I’ve talked about this before, but it helps when you’re writing a restaurant review to have some kind of hook, some reason why you decided, this week of all weeks, to check that particular venue out. Canny restaurants make that easy by having something about them, whether it’s in their branding, their social media or their USP – or, in London, by having a well-connected chef or owner.
In the case of M’s Smokehouse, which opened on the Basingstoke Road at the end of January, you’re spoiled for choice. Its Instagram describes it as the “First and Only Smokehouse in Reading”, which isn’t strictly true – remember Bluegrass BBQ? But Bluegrass closed last January, so the second half of that description is correct, for now at least. I don’t know about you, but I miss Bluegrass: a decent independent alternative in south Reading would be a find.
And there’s more. The smokehouse’s Instagram blurb also describes it as a “halal smokehouse”, and in that respect it is definitely a first: so no pulled pork or sausages, just brisket, burgers and fried chicken. Now, that kind of thing might enrage the swivel-eyed types who used to comment on my blog’s Facebook page, pretending to give a toss about animal welfare, but I thought it was worth checking it out.
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For all the people in Reading and beyond on Ozempic or Mounjaro, despite all the weeks in the last few years when I’ve joined my ever-optimistic wife on the Fast 800 diet, there remain some times when there’s a big hole in your life and only carbs can fill it.
I’m not saying carbs merit their own tier in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs the way, say, wi-fi does, but carbs are the unconditional love of food, the thing that softens the edges: no wonder we talk about lapsing into a coma after eating them. They are the thing that nearly always makes the world feel better, cosier and less harsh. Well, that and ice cream – but even I, an inveterate ice cream lover, would concede that ice cream is chiefly for the brighter months, while carbs are a friend for all seasons.
That said, carbs come into their own during our winters, which seem to take up most of the year once summer ends, with their chilly, dreich, gathering gloom that makes the soul sink. My brother was over from Australia at the start of last month on a short notice family visit and he loved the greyness, the lack of blue skies. But he felt that way because it was summer back home, and hot as balls there.
By contrast, he found shivering on the terraces watching Maidenhead United in his specially bought winter coat and gloves, his newly-purchased polyester scarf costing less than the ticket for the match, somehow magical. Even so, as he drove me home after the match he admitted that he wasn’t sure whether he could hack four months of it. I sometimes wonder how any of us do.
When it comes to epitomising carbs I know people put Italian food on a pedestal, with its twin exemplars of pizza and pasta. But I always think Nepalese food is a bit of a dark horse in this regard; I know it has other jewels, its sukuti and sekuwa, its phenomenal pressed potatoes, but when I think of Nepalese food the thing that comes to mind first is momo. And then, if I can think beyond momo, I also consider Nepalese chow mein, with the hot sauce that separates it from its Chinese sibling.
Reading is extremely lucky to have a significant Nepali community, and it means that we are well represented when it comes to Nepalese food. And that, in turn, means that Nepalese food has been bringing Reading in general, and me in particular, comfort and joy for well over a decade.
For a long time, for me, that meant momo at Sapana Home. Nearly a decade ago, in the depths of my divorce, when my flat was no longer a home I would stop at Sapana Home on my way back from the station and order ten pan-fried parcels of succour, with a mango lassi chaser. There was a specific wistfulness I felt when I finished the sixth momo and knew that the plate, and my respite, were nearly over: the Germans probably have a word for it.
In happier times there was the glorious autumn of 2017 when I discovered Namaste Kitchen, and the hospitality of Kamal, at the foot of Katesgrove. I would walk there from my little house in the Village with the slightest of provocation, any excuse at all really, and self-medicate with cider, momo and chow mein: the rest of that year, gastronomically speaking, was made up of four magnificent months.
And in the depths of the pandemic, when Kamal had moved to his eponymous kitchen on the Caversham Road, it meant delivery bikes scuttling from there to our little house in the Village when only Kamal’s carbs could shut out an attack of the glums. I must have lost count of the number of deliveries from Kamal since he opened, both at the old house and this one, and whatever those orders contain they always feature chow mein and momo: to omit them would be unthinkable. Zoë would mutiny if the former was missing, I couldn’t do without the latter.
