Tag: Pizza

Restaurant review: Dough Bros

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In December 2025 Dough Bros changed hands and the new owners made changes to its menu, adding smashed burgers and removing ham, ‘nduja and presumably pepperoni with pork. In June 2026 it rebranded to Doughza. I have marked Dough Bros as closed, and kept the review up for posterity.

I moved house last week, and suddenly everything changed. My little slice of Reading, my walks, maps, routes and routines were no more. No more waking up in the Village and mooching into town for lunch, no more strolls round Reading Old Cemetery or Palmer Park, no more number 17s and Little Oranges buses, no more Retreat just round the corner. After seven years of East Reading life, it was time for something different.

So on moving day Zoë and I found ourselves standing, sleep-deprived, outside a large house that wasn’t quite ours yet, rented van parked up in the drive, waiting for the agent to arrive and check us in. Meanwhile, across town, movers were loading boxes into a far bigger van from a far smaller house that was no longer ours. The sun was blazing, and I strolled across Cintra Park to Greggs, of all places, to pick up coffee and pastries. This is my neighbourhood now, I thought to myself.

I’m writing this over a week later, after seven days of unpacking and tip slots and IKEA trips (I’d forgotten how depressing that place is) and everything is starting to take shape. A lot of the boxes are unpacked, the kitchen is in some kind of order and, best of all, we finally got a new bed – high off the ground, with a big firm mattress, like climbing on to a cloud at night. The walls are fresh-painted white, the blinds are new and Venetian and the rooms flood with summer sunlight.

And every morning I wake up and can’t quite believe I live here, in this new place.

There’s a clothes line in the garden, and I get to experience the meditative joys of hanging out the washing, taking it in when it’s been dried by the sun and smells of heaven. Let’s not talk about the huge rent hike, or the council tax band of this place, or the fact that I can’t afford to eat out quite so often: let’s just think about the smell of that washing from the line.

On our very first night, exhausted but with the rest of the week off to unpack and settle in, we wandered to pretty much our nearest restaurant, Kungfu Kitchen. Like me they moved recently, although a few doors down Christchurch Green maybe isn’t quite as big a shift as mine. And their new site is lovely and snazzy – especially the light feature projecting fish onto the floor – but it was also reassuring just how like their old place it was. The food was still outstanding, and the welcome was the same, because Jo and Steve do not change: I particularly enjoyed Jo frogmarching customers to the loo, proudly boasting that Kungfu Kitchen has the best toilets in the world. Her words, not mine.

But Kungfu Kitchen is only one of our nearest restaurants, and I popped into one of the others to take something home the following night, just before an England match, fresh from a purgatorial trip to the tip. Dough Bros opened in March at the top of Northumberland Avenue and has built up quite a following in three short months. It’s run by a couple of friends, one of whom also runs the neighbouring barber Short, Back & Vibes.

I stopped by on a sweltering hot day and picked up a couple of takeaway pizzas, and as I waited I chatted away with Robbie, one of the owners. He seemed to know his stuff when it came to pizza, and told me that he was a fan of Sarv’s Slice (“they use the same flour and tomatoes as us”, he said). But he also said that his pizza was a little different from Sarv’s, and different from the floppy Neapolitan style that’s taken over the U.K. I saw that in action as he took both my pizzas out of the oven, tapped the bottom and decided they needed a little longer.

I didn’t have to talk to Robbie for long to realise that he was a proper pizza obsessive, and as I watched him pipe ricotta onto one of the pizzas I found myself thinking that this place, if it lived up to my experience up to that point, could be something very special. Robbie said that business was picking up, although there were some quiet weeks, and that they were trying other channels, mainly Instagram, to get more customers.

I liked his candour, as evidenced when I asked whether Dough Bros made its own chicken tenders. “No, we buy those in. Pizza is the thing we’re passionate about here.” I respected that, and later on he gave me Dough Bros’ mission statement in one short, simple sentence. “We’re trying to transcend Whitley,” he said.

Anyway, not to put too fine a point on it, or spoil what follows, I liked my pizza very much. It was significantly better than England’s ropy performance against Slovenia that night, and both of them were better than the torrent of dross that came out of the gob of ITV’s chief prattler Sam Matterface. I liked it so much that I recommended it to my sister-in-law when she came to visit the new house, and she collected a couple of pizzas to take home to the rest of the family.

