the front of house. It’s a nice room – stripped back, serene, humble. It feels like this could be the place where Kamal realises the potential that has been there since the Namaste Kitchen days.

The menu goes back to the territory that made Namaste Kitchen great – a range of small plates, momo and chow mein, with a handful of curries and a good vegetarian section. Fans of the bara and chatamari from Namaste Kitchen will find them here too. But there are also some new, really interesting dishes – deep fried lamb breast on the bone, for example, or a truly delectable pork dish with choy sum in a wonderful sauce that totally carries you along with it.

There are also some really interesting touches. On my visit, Kamal served sekuwa made with venison from the farmer’s market, and another beautiful venison dish almost like a tartare, clean, delicate and with a hint of game. If either of those ends up on the menu as a special, you should try them. But I was also very happy to be reunited with the tried and tested – the paneer pakora were as good as I remembered, the chutney fresh, zingy and spiky with heat. Equally delicious was the lamb sukuti, a crunchy plate of umami and spice which I could happily demolish multiple times in any given week.

The biggest surprise, for me, is an unassuming dish you could easily miss. Thhicheko Aalu is described on the menu as “potatoes fried, pressed and tossed with special sauce”. But that just doesn’t do them justice. Forget double cooked or triple cooked chips, this is close to the pinnacle of potato dishes – burnished and caramelised on the outside, all crinkly edges, yet soft and fluffy inside, the whole thing coated in a spice mix that contains a little bit of something like mouth-numbing Szechuan pepper. I’ve not tasted anything quite like this, and it has the makings of an instant classic. I was torn between wanting to know exactly how they did it, and preferring to keep the magic and mystique firmly intact.

That’s quite enough from me, so let’s talk about the competition. First prize is a meal for four people including drinks, up to a maximum value of £120. A runner-up will win a meal for two people, including drinks, up to a maximum of £60. That potato dish is £6, so alternatively you could turn up and keep ordering that until you’re full (that’s what I’d be tempted to do).

All you have to do is this: write me up to 250 words on the Reading institution you miss the most and why. It doesn’t have to be food-related (although it might well be) but this is your chance to wax lyrical about anything from the past, whether it’s the 3Bs, Mya Lacarte, 80s night at the After Dark, the “lovely hot doughnuts, nice and fresh” announcement, the crispy squid man at Blue Collar or even this blog, back in the days before it vanished up its arse. Knock yourself out! Email your entry to me – ediblereading@gmail.com – by 11.30am on Friday 15th April.

As always, to ensure impartiality I don’t judge the competitions myself. And this time I’ve managed to get a big name on board: fresh from her announcement about Clay’s Hyderabadi Kitchen’s forthcoming move to Caversham, Nandana Syamala has agreed to judge this one. Nandana, along with her husband Sharat, runs one of Reading’s most treasured culinary institutions, and I can’t think of anyone better to read all your entries about Reading institutions you have loved and lost.

Entries will be sent to Nandana anonymously and the results will be announced on Friday 29th April. And as always the judge’s decision is final: no correspondence will be entered into. Don’t forget, Nandana has only lived in Reading for four years, so this is your chance to make her envious of some of the Reading gems she may never have experienced! Thanks again to Kamal’s Kitchen for its generosity with the prizes and best of luck to you if you decide to enter this one. I’ll be back next Friday with another feature for you, before normal service resumes and I review some more restaurants. See you then.

Takeaway review: Momo 2 Go

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Of all the groups of people who have settled in Reading and made it their home, you could easily make an argument that few have done more to improve Reading’s food culture than our Nepalese community. I’m not talking about Standard Tandoori – I’m sure it had its day, and I know some people (the Dalai Lama included) probably mourn its passing more than I do. But perhaps more significantly, our Nepalese community is very much responsible for Reading’s love affair with the humble momo.

The godfather of the momo scene, of course, is Sapana Home which has been installed on Queen Victoria Street for many, many years. It is a terrific, completely uncompromising place in that it serves what it serves and has no interest at all in adapting its menu to more Western tastes, but it’s always warm and welcoming to people outside the Nepalese community who want to eat there. 