Three weeks ago, Zoë and I got off the train at Reading and we knew it was one of those nights. We’d been to see my dad in the hospice, and it was in relative terms a good visit. He had a sheet of exercises and told us he planned to start doing them, that he had been using a walking frame to reach the bathroom in readiness for when he was discharged home. He was so set on getting back to his house and his bed: he asked me what films he should watch when he made it there, talked about the things he was looking forward to doing when his life returned to normal. And we played along, because we didn’t know how else to handle it.
His speech seemed stronger than it had been, and it was a shame to leave. But we knew he was ready for us to go because he asked what we were doing that evening, his coded signal that he wanted to get some rest. I told him we were going on a mini pub crawl with Zoë’s CAMRA compadres, an event I always enjoy, and he appeared to like that answer.
It was an evening when we could believe we’d all had a false alarm, even though the hospice staff tell you, with the wisdom of years of experience, that patients often rally soon after they reach the hospice. It was the last time Zoë would see my dad alive, but none of us knew that then.
Even though my dad was on good form, relatively speaking, those visits take something out of you, make you think, make your mind go to places you’d rather it didn’t. So when we got back into town we only had a little time to decompress before having to go to the Greyfriar, be social, talk beer and pubs and buses with Reading CAMRA’s brilliant bunch. That hole was yawning and carbs could fill it, so I thought of Just Momo.
It’s on the same run of restaurants as pizza rivals Paesinos and seemingly permanently closed Amò, but of a slightly older vintage: it opened in winter 2024, the first of those sites to start trading. And the inside is pleasant, generic and featureless: a biggish box of a room with framed pictures on the wall and a real mélange of light fittings, from traditional to modern to bare, illuminating its basic tables and chairs. Only the exposed brickwork effect around the walls was bizarre: made of 3-D vinyl rather than flat wallpaper, and oddly spongy to the touch.
The restaurant was doing well when we arrived just before seven, with a fair few tables occupied. I was going to say that most of the customers were desi, but having had a preemptive Google it seems that Nepali people don’t identify with that term, so I won’t.
Just Momo is a bit misleading calling itself that, because it also does chow mein and one other dish, chatpate. But that’s hardly grounds to complain and their menu is a visually appealing, stripped down model of simplicity. It takes possibly the two most accessible dishes in Nepalese cuisine and sticks them front and centre: you can have chow mein with the protein of your choice, you can have momo any which way, but you’re going to be eating chow mein or momo or, if you have a hole in your life that only carbs can fill, both.
I say that you can have momo any which way, but that’s not strictly true. They come steamed or fried, in chilli sauce or plain, and they are chicken, vegetable or lamb. So no kothey, or pan-fried, momo, no jhol momo in broth and no buffalo (or buff, as Nepalese menu always term it) momo of any kind. Some momo purists might find that limiting but I didn’t, even though kothey momo are usually my first choice.
I went up and ordered a couple of types of momo, because Zoë shares momo, two portions of chow mein because Zoë likes, as she puts it, personal chow mein, a soft drink for her and a sweet Nepali tea for me. All that set me back just under £40.
Fifteen minutes later, out it all came and it was extremely gratefully received. The chow mein was more than acceptable, full of veg, topped with herbs and spring onions, tumbled with thick strips of chicken, noodles with plenty of bite. It only took a forkful to remember why this dish can be such a tonic, and if it didn’t quite hit the heights of Kamal’s Kitchen’s rendition it wasn’t far off, and besides Just Momo’s location is a lot more central.
It needed the sauce it came with, but it made me think of how welcome dishes like this can be and set my mind off in a reverie of all the great noodle dishes out there, from Me Kong’s Singapore noodles with their dusting of curry powder to the soy-laced wonders of Oishi’s yaki soba. Three cuisines, one giant gastronomic group hug. The fug dispersed slightly, the spirits began to lift. Everything was working as it should.
If the chow mein was good, the momo were even better. Just Momo’s Instagram page shows them painstakingly making them by hand and these certainly didn’t feel bulk made and previously frozen. Fried lamb momo were piping hot, beautifully crispy bubbles kept from floating away by a gorgeous ballast of generously filled ground lamb. Having had these at Kamal’s Kitchen and at West Reading’s impressive Momo 2 Go I have to say that Just Momo could give either a run for their money.