And I even liked it so much that at the end of the week we ordered a couple more, this time via Deliveroo, which we ate on our big comfy sofas in the new house while watching the last televised debate between our old prime minister and the new guy: for some reason, I associated Dough Bros takeaways with stodgy bore draws.

When I put a picture up of my pizza on Instagram I got one of two responses. Either people said “that looks good, where is it from?” or “that’s from Dough Bros!” That, more than anything, made me think that Reading was divided into two camps: Dough Bros fans, and people who hadn’t been there yet. So this week, one night when Zoë was working a late shift, I ambled back across Cintra Park to have my pizza in for a change.

Dough Bros is near the end of a run of shops at the top of Northumberland Avenue, before it descends the hill into the heart of Whitley. Short Back & Vibes is next door, and brand new Indian restaurant Curry Rasoi is at the other end. Inside you get a clear idea that a lot of Dough Bros’ trade is probably takeaway, because it was on the basic side: a few no-frills tables and chairs on one side of the room, two booths on the other.

The ceiling tiles were black and white checkerboard, which gave the disconcerting feeling that the room was upside down. One wall had a couple of guitars mounted on it, the other had some framed LPs and various pieces of wall art which looked like they came from a section in Home Bargains called “I just opened a pizza restaurant”. I promise this is affectionate, by the way: I rather liked it. I felt like I could have been in America, by a dusty freeway, instead of in RG2.

The menu was extensive, but also interesting in terms of what was and wasn’t on it. Many of the tried and tested combinations weren’t offered – no capers, olives and anchovies for me – and the menu gave a refreshingly wide berth to some of the on-trend toppings you see everywhere. That means ‘nduja only crops up in a couple of places, there isn’t any burrata to be seen and even hot honey, which seems to be ubiquitous in pizza joints lately, is deployed sparingly.

The overall choice was more American than Italian but even then there were some interesting curveballs designed by Dough Bros – one involved biltong, and might have tempted me but for the presence of sweetcorn. A couple involved a barbecue base rather than the classic tomato and again, appealed but perhaps for next time. And most tempting was the most oddball of all, the “Rogan”: Robbie had told me on a previous visit that it was based on a conversation between Joe Rogan and Elon Musk on a podcast about whether anchovies and pineapple was a genius pizza combo or an aberration.

Leaving aside the idea of ordering anything endorsed by a Covid vaccine denier, or social media’s single biggest tosspot, I think it sounds rather interesting, and I can’t rule out ordering it on another occasion. But I decided against it, and in the back of my mind I worried that ordering it would give out some weird signal that I really wanted to get drawn into a conversation about investing in crypto. I’ve lost track of the number of baristas over the years that have tried to give me the chat about crypto, come to think of it.

Anyway, for my sins I reordered the pizza I’d eaten the very first time I tried Dough Bros, the one which Zoë, stricken with pizza envy, had ordered the second time we tried Dough Bros. The Honey Honey was a comparatively simple affair – double pepperoni, ricotta and hot honey – but having tried it once I was very much in a hurry to try it again. My order, for a pizza and a can of elderflower lemonade (Dough Bros doesn’t have an alcohol licence) came to fifteen pounds fifty.

They don’t rush at Dough Bros, and nor should they. I was quite happy sipping my lemonade, looking out the full length windows at the summer evening outside, people watching and contemplating my new surroundings. I felt thoroughly transported, I thought I had a decent pizza on the way and nowhere in particular I needed to be any time soon. I was the only customer, and it seemed to be a quiet Tuesday: unlike my previous flying visit I didn’t see people turning up with their green Deliveroo backpacks, ready to find pizzas a new home.

When my pizza arrived, I remembered just how good they looked and how huge they were – fourteen inch, I think, a big, stretched, irregular wonder. This is not a pizza assembled with an eye on cost control, the way the likes of Franco Manca used to be, and the toppings were as generous as they were haphazard. It really was a beautiful thing, a symphony of red yellow and white, with a slight glimmer from the plentiful drizzling of hot honey. I’d enjoyed it at home, several minutes after it had come out of that oven, but I realised that this was the real deal: no delay, no messing about. Out of the oven, onto a plate lined with paper, sliced into eight and brought over without delay.

I sighed with happiness, and then I set about my task.

