You can have a great network of informants, but sometimes there’s no substitute for getting out and about, keeping your eyes peeled. It’s a fact that our local journalists – what’s left of them, anyway – have forgotten, working from home. So last Saturday, after a very enjoyable lunch at Blue Collar and a coffee at Compound, my friend Dave and I took a wander down the Oxford Road to be virtuous and get some steps in ahead of a few afternoon beers at the Nag’s Head.
Much of what I saw was as expected. Traditional Romanesc are still there, in the spot where I had so many brilliant meals when it used to be Buon Appetito. Vampire’s Den, too (“is that really the only reference to Romania they thought people would get?” was Dave’s take). Oishi had definitely gone from “temporarily closed” to “never coming back in a million years” and Workhouse had been given a very attractive makeover, although the new store front didn’t seem to contain the name anywhere.
But there were, as there always seem to be, places that were news to me. Near the top of the Oxford Road, a place called AfrikInn was selling fufu, fried yam and jollof rice. SORRY WE’RE CLOSED TODAY SEE YOU TOMORROW said handwritten signs on the door and window. Further down, not far from Momo 2 Go, a place called Agnes’ Coffee Shop was open, selling coffee and Polish street food: the word Zapiekanki ran vertically down the brickwork, in a bigger font than the name of the café. I made a mental note of both.
But the place Dave and I were vaguely ambling to check out was Portuguese café DeNata, which opened in March this year, replacing – and this is where it gets confusing – Portuguese café Time 4 Coffee, which opened last August. It had been on my list for ages and although Dave and I were both full from lunch we figured an expedition to research pasteis de nata was a worthy pre-pint pursuit. Dave’s son has just come back from Lisbon on holiday, and hearing all about it made me very glad I had my own trip booked there later in the year.
We ordered a couple of pasteis, and the proprietor – instantly bright and personable – took great pride in showing me the menu; I chatted away with her for so long that poor Dave had to pay for the egg custard tarts. The owner asked me to follow DeNata on Facebook, and I dutifully promised I would. The place was bustling on a Saturday afternoon, and warm, but I didn’t pay it too much attention. Dave and I had a pub table to bag, after all, and a pastel de nata to inhale.
Anyway, the next day I left the house mid-morning, took a couple of buses and turned up at DeNata just before midday for lunch, to eat the meal you’re about to read about. So why did I do that?
Well, two reasons. First of all, the pastel de nata was one of the best I’ve had in this country and easily Lisbon standard – a beautiful cup of light, flaky pastry filled with wobbly, sweet, still-warm egg custard. Why had we been so stupid as to only buy two?
The other reason was that, looking at DeNata online, I got a strong suspicion that they were the real deal. Their menu, which I’d taken care to photograph on my flying visit, was a mixture of more mainstream café fare – pancakes, all day breakfasts, toasted sandwiches – and what the owner had endearingly described to me as “real food”. That’s where the embarrassment of riches could be found: classic Portuguese dishes like caldo verde, bacalhau à brás, feijoada, grilled chicken. Not only that, but they had the country’s two epic sandwiches on offer, the twin pillars of any Portuguese lunch, the francesinha and the bifana.
The menu would have been draw enough, but the social media was the clincher. Pictures of bifanas lined up ready to be eaten, of pasteis fresh out of the oven that day, of various daily specials, of delectable Jesuit pastries packed with frangipane cream. I’ve written before, I’m sure, about Portuguese food being an unjustly overlooked cuisine, but I’m also struck that nobody in Reading has ever quite got it right. Many years ago O Beirão had a crack at it, not entirely successfully, and more recently O Português had lasted a couple of years before going the same way (I should add that Brazilian establishments, in the shape of Pau Brasil and Minas Cafe, appear to have had more luck).
But what also struck me about DeNata, even from my passing interaction with them, was that unlike the likes of O Português this didn’t feel like a closed shop for Portuguese customers only. The owner seemed to have a genuine desire to introduce others to Portuguese food and that, to me, carried the echoes of great communicators like Clay’s Nandana, Geo Café’s Keti, the eponymous Kamal of Kamal’s Kitchen and, of course, Kungfu Kitchen’s inimitable Jo. And when you have someone like that determined to bring their national dishes to life you are, in my experience, on to a good thing.