Ten for just shy of a tenner still constitutes impressive value inside the IDR, where costs were prohibitive before everything got more expensive on April 1st and are only going to get worse. When I update my guide to solo dining in Reading, this place – and this dish – are going to be in serious contention. I also loved the fact that this, and all of Just Momo’s dishes, come in eco-friendly leaf plates “just the way it’s served in Nepal”, even if the green credentials you get from that are wiped out by flying them over from the motherland. I was less keen on the wooden knife and fork, but never mind.
Chilli fried chicken momo were a different permutation of brilliant but no less enjoyable. I loved the chicken filling, although I should really have had the chicken momo unadorned to make a fair comparison with the lamb: that’s next time sorted. But if I couldn’t judge them in isolation from crunchy peppers and a thick, punchy chilli sauce which clung to every crinkle of every dumpling, that was hardly a tragedy.
The overall effect was a plate which rounded out our order rather than just offering more of the same. And again, hats off to Just Momo for not bloating their menu with chilli this and Manchurian that, not trying to offer something for everyone the way restaurants on Reading’s newly dubbed Curry Mile – people are trying to make it A Thing – sometimes do. No Indo-Chinese or South Indian interlopers, just a tightly honed menu that offers a few Nepalese crowd pleasers. If you don’t like them, go elsewhere. But really: if you don’t like them, check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Service was lovely and friendly, as warm and sweet as my very enjoyable Nepali tea. I found myself thinking about the randomness of life as we finished our meal at Just Momo. Presumably they had their pick of the units on that run as the first tenants, and perhaps if they had chosen Amò’s spot and Amó had been forced to take their site Amò would be the ones still trading and Just Momo would have the sign outside their door for three months saying “closed for refurbishment”.
If I hadn’t liked Just Momo, I might have shaken my fist at the skies about that, but much as I miss Amò I loved Just Momo, so I was glad they dodged that bullet.
The rest of the evening was just what I needed after the day I’d had. Zoë and I joined the Reading CAMRA brigade in the pub, drank nice beers, chatted merrily about all sorts and I could almost forget, for a few hours at least, where I had been earlier in the day and what lay ahead. Drinks in a pub might have achieved that on their own, but I don’t know. I think it was the welcome of Just Momo, misnomer and all, and their array of wonderful carbs that proved the turning point. I am grateful to them for that, and I’ll be back to enjoy more of their food, on the flimsy pretext of repaying their kindness.
One little postscript, because I somehow feel I want to say it: I have had the strangest fortnight. Two weeks ago, on the date of my last review, I went to London with Zoë to celebrate my birthday. I had a wonderful lunch at The French House, wandered off to buy fragrance I wanted but did not need, photographed some Brutalism, drank Belgian beers at one of my favourite London pubs. The following morning, unexpectedly, Zoë and I were at the hospice for the last time, my dad’s room silent and cold, him finally at peace and free from pain.
And the day after that, because it had been booked for months and was badly needed, Zoë and I flew to Màlaga for our first holiday in six months. I spent a week in the warmth, happy and sad and guilty, drinking vermouth in my dad’s honour – every single time – my mending arm gently baked by the incessant sunshine. Shorts on, legs out, sandals on, living the best life I could manage, under the circumstances.
It is an incongruous experience to grieve on holiday, to feel like crying in your favourite restaurants and a beautiful hotel room with the nicest view, with your best friend. I can’t say I recommend it. I have no prior experience of this, really, and it’s weird and unsettling that it’s never constant, always intermittent. Right now it feels like it might be constantly intermittent for ever. Having a lovely time, wish you were here: I didn’t send a postcard but I thought it, often.
When we got back last Friday, we turned the heating on and unpacked and sat on the sofa, home at last. The holiday was over and impending reality was looming, nowhere near the horizon. Discussions and decisions awaited, as did conversations and condolences. I felt that hole again, the kind that carbs can pretend to fill, and because I couldn’t think what else to do, Zoë and I ordered takeaway – chow mein and momos, of course. I will say this, though: they were delicious. They almost worked.
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Could you eat exactly the same thing day in, day out, for weeks on end?
Fifteen years ago I worked in an office, back in the good old days when people actually liked going into the office every day because they had their own desk, their own desktop computer and regular deskmates, not some hotdesking hell optimised for isolation in the name of networking where you locked away your personal effects every evening and had nowhere to hang your coat. I miss those days, sometimes.