It’s kind of delightfully incongrous how on trend this little place near the edge of Whitley is, by the way. I read a piece in the Telegraph last week about how Neapolitan pizza was on its way out and American pizza was the hot new thing: crispier, more rigid pizza without that sloppy centre. It cited the much hyped Crisp Pizza W6 in Hammersmith as the vanguard of a new movement offering New York pizza, and mentioned other trailblazers in Hertfordshire, in Margate, in Brighton. But would you believe that you can also get exactly that kind of pizza here in Reading, on Northumberland Avenue? Me neither, but it turns out you can.

And it really was a beauty and, just as importantly, an utter joy to eat. Forget all those times you’ve gingerly picked up a piece of Neopolitan pizza to find the tip of the triangle drooping platewards. This was a rugged pizza, to be folded lengthways and devoured. The tomato sauce was deep and impeccable, the pepperoni a crispy guilty pleasure. And the little dabs of ricotta, offset with the slight tickling heat of the honey, made every bite slightly different but equally wonderful.

I can honestly say that it was one of my favourite things I’d eaten all year and as I’ve experienced a few times in the course of writing this blog – when visiting the likes of Clay’s, or Kungfu Kitchen, or Bakery House, or Namaste Kitchen for the first time – I had this feeling of real good fortune that of all the towns across England where these chaps could have opened their restaurant, they happened to pick Reading.

It bothered me a little that the restaurant was empty, although when I’d chatted to Robbie the week before he said it was generally very busy, and I felt that pull, familiar by now, that I wanted to do what I could about that.

There’s very little more to say: I had already settled up, so I told Robbie that it was marvellous and I prepared to make my way home through Cintra Park, full and happy, watching significantly more active people than me running, kicking balls and making the most of the long evenings. But before I did, Robbie asked my name and told me he remembered me from the previous week. I imagine he remembers all of his customers: he struck me as very good at that sort of thing.

So there you have it, that’s Dough Bros: a marvellous spot, and the unlikeliest of discoveries. If you live nearby, I recommend going. If you live further away, get a delivery and pop the oven on to pep it up when it arrives (if your oven is big enough to accommodate one of their whopping pizzas, that is). But either way, if you like pizza at all I think you might want to check it out. Whitley is very lucky to have them, but I do kind of hope that they manage to achieve their ambition and transcend the place. Fingers crossed that this review plays a small part in that.

Dough Bros – 8.4
87 Northumberland Avenue, Reading, RG2 7PT
07922 477519

https://www.instagram.com/doughbrospizza_reading/

Restaurant review: Sartorelli’s, Oxford

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I’m of the firm opinion that everyone has at least one useful life lesson you could learn from them. Someone I used to know, for instance, was convinced that you could never go wrong taking champagne to somebody’s house: we didn’t agree on much, it turned out, but on this she had a point. My stepmother has a rule, a very wise one, that you should never buy her any Christmas or birthday present she has to dust. I sometimes give her champagne, which combines those two rules nicely. 

A married couple I used to know had two excellent customs. One was that using the W word, talking about work, was strictly verboten on Sundays. The other was that, once in a while, one of them could play a joker and opt out of adult life for a whole day. The other one had to make all the decisions – where to go, what to do, what to watch, everything. 

I’ve tried to introduce that latter rule into my own life, but without much success. Most of the time my spouse, tired from working to the core of the bone, doesn’t want to make decisions for anybody else. And when she does, she has a bad habit of making plans for me that I just don’t like. 

“I think you should stay at home and pack for the move” was Zoë’s suggestion last Friday when I was facing another Saturday on my tod and asked her what I should get up to: I didn’t fancy that at all. 

So on a whim, a solo Saturday stretching out in front of me, I thought “fuck it, I’ll go to Oxford”. I headed for the station, and was sitting in C.U.P. having a mocha and making my plans when Zoë texted me. I thought I’d have one last crack at abdicating responsibility. 

“I’m going to Oxford but I’m torn between grabbing a late lunch at the Magdalen Arms or trying Sartorelli’s, that pizza place in the Covered Market. What do you think?”

“Have the pizza. You can review it.”

What happened next was a series of some of the happiest events. First, that moment when your train pulls up and it’s mostly empty, no standing in the aisle holding on to the back of someone’s chair, sitting on the luggage rack or slumped in the vestibule. Instead, a leisurely trundle through Oxfordshire, just me, my phone and the music in my headphones. As Larkin puts it, all sense of being in a hurry gone. 