Arriving on a Sunday just before lunchtime, the place was packed, to the point where only one table was free. It’s an interesting spot – looking at pictures DeNata seems to have inherited a lot of its furniture from its predecessors, but even though it wasn’t a massive room it still felt like one of two halves. To the right as you walk in, it’s a banquette and comfy chairs, a more English-looking café. But on the left, the unfussy tables and chairs on the marble-effect floor, the big TV mounted on the wall, you could have been in Lisbon. That feeling might have been enhanced by the fact that I’m pretty sure I was the only customer in there who wasn’t Portuguese, which is something I rather loved.
The counter was right ahead, with a big coffee machine and plenty of pastries on display. Behind it I could make out another cabinet full of petiscos and salgadinhos, and further back a small kitchen. A lot of good-looking food was packed into a small space – which is also, come to think of it, as good a description of DeNata’s menu as any. I took the last remaining table, just in front of the counter, sort of in both halves of the room and neither at the same time. It somehow seemed appropriate.
I couldn’t quite work out what to have, and ten to midday felt a little early to order lunch, so I started with a coffee and another of those natas. Now, my latte came in one of those tall, almost conical cups that I generally associate with naff, burnt coffee, so I approached it with a hint of trepidation. But honestly, it was absolutely gorgeous – smooth, beautifully made, no bitter note at all. I guess with Workhouse just down the way your coffee has to be pretty good, but given everything I ate from here on in I would still say that DeNata’s coffee is much better than it strictly needs to be (it’s by Kingdom Coffee, which means I owe Kingdom an apology: turns out the issue is with the people making their coffee, not with their beans).
And the eponymous nata? So, so good. Again, still warm, still with plenty of wobble in the custard, an absolute delight that transported you in a matter of mouthfuls. Unable to believe quite how good it was I was torn between wolfing it down and ekeing it out, eventually opting for the former on the basis that I’d buy some to take home at the end of the meal. My only criticism was that maybe I’d have liked it ever so slightly more set, but I’m clutching at straws saying that.
When I’ve found myself in Lisbon, or Porto, I’ve been unable to pass a single day without eating at least one pastel. And when I’ve returned home I’ve tried, and invariably failed, to find something that even comes close to how glorious they are. That’s not to say they’re all awful here. You can get some reasonable ones in this country, if you look – Nata & Co. in Cardiff and Bath springs to mind – and you can get some okay ones in Reading. Tuga Pastries, from Swindon, who sell at the farmer’s market, are decent. But for my money, DeNata’s are probably the best I’ve had in the U.K. The owner, who was every bit as engaging and charming as she’d been the day before, pointed out the shaker full of cinnamon at my table. I made full use of it: again, an indicator that this was the real McCoy.
As I think I said last week, reviewing solo makes choices far more difficult, because a place gets fewer chances to impress and you have to think harder about a representative sample of the menu. I toyed with the idea of flame grilled chicken, or arroz de pato, but in the end I decided to hedge my bets with a couple of snacks followed by a sandwich. This is where DeNata blurs the edges between Portuguese and Brazilian food – a couple of coxinha, for instance, were on the snack menu, but I decided to go for one of my very favourite things, pasteis de bacalhau.
This was, as it turned out, an inspired choice. What turned up were two large fritters, golden yet greaseless, hot but just cool enough that you could eat them by hand. Inside they were impressively light with that welcome hit of bacalhau, saline but not overpowering. I love salt cod, something I always associate with being abroad, and I loved these. They, too, were better than many I’ve had in Portugal and, for that matter, infinitely better than the ones I remember from Pau Brasil, many years ago.
My sandwich choice was difficult but in the end I went for the bifana, lured by those enticing photos I’d seen. This mostly happens in independents, rarely in chains, but what came to my table looked almost exactly like the pictures online and every bit as alluring. A bifana, although there’s some variation across Portugal, is strips of pork cooked in a sauce of beer, garlic and paprika, loaded into a big soft floury roll and eaten like a hungry beast. Okay, that last bit probably only describes my assault on it, but I assure you the rest was very accurate.