And who wouldn’t fall in love with momo? They’re tiny pockets of joy, you get ten of them for not very much and they’re hugely versatile, whether you want to be virtuous and have them steamed, indulgent and have them seared and caramelised in a pan or Glaswegian and eat the bastards deep fried. You can have momo in sticky chilli sauce, momo bathing in tomato gravy or momo bobbing in soup. National cuisines have been built on less, and although I know that pierogi, ravioli and gyoza have their ardent fans, momo have my heart.

For a while Sapana Home largely had the market sewn up. Sure, there was a pretender all the way out in Caversham Park Village and another at the top of the Basingstoke Road, but for most people momo meant Sapana Home. And then along came Namaste Kitchen, a game-changing restaurant in Katesgrove operating out of the Hook And Tackle pub. Its momo were fantastic, but it also showed that there was so much more to Nepalese food, whether it was exemplary chow mein, chewy, savoury dried mutton, beautiful gizzards or bara, thick lentil pancakes studded with spicy chicken. I went once and fell in love: Reading had never had it so good.

As it turned out it was too good to last, and within a year Namaste Kitchen’s dream team had split up. One of the owners, the legendary Kamal, left the business and the chef went back to Nepal. Namaste Kitchen kept trading, but it bought a tandoor and shifted its menu towards more traditional fare, slightly away from the dishes that made it famous. Kamal set up a new place, Namaste Momo, on the outskirts of Woodley in partnership with a chef from the Royal Tandoori. And the momo there were great, but there was still a friction between the Nepalese and more traditional sections of the menu. Namaste Kitchen was the Beatles of the Reading restaurant scene, and after it split up none of the solo projects quite recaptured their genius.

Fast forward to 2022 and Kamal has now left Namaste Momo as well. He’s in the middle of fitting out his new restaurant, Kamal’s Kitchen, on the Caversham Road: appropriately enough it occupies half of the space that used to be Standard Tandoori, a nice way of passing on the torch. If Kamal’s Kitchen turns out to even half as good as Namaste Kitchen was in its heyday it will be a fabulous place to have dinner. But today’s review is about a total curveball, a new pretender to the momo throne that has come out of nowhere: Momo 2 Go, a little joint down on the Oxford Road.

Momo 2 Go first came to my attention late last year, but by the looks of it it actually started trading, on the down low, last spring. It’s in a small site just before Reading West Station, with pictures of the dishes Blu-Tacked to the window, and despite the name it does have a handful of tables for dining in. But I fired up its website (they handle deliveries themselves and don’t currently use Deliveroo or JustEat: good for them) on Saturday night and decided to order a takeaway for two to stave off the winter blues.

Here’s something I really liked about Momo 2 Go’s menu – it was compact. Many of Reading’s Nepalese restaurants give you a plethora of choices, not including the huge number of ways you can customise your momo experience, and the stripped down simplicity of Momo 2 Go’s offer was a real breath of fresh air. You can have your momo steamed, in chilli sauce, in a tomato gravy or “fired” (which I assume is a typo), but that’s it. You can order chow mein or fried rice, and there’s a smallish section of sides, but that’s your lot. The water is not muddied with a crossover into more conventional Indian food or street food, there are no samosas, or chaat, or dosa. You go elsewhere for that, the menu says, and you come here for your momo. I wish more restaurants appreciated the feeling of confidence this approach instills, but I’ve been saying that for years and I’m probably not done saying it yet.

This also meant that between us Zoë and I could order a hefty cross-section of the menu – five dishes in total which came to just shy of forty pounds. That included two pounds fifty in service and delivery charges, which gives you an idea of pricing. None of the dishes costs more than a tenner and the majority are around seven pounds. We ordered at twenty to seven and the website said we’d be waiting around forty-five minutes. And pretty much bang on the dot our delivery arrived, brought to our door in a Mini which I suspect might have been driven by one of the owners. The greeting was smiley and friendly, the delivery prompt and piping hot: it’s easy to forget that most of the time, all the middle men like Just Eat and Uber Eats do is cock things up, and allow you to track how badly they’re cocking things up in something tangentially related to real time.