Getting off at Oxford I was struck that although it wasn’t quiet – it never is – it wasn’t crazily busy, and as I strolled in, up George Street and Ship Street, I thought how curious it was that I’ve never quite escaped this city, just up the train tracks from home, where I spent three years learning a lot about a little but precious little about life. That used to put me off the place, but now I’ve reached some kind of accommodation with it. 

Another glad event followed as I entered the Covered Market. It was that wonderful coincidence that happens when you arrive somewhere very busy literally as somebody else is just leaving, and can jump into their place. So I got a plum spot outside Sartorelli’s at one of the long tables, just by being in the right place at exactly the right time: after that, the queue just grew and grew. If I’d got there five minutes earlier, or later, the day would have had a completely different shape. 

The Covered Market has always been one of my favourite spots in Oxford, even back in the early Nineties when I used to stop there to pick up a lunchtime pie from a trader called Ma Baker (Boney M fans, I presume). But its character has been changing in recent years, with many of the traditional traders driven out by high rents: the butchers and fishmongers have left, and on this visit one of the old-school mens’ outfitters had a closing down sign in the window. The likes of Fasta Pasta, who used to do the best ciabatta in the world, are gone too.

But in their place a very different sort of trader is settling in to the market. Although they recently got a little tap room from Botley’s Tap Social, I first noticed the phenomenon a few years back with Teardrop, a micropub offering beer from Church Hanbrewery, a little brewery based out past Witney. They had half a dozen or so beers on cask and keg, and sold charcuterie and the like, and they had a few barrels and tables outside. And then there was a wine bar, Cellar Door, next to it – again, selling wine by the glass. And finally, there was Sartorelli’s along from that, setting up a little ecosystem – wine, beer and pizza all in one little corner of the market.

Sartorelli’s also sprung up out of Church Hanbrewery, first offering pizza at the brewery taproom before opening in the Covered Market in March 2022. And since it opened, every time I’ve been to the Covered Market – usually to buy cheese, or grab a latte from the excellent Colombia Coffee Roasters – I’ve gone past, thought the setup looked great, eyed the pizzas being devoured outside with no small degree of envy. And then sighed. because I had a lunch reservation somewhere else. But on this occasion I was in Oxford with no plans, and this space at a table outside had miraculously come free. When opportunity knocks like that, you don’t send it away.

The very kind couple next to me kept an eye on my stuff and I went up to order. The place was a bustle of activity, with a big wood-fired oven and a menu displayed on the wall that was simple almost to a fault. Fundamentally you can have a margherita for £8.50 and load it with whatever you fancy, at a cost of 50p per topping, or you can have one of their suggested combos. The menu explained that sartorelli means small tailor, and that as far as they were concerned you could tailor your pizza however you like.

I spotted one of the suggestions that mentioned anchovies, ordered it, paid £10.50 and scuttled back to my seat and my bag, gratified that they were still there. My tablemates then kindly agreed to keep looking after my bag while I went to Teardrop and ordered two thirds of their Teardrop Citra on keg. It cost just under four pounds and was absolutely gorgeous – cold, crisp and, I hoped, perfect pizza accompaniment. I went back to my table with my winnings, saw the queue beginning to build and felt like coming here for lunch was turning out to be a very smart decision on my part.

My pizza arrived just over ten minutes later, although I was having such a lovely time that I’d quite happily have waited longer. It came on a metal tray, à la The Last Crumb, but they’d sensibly put paper underneath it which also helped it stay warm longer. Sartorelli’s just gives you a pizza cutter, a napkin and some chilli and garlic oil, so if you’re a cutlery user, their pizza might challenge you. And this was the point where I realised I had completely missed the fact that, on the menu, my pizza was billed as coming with a “sprinkle of rocket”. It was a nice idea, but it was more than a sprinkle, and without cutlery it added a layer of complexity to eating the thing with your hands.

Initially I also wondered whether the rocket might have been used to camouflage the toppings, to conceal any caper or (especially) anchovy-related stinginess that was going on. But once I settled down to eating the pizza, I realised nothing could be further from the truth. It was liberally carpeted with tiny, punchy capers, had a respectable number of plump black olives and, most importantly, plenty of glorious, salty anchovies.

Not only that, but the base was excellent – especially the crust, all blistered, puffy and chewy. I was having an absolutely marvellous time: a bite of the pizza, a sip of the gorgeous beer, an unworthy look up at the queue, still growing, and I felt like I was properly winning at lunch.