Back then, for a time, I sat opposite a chap called Neil who told me that at some point in his past, he ate the Prêt tuna mayo baguette for lunch every working day, without fail, for over a year. Didn’t he get bored, I asked him? He said it was just one fewer decision to make, and I didn’t know whether to be impressed or depressed. Maybe he just didn’t like food all that much. I imagine he stopped when, as was the fashion, our office got moved from the town centre to some misbegotten industrial park, nowhere near a Prêt.
I subsequently discovered that this was a lot more common than you might think. Former Deputy Prime Minister and swivel-eyed wrong ‘un Dominic Raab was in the news for doing exactly that back in 2018, and when the story came to light the Guardian unearthed a poll from the previous year before saying that 1 in 6 people had eaten the same lunch every day for the last 2 years. Not only that, but apparently 77% of workers had eaten the same lunch every day for 9 months. Every day. Nine months. You look at that on paper and can’t believe it could possibly be true.
Who are these people, I wonder? They walk among us, they look like us but – like evangelical Christians – I never expect to come across anybody who owns up to being one in daily life. Perhaps those mind-boggling statistics are no longer correct. It’s possible that the pandemic forced people to introduce some variety to their diets: it would be nice if at least one decent thing had come out of that whole affair.
Somehow, when it comes to dinner, having a regular order is more understandable. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want to go to Clay’s or Kungfu Kitchen and order the same thing every time, however great it would be, but I do get it, especially if you don’t go somewhere too often.
When Gurt Wings was at Blue Collar Corner, I nearly always ordered their Korean popcorn chicken and, on the occasions where I strayed from the path, I usually wished I hadn’t. I’ve had other pizzas at Paesinos, but the one with olives, anchovies and capers remains my favourite. Sometimes you have a regular order because it’s the only thing you especially like. When I meet my family at Pho, their favourite, I always have the wok-fried rice with chicken and fried shrimp: I find the rest of their menu a bit ho-hum.
And yes, some restaurants have must-order dishes, although we could argue all day about what they are: Bhel Puri House’s chilli paneer, perhaps, Kamal’s Kitchen’s pressed potatoes, the Tuna Turner at Shed. But is there ever truly a universal consensus?
Often, when I’ve visited somewhere lauded by the critics and eaten the thing you must try – saffron risotto with bone marrow at Town, or The Devonshire‘s beef cheek suet pudding – it hasn’t knocked my socks off. Maybe dishes only reach that elevated status over time, rather than by the same three private schoolboy nepo babies – you know which ones – telling you what to order in their newspaper columns a few weeks after the place opens, saying something is an ‘instant classic’.
But is there a level even above that? Are there dishes so good that you must visit the restaurant just to try them, and – one final step beyond – so amazing that you have to revisit the restaurant over and over just to get your fix? Such dishes would be unicorns indeed, but this week’s review is of Smoke & Pepper, the smashed burger and fried chicken spot that opened late last year where greasy spoon institution Munchees used to be, because I had a tip-off that hiding on its menu was exactly such a dish.
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Graeme and I are a fine pair when I meet him on Cemetery Junction for our trip to Namak Mirch. He had an operation on his foot in January and is standing there, crutch in hand, wearing trainers for the first time since being discharged: his wife has given him a lift to our meeting point. My injury is more invisible these days – people can only see the beginning of the cursive scar that flows from my elbow to my shoulder when I wear short sleeves – but I still can’t lift much, not until the man who sliced me open is happy with the x-rays.
I crossed the border into my fifties a couple of years ago, Graeme is not far off it: in the pub after dinner we agree that getting old is no fun, even though a viable alternative is yet to be discovered. Graeme says that it seems as if one minute you don’t feel old and then suddenly the tipping point comes and almost immediately you do; I know what he means, and feel like, for me, that happened at the end of last year. I’ve had one of those tough weeks when you feel far older than you want to be. But still, one benefit of ageing is that over time friends become old friends, and you can meet them for dinner.
Graeme moved back to Reading last year and now lives in a pretty house in Newtown, far from his previous place in Thatcham and the bucolic delights of Paggies Bar, a spot he steadfastly refused to take me to. I picked Namak Mirch for us partly because it is practically the nearest restaurant to his house – well, that or the The Fisherman’s Cottage. In the run-up to Graeme’s big move I recommended Deccan House to him ad nauseam, because I’ve enjoyed its takeaways so much in the past, but I’d received some inside information that Namak Mirch might give it a run for its money.