Our first two dishes were variations on a theme: Momo 2 Go’s chow mein, one portion with pork and the other with sukuti, dried meat usually made from buffalo or lamb. The first thing to say about this is that I’ve had chow mein from a fair few Nepalese restaurants and it’s often as beige as beige can be. But Momo 2 Go’s was pleasingly speckled with colour and life – a flash of red chilli here, a verdant glimpse of shredded cabbage or spring onion there. 

It felt fresh and vibrant, and teamed up with their impressively decongestant chutney (again, a step up from the one you get at Sapana Home) it reminded me that I think I prefer Nepalese chow mein to its Chinese cousin. But the real MVP was the sukuti – dense, chewy nuggets of savoury joy that transformed every forkful they stowed away on. I just wish there had been a few more of them – which might say that the dish was slightly out of balance, or might just say that I was greedy. The true answer’s probably at the midpoint, and besides, the dish was only eight pounds.

“You always complain that I order better than you, but I think you win this time” said Zoë. Her chow mein had pork in it (because asking Zoë to order something other than pork is to engage in a futile battle against centuries of Irish forebears) and for what it’s worth I thought it was quite nice. But it wasn’t the sukuti: Momo 2 Go sells sukuti on its own, for nine pounds (ten if you want it with beaten rice and pickles) and next time I’ll have to order a separate portion of the stuff to relive that wonderful moment when I took my first bite and knew that I’d picked a winner.

Speaking of winners, we’d chosen chicken choila as a side and again, I’m not sure I had especially high hopes. I thought it would be nice enough – it’s spiced, grilled chicken after all – but I’ve never had a choila in a Nepalese restaurant that was a feature attraction in its own right. But this was. A tub full of beautiful pieces of chicken thigh, cooked just right, not bouncy but with enough firmness left, blackened and coated with a sticky fieriness that started to make your eyes water by the end. 

I really loved this dish, so much that I don’t know how I could avoid ordering it again, except maybe to try the pork next time. We raced through, almost wordless with delight, and both offered the other the final huge, succulent piece of chicken. “No, you have it” said Zoë and, realising that if I refused one more time she would totally eat it I gratefully accepted her offer. I don’t remember whether she said at the time that it was fucking good – I know it’s the kind of thing she would say, but I don’t want to invent a memory. But either way I’m saying it myself, right now.

I’ve saved the momo til last, and ironically they were the dishes with the most room for improvement. But even then, they were still really very good indeed. Let’s start with the lamb chilli momo, which were the most problematic. Which is a pity, because all the elements were present and correct, almost. The chilli sauce was an absolute beauty – a glossy, hot, sour and sweet doozy that clung to every single momo. Kamal once told me that the secret ingredient in the chilli sauce at Namaste Kitchen was Heinz tomato ketchup, and this reminded me of that but with more of a barbecue sauce note. And the filling, coarse minced lamb, was extremely good. 

But the problem was that because of the way the momo had been assembled, there just wasn’t enough of the filling. Most of the momo I’ve eaten tend to be crimped along one side into a half-moon, like a gyoza, which means that the filling gets to take up plenty of space in the middle. But these momo had the dough gathered at the top, like a little pouch. Nothing wrong with that, of itself, but it meant that the filling was largely taken up with a heavy, stodgy knot of dough that didn’t leave enough room for the lamb (it’s also the reason I’ve never quite taken to khinkali, the momo’s Georgian cousin). Even so, what lamb there was and what dough there was, speared onto a crunchy piece of onion and taken for a swim in that sauce made for a very agreeable mouthful. 