I should have stayed for a dessert, really – it’s just ice cream, which they say is “hand crafted to a secret Sartorelli recipe” – but I had my eye on something from Swoon on the High later on, and I also felt guilty depriving punters of a seat. So I ambled off to the Oxford Cheese Company to pick something up for the evening, and then wandered out towards North Oxford in search of one of my favourite pubs in the whole wide world, the Rose And Crown.

I have broken one of the unspoken rules of restaurant reviewing by reviewing the same kind of establishment two weeks running. Last week was Zia Lucia, this week it’s Sartorelli’s: it’s the equivalent of putting two consecutive tracks on a mixtape by the same artist. But I think it’s very instructive in some ways because restaurants aren’t only about quality, or value, or service, or even convenience. They’re also about expectations, and whether they can surprise or delight.

So I expected Zia Lucia to be something special, and although you couldn’t fault their tomato sauce, or their Parma ham, the overall experience was a little underwhelming. And yet on a wooden stool, at a trestle table in the middle of the Covered Market I had a pizza from a place that didn’t shout or brag, but just did an absolutely marvellous job. Excellent craft beer from a place two doors down, a little people watching and hubbub, and an excellent lunch that, all told, set me back just under fifteen pounds.

Experiences like that are reason enough, if you find yourself at a loose end on a Saturday, to hop on a train and take your chances. I’m very glad I did. Besides, I’m asked quite often whether there’s anywhere decent to go for an informal, quickish lunch in Oxford, and now I have an answer for you. I may not have any great life lessons to impart to you – although my stepmother’s rule of thumb is a very good one – but you can usually rely on me for a restaurant recommendation.

Sartorelli’s – 7.7
21, Covered Market, Oxford, OX1 3DZ

https://www.sartorellis.com/sartorellisoxford

Restaurant review: Zia Lucia

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It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that as a middle-aged man churning out two and a half thousand words a week about some restaurant or other, I’m about as far from the food and drink zeitgeist as it’s possible to be. Restaurant blogs have been dead for years, local papers too, and even the broadsheets are gradually fading away. Instagram influencers are passé too, even if Reading’s handful are still scrounging the occasional free meal (the latest from the Hilton in Kennet Island). Nope, apart from the occasional increasingly desperate Substack, food reviewing is all about TikTok and Instagram reels these days. 

The most prominent is an account called Topjaw. Topjaw, for the uninitiated, consists of a posh bloke with floppy hair (who used to be a model) in front of the camera and a less photogenic bloke, presumably also posh, behind it. The posh bloke with floppy hair interviews restaurateurs in London getting vox pops about where they think you can find the best pizza, burgers, coffee and so on in the capital. He’s trying to perfect that fake almost-estuary accent posh people do when they’re trying to sound less posh, like Tony Blair used to do. He’s not managed it yet. 

The usual suspects come up in those vox pops time and again – the Dalston bakery Dusty Knuckle, the Dexter burger at The Plimsoll in Finsbury Park, the Soho hype factory that is new pub The Devonshire (a place where nobody can snag a reservation but there are mysteriously always tables available for celebrities, critics and, well, Topjaw). We’re never paid by any restaurant we feature, says their bio, although they’re not averse to doing paid partnerships with the likes of Bicester Village, of all places. They may not be paid a fee, but God knows if they pay for their food.

Still, all power to them: their format is quick and entertaining, and you find yourself watching it whether you like them or not. It’s already spawning imitators – mainly in Bristol, where you see some people trying the vox pop format – and maybe one day it will translate into a TV show for them, or a paid gig or an appearance on Strictly or I’m A Celebrity.

You might wonder what any of this has to do with Reading, so I should explain. A couple of months ago, during a bumper week of tosspots on Topjaw, they interviewed not only Ed Sheeran (who turns out to be as basic as you would expect) but also hereditary columnist and bigoted human bin fire Giles Coren. Coren was clearly desperate to appeal to a new demographic so was doing his usual dreary, sweary trying too hard schtick, only even more manic than usual.

But in the course of dispensing his tiresome opinions he happened to say that he thought the best pizza in London was done by Zia Lucia. “They have this charcoal base which apparently doesn’t make you fart” he added, not as hilariously as he intended. Hang on, I thought, haven’t they just opened in Reading?