Namak Mirch has taken over the old spot where Star Karahi, the Pakistani restaurant so beloved of Reading’s black cab drivers, used to be. Not entirely – one of the signs outside still gives the old business’ name – but the place is definitely under new ownership. Last October I got a tip-off from Jacqui, a regular reader of the blog, that a friend of hers who previously ran a takeaway business from home had taken on the site.
Jacqui started out buying her samosas, then her Friday night curries, and then she sent me a couple of pictures of a distinctly attractive looking dinner from Namak Mirch: nothing fancy, just a lamb curry, a bed of rice, some grilled chicken wings and a simple salad. You could go past the restaurant in a car and barely notice it, and in fact I did a couple of times including a drive home from my dad’s on Christmas Day. But a glowing report from Jacqui, who knows her food, was enough to place it on my to do list.
The interior of Namak Mirch is about as no-frills as you can get. Three tables, covered with linoleum tablecloths, seat no more than a dozen people, the chairs mismatched and occasional. On our visit we were the only people there, although this was during Ramadan and a delivery driver or two did turn up while we were eating.
But there was something homely about it nonetheless. Some of the starters, snacks and other dishes were on display under the counter, cardboard starbursts in Day-Glo shades taped to the glass giving names and prices, the whole thing strangely retro. Besides that, the menu was all listed on a board overhead, the aesthetics of the greasy spoon somehow appropriated for a restaurant serving Pakistani dishes.
That menu was pretty compendious, a mixture of starters, kebab rolls, curries and biryanis, most available in multiple sizes. Over on the far right of the menu, fittingly, were the crazy choices, the burgers and cheesy chips for wackos who simply refuse to integrate.
There was also a laminated menu on the table, unbranded except for the restaurant’s name written in Sharpie, which didn’t entirely match the one over the counter, including some mixed grills and other dishes not to be found on the blackboard.
Nothing at Namak Mirch was expensive, with the costliest dishes coming in at £12.50 and most far, far below that. The snacks emblazoned on some of those highlighter coloured pieces of cardboard were the cheapest, coming in at £1 apiece.
We started with those and the friendly chap behind the counter, who told us his wife runs the kitchen and makes everything from scratch, was happy for us to order them and decide on the rest of our meal later. There isn’t really table service per se, more that your plates are plonked on the counter and you take them to the table yourself. I didn’t mind that at all, once I realised that expecting Graeme to do that was insensitive in the extreme. His barely functioning foot trumped my partly functioning arm.
So the first things we ate, along with being among the best, were unbelievably affordable. Namak Mirch’s pricing structure can be a bit chaotic, and what you read on one menu doesn’t necessarily match up with what you end up being charged. So for instance, the menu says you get six vegetable pakoras for £4.50. We didn’t know that, so just ordered the four.
They were crisp but not overdone, utterly greaseless and perfect dipped into the little tub of spicy tomato sauce or the raita on offer. I could easily have ploughed through half a dozen with Graeme, in fact I could easily have ploughed through half a dozen on my own. The four we accidentally ordered showed up on the bill at the end as costing £2. Surely some mistake, to offer terrific food at sweetshop prices?
Also costing £2 were a pair of samosas, golden and generous, packed to with minced chicken. These were Graeme’s pick of the snacks, I liked them but I feel I’ve been spoiled by the world-beating vegetable samosas at the Wokingham Road’s legendary Cake & Cream, which last time I went cost something silly like 70p a pop. Despite moving to East Reading, possibly my very favourite part of town, Graeme is yet to try Cake & Cream. I’ll let him off, though: he doesn’t need a doctor’s note for that one.
Even better, and for my money my favourite of the snacks, were the chicken aloo tikki. Deep copper-coloured irregular fritters made with chicken and potato, these – to my mind anyway – took everything that was great about the pakora and the samosas and, à la The Fly, merged them into a single unbeatable snackette. And when I say “for my money” I mean “for one pound sterling of my money”. My goodness. I could just come to Namak Mirch and eat these, if it wasn’t for the inconvenient fact that the rest of the menu is equally loaded with winners.
But I didn’t know that at this point. I was catching up with Graeme, congratulating him on his new home, discussing my recent travails and marvelling at how well a can of Tango Mango Sugar Free went with all this gorgeous scran. I already envied Graeme his new house on one of Reading’s prettiest streets, was I going to end up coveting his local restaurant as well? It felt like it was going that way.