The chicken fried (or fired, according to the menu) momo were also very good but not quite on the money. These were crimped the same way but the act of frying had formed little chimneys. I suspect they were deep fried rather than pan-seared, because Momo 2 Go doesn’t offer kothey momo, and the overall effect was ever so slightly tough. And again, if I wanted a little more filling it’s partly down to gluttony but also recognition that it was so good, singing as it did with fragrance and what felt like a hint of lemon grass. And again, even if they were a little knife-resistant and a little light on the chicken, they were still fairly stellar when dipped in the chutney.

Around this time last year I reviewed Banarasi Kitchen, in one of my first ever takeaway reviews. It really helped to discover somewhere brilliant, unassuming and under the radar early in the year, to remind me why I do this and reiterate that for every bland, disappointing meal and bandwagon-jumper there’s still the potential for somewhere to come out of nowhere and pleasantly surprise you. 

I don’t know if the glass is half full or half empty, and I do know – in the immortal words of Dolly Parton – that if you want the rainbow you’ve got to put up with the rain. But to fend off the occasional disillusionment I do need to feel, especially after a run including Zero Degrees, Zyka and 7Bone, that the next ThaiGrr! might be just round the corner. And that’s why I’m so delighted to have discovered Momo 2 Go this week – another modest but quietly accomplished place that gets so much right. I admire them for the concision of their menu and for sticking to their guns, and I could see plenty of little touches in what I ordered that tell me they care about their food. 

It’s ironic that the momo were possibly the weakest thing I had, but they were still pretty good and within touching distance of greatness. I can’t imagine it will be long before I order from them again, and I know I’ll face that agonising dilemma of choosing between the things I know I loved, and the unknowns I might like even better. There are far worse decisions to have on a night when you’re giving yourself a night off from doing the cooking. Try it, you’ll see.

Momo 2 Go
172 Oxford Road, Reading, RG1 7PL
0118 9586666

https://momo2go.co.uk
Order via: Restaurant website only

Namaste Momo Competition: the results!

On By ediblereadingIn CompetitionsLeave a comment

One of these days I’ll learn to do competitions the way most bloggers and influencers do. Like and follow this page to be in with a chance of winning, or All you have to do is tag yourself and a friend who would love to eat Namaste Momo’s delicious momo and all that guff. Everyone loves a bit of something for nothing, don’t they? Unfortunately I’m too old fashioned and not cool enough for that, so people had to work for this one by writing 250 words on the restaurant they’d love to pick up and drop in Reading.

Despite that I had plenty of excellent entries and, as usual, was delighted to have such enthusiastic and talented readers. Reading the entries made me very hungry indeed, whether they were describing bruschetta eaten in a fairy light-strewn square on a warm Pisa evening, a cornucopia of meat, fresh off the grill somewhere in Northern Cyprus or Chinese noodles “as wide as belts”, wolfed down in New York (New York featured in several competition entries: I really must go there).

It’s always a huge relief, reading the competition entries, to know that I don’t have to judge them myself. That arduous task fell to John Luther who has done a brilliant job. John and I went to Namaste Momo last week just to put the menu through its paces and I’m happy to say that we both agree that this is definitely a prize worth winning – the chicken chilli momo and the pan fried lamb momo were both terrific and the Golden Everest lager accompanies them superbly. Just stay away from Kamal’s post-prandial brandies and I’m sure you’ll be absolutely fine.

Anyway, enough faff and preamble: it’s time to announce the winner and runner-up, along with John’s comments. Let’s open some metaphorical envelopes!

WINNER: Catherine O’Hare

Just like the tiny Chinese backstreet it’s tucked away on, this restaurant has no name. There’s no signage, no fancy furniture or smartly dressed maître d’ taking reservations and pushing the specials. In fact, you’d barely know it was a restaurant at all. It’s more like someone’s kitchen they’ve hastily decked out with mismatched tables and chairs. And lots of shouting.

“Rè nao” is how the Chinese describe a good restaurant. “Hot and noisy”. Mama Yung’s ‘kitchen’ restaurant is certainly that. It was just round the corner from my apartment when I was living in Lianyungang, but I would never have known of its existence had my local friend not brought me there for dinner one evening. My first of many visits. It’s probably fair to say that Mama Yung was largely responsible for keeping me alive during my year in China. She would often sit at my table if I was alone, nattering away to me as if I could understand her fast local dialect and I would feel obliged to nod sagely as I chomped my way through Sichuan spiced beef, stir-fried eggs with tomato and big, fluffy bowls of rice.