Well, yes, they have. Zia Lucia opened at the start of April on St Mary’s Butts, where ASK used to be, their first branch outside London. Their website talks about their origins in Islington over 15 years ago, and they also bandy around the slightly random stat that they are the world’s 38th best pizza chain (before you get too excited, Pizza Pilgrims finished 27 places above them and the Big Mamma Group, which Coren loathes, came third). Even so a first branch outside London, coming to a town that had lost Franco Manca and Buon Appetito, felt like it was worth investigating. 

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Restaurant review: Vesuvio Pizzeria

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Vesuvio Pizzeria, an Italian restaurant in Tilehurst, opened back in May and I’ve been trying to fit in a visit ever since without quite managing it. I made a booking back in July, which I had to cancel, and then life got in the way and so it wasn’t until a couple of Saturdays ago that Zoë and I left the house, strolled to the bus stop at the bottom of the hill and hopped on Reading’s sweet chariot, the number 17, to boldly go where my blog, let’s be honest, has rarely gone before.

I’d heard few reports of Vesuvio, so had little to go on. In a bizarre twist that tells you everything you need to know about the Reading Chronicle, they reported faithfully on the fact that someone had applied to convert the old Coral bookies on the Norcot Road into an Italian restaurant. They practically foamed at the mouth when the restaurant applied for permission to serve food and drink until 2 in the morning, dubbing it a“showdown”. Why would anyone want to eat in a pizza restaurant at that time? and Why would a restaurant want to serve anybody who did? were just two of the questions the article made no effort to answer.

But since it opened? No coverage at all. I guess you can write the first two stories in your lounge in your pants without having to do any genuine journalism, whereas a restaurant review would require you to put some trousers on, leave the house and spend some actual money. Never mind, you’ve got me for that sort of thing now.

My pre-meal research was as inconclusive as they come: TripAdvisor seemed unimpressed, Google was gushing. The restaurant’s Instagram was sketchily updated and, being charitable, didn’t make the food look outstanding. Its website, such as it was, appeared to be made up entirely of stock photos, to the point where the pizzas all seemed to have different types of bases, some with flat, featureless crusts and others with the kind of bubbling and leopard spotting you see everywhere.

How were you possibly meant to know whose version of reality was correct, and whether you’d have a good meal at Vesuvio? Like I said, you’ve got me for that sort of thing.

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Restaurant review: Sarv’s Slice at The Biscuit Factory

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Sarv’s Slice left its Reading premises in May 2025.

Now the thermometer has finally crept over twenty degrees a couple of times, now that the first al fresco pint of the year is in the recent past, now that we’ve had Cheesefeast and Eurovision my mind, like everybody’s in Reading, turns to summer. Back when we had a beer festival every May bank holiday weekend there was a clear demarcation point that said summer was on the way: the failure to hold one for the last few years has left us fending for ourselves.

But never mind – summer is on the way. And that’s got me thinking, lately, about how every summer has its own distinct identity, its own little chapter in the autobiographies we all carry around in our heads. 2016 was a bad year, all angst and anguish. 2018 was about the rush of new things and new happiness. 2020, with the long walks and the first tentative drinks outside, was the pastoral symphony (am I the only person nostalgic for 2020? I bet I’m not).

Not only that but, if you think about food anywhere near as much as I do, summers can also be defined by restaurants. During any phase of your life, the two wind up inextricably linked. For me, the summers of 2005 and 2006 were all about Santa Fe, on the riverside. At the end of the working week my then wife and I would grab a table in the window with our friends, looking out on what felt like the whole of Reading celebrating the weekend.

We would drink cocktails, so many and so frequently that they ended up giving us a silver 2 for 1 card. My drink of choice, horribly basic, was the Mudslide, with, I think, chocolate ice cream in it. It tasted devoid of booze. Eventually we would drift inside, grab a table and eat dinner. That was those two summers in a nutshell. I had only just turned 30, I was carefree, content in my job and when I think about those summers, I always think of Santa Fe.

Similarly, when I remember the summer of 2014, or 2015, it’s indelibly connected to Dolce Vita. By then those friends had become parents, or drifted away, but for me that child-free ritual of marking the end of the working week was still similar: make a beeline to Dolce Vita, order a bottle of wine and see what was on the specials menu. Order it if it looked good, have the saltimbocca or the monkfish if I didn’t fancy it. Whole months passed like this, punctuated by excellent, happy meals.