After much reflection, an enjoyable spot of picking out our favourite dishes like we were assembling some kind of gastronomic Fantasy Football team and lots of awfully polite “no, you pick your favourite” toing and froing, Graeme and I had assembled a selection of five dishes to let us sample as much of the menu as possible. We thought we might have over-ordered, but Namak Mirch’s pricing is so reasonable, and we so reckoned we were onto a winner, that we both agreed it was a risk worth running.
When I got to the counter, that slight air of lovable chaos set in again around portions and pricing. Now, I should say that I don’t mean you get diddled with hidden expenses: I mean that you believe your dishes are going to be a certain size and cost a certain amount and then you find that actually, they are somehow magically even bigger or even cheaper. It was baffling and benevolent.
A great example is that I wanted to order us a boneless chicken biryani to share, a large dish that – on paper, at least – will set you back £11. And I was about to do exactly that, when the beaming man behind the counter told me, in the style of once famous local lush and Pride Of Reading Awards uber-ligger Chris Tarrant in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, that he didn’t want to give me that. He said that as a Ramadan special they were doing a chicken thigh biryani, not on the usual menu, for £3.99. Would I like a couple of those instead, he asked me? It was not a difficult question.
Not only wasn’t it a hard question, but it was an excellent idea. We got two exceptionally generous portions of fragrant rice, studded with tremendous pieces of chicken thigh, the whole thing pungent with cloves. I mightn’t necessarily have wanted to eat this on its own, but as a bed to absorb gravy or curry it was unimprovable. When Ramadan is over I’m sure the chicken biryani will made an excellent alternative – or keema, or paneer, both of which Namak Mirch offers. But really, £3.99? How was Namak Mirch making any money?
The wayward pricing affected a couple of other things we ordered. Graham was drawn to the lamb curry on the bone, and it was a superb choice. The lamb took minimal persuasion to leave home, so to speak, and properly go for a dip in a sauce which was rich, fruity and comforting, with a gentle heat that had me dabbing my nose only towards the end of the meal. Better still was the marrow, eased and winkled out of the bone and enriching every forkful it came into contact with. Graeme reminded me that this was why curry on the bone was better and, despite us both having all sorts of fun and games with our own bones, I couldn’t disagree.
We asked for a large, were billed for a medium and I suspect a medium is what we got. You could almost believe that they knew we’d ordered a little too much but were too polite to tell us. Still, it was a princely £9.50 and would have more than served one person handsomely. On the menu it’s meant to cost £9.95, but that was Namak Mirch: nothing cost precisely what you expected it to.
Further confusion reigned with the tarka dal, something Graeme really fancied. When I ordered it, the chap behind the counter told me it came with homemade roti on a special deal – another special deal – and of course we went for that. What arrived was some perfectly credible flatbread, which had the kind of gaps and holes that said it had been made by hand back in the kitchen. I liked it. but we were too full to properly attack it. It did however suggest that Namak Mirch’s kebab rolls – freshly made in naan, according to the printed menu, merited investigation.
But we also got not one but two metal bowls of tarka dal. We said we’d only ordered one and the chap waved it away, saying we could have the second one anyway. We were hardly complaining, and we complained even less after we’d tasted it – the most perfectly soothing bowl of big, floury lentils in a sauce that gently hummed with garlic without bragging about the time and care that had gone into it. Graeme’s wife Amy is a vegetarian: between this and the paneer biryani I suspect Namak Mirch will have her bit of their next takeaway order well and truly covered.
Again, when the bill arrived it was a bit of a case of The Price Is Right. We had allegedly been charged for two portions, at a cost of £8. You could read their menu from now to the end of the day and never find a permutation of tarka dal that cost either £4 each for two or £8 for one. But either way, two bowls of that faultless dal for £8 felt like some kind of misprint, or cosmic error.
That would have been enough food, but there were a couple of other things I really wanted to try. One, the masala fish pakora, was possibly my single favourite dish of the evening, a big pile of irregular golden nuggets of fish, the coating all gram flour and herbs and the inside pearlescent, cooked no more and no less than each piece demanded. This deft touch reminded me of Kungfu Kitchen’s deep fried fish in spicy hot pot, a spiritual sibling even if it originated thousands of miles away in Chengdu.