Every evening, the farmers would come to the street outside and lay their fresh produce out on sheets and every evening on my way home I would see Mama Yung arguing ferociously with them to get the best price.

“Hot and noisy” from produce to plate, Mama Yung’s is very, very special.

John says: This story of year fed well far away from home in a small restaurant in China made me smile. The little details of the food we’re tantalising but the star of the piece was the fierce matriarch running the show, brought to life beautifully. Bring her to Reading!

RUNNER-UP: Sophie Ibbotson

I’m in a battle of wills with a seagull. If I look away, even for a moment, there’s a good chance that not only will I lose a lovingly chosen giant prawn, but that an entire plate of seafood will be stolen from in front of me in a cacophony of screeching and violent flapping. And so I sit, glaring, and unusually possessive of my lunch.

Sydney Fish Market — the self proclaimed home of Australia’s seafood — is the biggest structure on Blackwattle Bay. In between the boats and vans transporting fresh fish across New South Wales are crowds of diners (plenty of them feathered), jostling for space at the outdoor picnic tables.

I spent nearly an hour inside the fish market making my selection. It wasn’t that service was slow, but rather there was too much choice. Would a trio of sushi donuts be more rewarding than a pint of prawns? Could I manage the marinated swordfish skewer as well as a plate of lightly battered scallops, calamari, and mussels?

The solution, as I knew deep down it would be from the very start, was to buy as much as I could carry. I wove precariously with my pile of takeaway boxes and paper plates between the lines of queuing shoppers, out the doors, and down the stairs. I squeezed onto the end of a patio table and unwrapped my mouthwatering fishy treasures, sprinkling them with a squeeze of lemon. That’s when the seagull arrived.

John says: Another little gem of a story featuring pesky seagulls. I’m a sucker for seafood, so was on side from the start, but was seduced by the description of this bustling fish market and al fresco dining.

Huge congratulations to Catherine and Sophie. Catherine wins a meal for four at Namaste Momo (where, in Kamal, she will encounter a proprietor almost as idiosyncratic as Mama Yung: although I can’t help but feel Catherine’s Mama Yung withdrawal symptoms could be solved with a trip to Kungfu Kitchen). Sophie wins a meal for two, and will only have to stop her dining companion scavenging her food. Thanks too to everybody else who entered: the standard was very high indeed.

Finally, to play us out, here’s my 250 words on the restaurant I’d like to drop in Reading. Tune in next week when I’ll have a new review for you – let’s hope it doesn’t turn out to be a place I’d like to drop as far away from Reading as possible.

I’m sure there are many restaurants in Paris better than Le Petit Marché where you can get fancier food and slicker service. Of course you can, it’s Paris. Yet I’ve been coming to this little restaurant, tucked behind the Place Des Vosges, for over a decade.

The tables are cramped; you always end up knocking elbows with your neighbours. Sometimes you wind up in conversation with them – the French have an uncanny habit of seating any native English speakers in a little enclave, as far from the locals as possible. They have to pull the table out to let you escape if you need the loo. But all that, coupled with the soft, atmospheric lighting, lends a cosy, conspiratorial feel.

The food’s beautiful: no showing off or theatrics. Tuna is served almost like sashimi, studded with sesame, seared on the outside, ready to be dunked in dipping sauce. Pink-middled discs of lamb come with a creamy sauce fragrant with basil. The mashed potato is the best I’ve ever tasted, and that’s not just me looking at it through rosé tinted glasses. The wine is available in carafes, as it will be in all restaurants if I ever come to power.

Two years ago, after my divorce, I went to Paris on my own to reclaim the place.  My one regret is that I didn’t visit Le Petit Marché. I’m back there next month, and I know exactly where I’ll be on my first evening in the city.