Fast forward the best part of a decade and last summer, for me, was the summer of Buon Appetito. I would meet Zoë in town after work and, unless either of us had a better idea, we would amble down the Oxford Road, comparing notes about our day. And we would end up sitting outside at Buon Appetito’s welcoming patio, a Negroni for her and an Aperol Spritz for me, and we’d luxuriate in that feeling of work being over, for the time being at least. I say “unless either of us had a better idea”, but of course the best idea of all was to have dinner at Buon Appetito. That’s the siren song a restaurant has when it becomes synonymous with your summer.

I write all that with some sadness, because something funny is going on at Buon Appetito. Their social media lies dormant, the doors shuttered, no signs of life. I’ve heard stories of people turning up, with or without bookings, to find the restaurant abandoned and unlit with no sign or announcement. And I’ve heard various rumours: some say the closure’s a temporary blip, others strongly suggest we won’t see them again. My own Instagram message to them, sent four weeks ago, remains unread.

I guess that’s what led me to the Biscuit Factory on a weekday afternoon last week, to see if Sarv’s Slice offered a viable alternative for al fresco pizza in the sunshine. Sarv’s Slice has an interesting history: Reading first encountered them at Market Place as part of Blue Collar’s weekly events, and when Blue Collar Corner opened last year Sarv’s Slice was one of its four permanent traders on a year’s contract. I think I ate their food once, with my friend Graeme, and was very taken with their carbonara special (maybe it’s heresy to do this on a pizza, but I liked it too much to care).

When their stint at Blue Collar Corner ended they didn’t rest on their laurels, and in March they announced their new home at the Biscuit Factory, where they’re in residence Wednesday to Sunday. On paper it’s a perfect match. The Biscuit Factory has wonderful coffee downstairs by Compound – and, top tip, it’s pretty much the only place in Reading to get decent coffee after 6pm – but the food offering has been a bit patchy. Something casual, the next step up from street food, would seem like the perfect option for eating before one of the Biscuit Factory’s events. And they even have some outside space: the omens were promising.

I’ve never actually been to the Biscuit Factory for any of their events – judge away, I know I should have – but I know the upstairs space from the occasional West Reading coffee. It’s a plain, anonymous space, and pretty big, but not unwelcoming for that. There was stand up comedy on the night I went, a table of people who seemed to be doing an art class, and plenty of others still on the banquette that runs along two sides of the back room, tapping away on laptops or, in one case, playing what looked like a fiercely competitive game of Uno.

I’ve never set foot in the Biscuit Factory without feeling slightly too old for it, but even so I liked it. It has what old duffers like me refer to as a “lovely energy”, and even the pale birch panelled walls felt nicely neutral rather than cheap. The outside space, where I ate my pizza, is surprisingly attractive, all yellows and burnt orange, with an oddly gorgeous view past the Penta Hotel down the Oxford Road. It reminded me of my sentimental attachment to West Reading: I always think that if you don’t like West Reading, you don’t really like Reading. I do wish it was non-smoking, though: the ashtrays at every table and people sneaking out to clang away on a fag felt jarring.

Sarv’s Slice has a small menu, which is as it should be. Just the seven pizzas without a huge amount of variation, truth be told. You can have a marinara with no cheese, or a margherita with fior di latte, or the same thing with buffalo mozzarella. You can have a pepperoni pizza, or one with both pepperoni and ‘nduja, and you can have a mushroom pizza either with olives or with ham. I admire their stripped-down approach: I could say it reduces the replay value, but I always went to Buon Appetito and ordered one of two pizzas, so I’m the last person to criticise.

Often they have squares of deeper pan Detroit-style pizza on their specials, which seem to be where their more creative side comes out, but on this visit the only special was the Napoli, with olives, capers and anchovies. I was hardly complaining: that’s pretty much my go-to pizza anywhere. Sides are limited to garlic bread – I’ve never understood the appeal of this when you’re about to eat a bread-based main course – and parmesan truffle fries. Naturally I ordered the latter, and my bill came to eighteen pounds fifty. As at Blue Collar Corner, they give you a buzzer which goes off when your food is ready.

I nabbed a table out on the terrace (terrace? balcony?) and made inroads into a beer. You have to buy these from the bar separately, but laudably they had a good local range from the likes of Double-Barrelled and Phantom. Mine was from Phantom, and not up to their usual standard, but it was a warm day and I was sitting outside so I was prepared to overlook a lot.