And it really is one of the great sandwiches out there, and possibly the best sandwich you’ve never had: no wonder the bifana has been described as a matter of national pride to the Portuguese. Who can blame them? It makes tuna mayo or egg and cress look distinctly bobbins. The pork was tender and the sauce, although hard to describe, was captivating with the smokiness of paprika harmonising with the moreish tang of beer.
They don’t skimp on the sauce either, to the point where the bottom of my bap was getting a little soggy. But it’s an inspired choice of bread – big and capable enough to be gripped and devoured, to keep everything in without worrying about losing precious morsels. As with the pastel da nata, I’m not sure I ate it with an awful lot of poise or dignity, but I absolutely ate the shit out of it all the same.
I was having such a wonderful time that I quite forgot myself, forgot where I was, forgot the RG30 postcode, forgot that I had to work the next day. By this point that wave of customers had left and a new wave had arrived, all bom dia, adeus and obrigado. Everybody, coming and going, was Portuguese. One English couple came in, looked around, seemed overwhelmed and decided to leave.
“Are you saying we’ve come all the way here and now you want to go somewhere else?” said the boyfriend in an exasperated tone, and I know I should have interjected and said “No, stay! The pasteis are amazing and so’s everything else I’ve had”, but I felt self-conscious and I didn’t want to break the spell. I imagine they ended up at Workhouse and they probably had a lovely coffee, but they missed out all the same.
I could have stayed all afternoon, but I had promised to get home and bring some pasteis de nata with me, so I went back up to the counter, ordered a tube of four pasteis and settled my bill. It came to twenty-eight pounds, not including tip, but seven of that was the bounty I took home with me. The pasteis cost less than two pounds each, as did both of my salt cod fishcakes. The most expensive thing I had was my bifana, which cost less than eight pounds, and the most expensive thing on the entire menu, if you feel fancy, is a whole flame-grilled chicken. It’s yours for just under fourteen pounds.
Service was brilliant throughout by the way, every bit as it had been during my passing visit the day before. Even though it was a little Portuguese enclave plonked in the middle of the Oxford Road I didn’t feel like an outsider or a curiosity. I felt welcome, well looked after and well fed and it truly was a wrench to leave. I found it really hard to fault DeNata, and if I picked anything out it would be largely for the sake of it rather than because there’s anything I think they should change.
Well, maybe one thing: it was a bit toasty in there, for a summer day, but I imagine come winter it will be cosy and a positive haven from the cold, dreary Oxford Road outside. Most of all, the things I thought were missing were sheer potential rather than missed opportunities. DeNata is a wonderful place for a coffee, a cake, a snack, lunch or sheer people watching, immersion and escapism.
But I just found myself wishing it was open in the evening, that I could try some of those ribsticking Portuguese classics when the sun had gone down, with a cold Super Bock in front of me and maybe a Boavista match on the big TV. A few of those pasteis de bacalhau with the beer, and then duck and rice, or half a chicken. And then more beer, because places like this are crying out to be enjoyed with a beer (come to think of it, I did see a bottle go to another table when I was there, although I didn’t see beer on the menu).
But all that is me getting ahead of myself – maybe that will be their next venture, at some point in the future. Let’s instead concentrate on the here and now, where somehow, in the middle of the Oxford Road, this wonderful little bubble of not-Reading has materialised, seemingly out of nowhere. It is exactly the kind of place I hoped to discover when I started writing this blog many years ago and, many years on, it’s exactly the kind of discovery that redeems every Popeyes and Taco Bell.
And that, in turn, makes me hopeful that Reading still has the capacity to astound and enthrall, and to attract fascinating new places. Reading hasn’t had many new places open this year and many of the big names that have, like Zia Lucia and Siren RG1, have underwhelmed. But when you can still stumble upon the likes of Dough Bros, or a DeNata, I reckon we’re doing all right.
When I got home, the pasteis de nata were gone in less than an hour. I have strict instructions to forage for them again in the not too distant future.
DeNata Coffee & Co. – 8.5
377 Oxford Road, Reading, RG30 1HA
Edible Reading 