It was seven pounds fifty. Now that I clearly wasn’t completely prepared to overlook, as I’ve mentioned it here. Is that a lot? I suppose it would be for a pint at the Nag’s, but I’ve never understood how restaurants are allowed to treble the cost of wine but we expect to get beer for less. Who knows what too expensive even means any more, these days? Everything is too expensive, even the electricity you charged your phone with so you could read this; just think, if I was less prolix you’d literally save money.

My buzzer went off in less than ten minutes and carrying my goodies to my table it was hard not to be impressed, on first sight, by the pizza. The crust was suitably bubbled and blistered, and the whole thing had a satisfying irregularity to it. And there was much to like about it – a beautiful base, an excellent sweet tomato sauce, plenty of cheese. The whole thing held together well and was a pleasure to eat. But the devil was in the detail, and if I’m being critical – which it turns out I am – it could have done with more of its star players. The purple, fragrant olives were great but it was light on the capers and, more sadly, one quadrant was an entirely anchovy-free zone.

But none the less it was an excellent pizza, and I spent a bit of time afterwards trying to decide where it ranked in Reading’s pizza pantheon. Nicer than the likes of Franco Manca, if more expensive. Roughly the same price as Buon Appetito had been, but svelte by comparison. Easily as likeable as the pinsa at Mama’s Way, albeit a very different beast, with the advantage that the base wasn’t bought in. Overall? Right up there. More expensive than it used to be at Blue Collar Corner, but I imagine all their costs have soared in the last twelve months.

That said, my advice would be to avoid the fries. They were bought in – which is fine, only a knobber objects to that – but if you’re going to buy in, you have to buy well. This week I had an al fresco dinner at Park House and although the chips were clearly bought in, they totally hit the spot and there was nothing to dislike about them. Sarv’s Slice’s fries, on the other hand, were a tad skanky, too many grey patches and bits I wanted to leave. They’d been given enough truffle oil to smell of truffle but, somehow, not enough to carry through into the flavour.

And the Parmesan: well, I suppose technically there was a little, but almost too little to see, let alone taste. I’m used to Parmesan fries at places like the Last Crumb, where the cheese all falls to the bottom and your challenge is to actually get it on your fries. I expected to reach the bottom of the cup to find a motherlode of Parmesan, like that glorious bit of chocolate at the base of a Cornetto cone, but it wasn’t to be. Not that I finished the fries anyway. They stayed on the table, whiffing away.

The good news is that with the money you save not buying the fries – six pounds, honesty! – you can get some tiramisu instead. I ordered Sarv’s Slice’s only dessert after finishing my pizza and grabbed a second buzzer. The wait was about five minutes for this too, and worth every second. It was a gorgeous, boozy, thick indulgent slab of the stuff, for only five pounds, and it was probably my favourite thing about the whole meal. It was strange eating it with a wooden spoon – those things are synonymous with failure for a reason – but honestly, it was an utter delight. If I’d known how good it would be I’d have grabbed a coffee from Compound to enjoy with it, but instead I picked one up as I was leaving, strolling home, latte in hand.

As you’ve no doubt gathered, with the exception of those fries I found Sarv’s Slice hugely likeable and I think it has found its perfect home at the Biscuit Factory. The staff are downright lovely and very friendly, and it nicely fills a gap in Reading’s food scene, offering something like Blue Collar’s ultra-casual dining in a different setting. And if I sound like I have reservations, or faint praise, I really don’t. But it’s important to recognise Sarv’s Slice’s limitations – because they do, and they operate within them superbly.

They’re not aiming to be a full on restaurant, at this stage, but instead just offer really good food you can eat informally in a hurry. Perfect pre-theatre dining, if you’re unfortunate enough to go to the Hexagon for something, or a meal you can enjoy before watching a film at the Biscuit Factory itself. So, good for cultured types. For a heathen like me, they fit into the same bracket as, say, ThaiGrr!, as a great way to have an excellent meal before moving on for a few beers at the Nag’s Head.

Back in the day, I used to go for Tuscany for that kind of thing, and then it became Buon Appetito. Sarv’s Slice is a very good successor to those places, and you’ll eat well there. It’s not the widest menu in the world, but for what they aspire to it doesn’t need to be. What Sarv’s Slice isn’t, much as I liked it, is the place that will define my gastronomic summer. But that’s okay, because I’ll keep looking and I’ll find mine in the end. I hope you find yours, too.

Sarv’s Slice – 7.4
Reading Biscuit Factory, Unit 1a Oxford Road, RG1 7QE
07854 892749

https://www.sarvsslice.com/