By this point the staff had just given us a big squirty plastic bottle filled with raita, the kind kebab shops use to anoint your late night purchases, so we didn’t have to exercise restraint. I think they’d worked out that, on that evening at least, restraint simply wasn’t our bag.
Last of all, we had to try Namak Mirch’s sheekh kebabs (I say had, I mean wanted). These are £2 each or five for £9.50 and when I’d asked for four the owner said he would happily do us five for £9: I’ve never eaten anywhere where the pricing felt quite so optional. I said it would just cause a diplomatic incident if we had to share a fifth one but really, four was plenty.
Again, they looked divine and the lamb in them was superb, the texture impressive, coarse with no bounce or padding. I think they were – almost – some of the best sheekh kebabs I’ve ever had. That almost is because the spicing of these was far more clove heavy than the biryani had been, to the point where it was a little like eating a pomander-flavoured sausage. A liberal trawl through the raita took the edge off it but a slightly gentler hand in the kitchen would turn these into world-beaters to rival – well, to rival the rest of the menu really.
I had no idea what our bill would come to, but when I went up to pay all our food – which may or may not have been part of special offers, Ramadan only deals or spur of the moment decisions by the proprietor – came to just shy of £50, including a couple of soft drinks. That didn’t include a tip, and I insisted on tipping to an extent which surprised the owner. But really, we were the only customers there that night and our food was almost without exception outrageously good, and I worried about how Namak Mirch would survive charging such timid prices.
He told me that they’d only been open a few months, and that things were going well – quiet at times, busy at others, very much impacted by Ramadan, for better and for worse. He seemed delighted that we had so loved our food and reiterated that his wife, out back, made it all from scratch. I told him his friend Jacqui had recommended it to us and he laughed. “That’s my wife’s friend! They’re all my wife’s friends.”
And then, because in my experience some truly hospitable cultures and people feel bad about things like being tipped and immediately try to give you something in return, he insisted that we stop for chai and, about ten minutes later, brought us two beautiful sweetened cups of the stuff. Because that wasn’t enough, we also got a little bowl of dates stuffed with almonds. It was simply lovely: my friend and I sat there sipping our chai as our cups sat on that lino tablecloth, we ate our dates, we watched the traffic hum past, heading into town, and we both reflected on just how good a meal it had been.
Neither of us had missed alcohol at all, either, but that’s because we knew that when we were done we could manage the short walk to the Hope & Bear, which had an acceptable pale for me and an impressive range of single malts for Graeme. We still had plenty to discuss but we did keep coming back to one particular topic, which was just how good Namak Mirch was. On that night, when both of us really needed that kind of warmth and hospitality for our own various reasons, Namak Mirch was a beacon of how things should be, and I was deeply thankful for it.
I hope other people make a pilgrimage there, even if working out the menu and pricing might be beyond even the intellect of Hannah Fry, and that they discover what I discovered. For my part I’m already wondering when I can go back, because I knew before the meal was even over that this one fell into the category of restaurant Zoë likes to describe as why didn’t you take me? Graeme, I have a feeling, might be back even sooner. He lives round the corner after all, the jammy bastard.
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One of the constant criticisms of Reading, throughout most of my time writing this blog, has been its lack of what people consider to be a special occasion restaurant.
The town centre and its surrounds have rarely troubled restaurant guides and critics: the London Street Brasserie was briefly listed in Michelin, Mya Lacarte was in the Good Food Guide back in the day and Clay’s is now, but beyond that nothing. Clay’s has become Reading’s de facto special occasion restaurant if you love food, and I suppose Thames Lido is there if you’re a fan of what I believe people like to refer to as vibes. But the town centre in particular seems to be lacking that kind of restaurant.
I had a message on Instagram recently from someone asking if I could recommend somewhere in the town centre for exactly that, on a rare night out without the kids. He and his wife usually ate in Caversham when they had a date night, but where in the centre would fit the bill, he asked? I had to tell him I had nothing for him, except a suggestion to either go back to Caversham or take a train to somewhere like Goat On The Roof, Seasonality or The Three Tuns. Or catch a taxi to Orwells, a restaurant that has special occasion written all over it, at least if ‘special occasion’ means far too pricey for everyday dining.
There’s one flaw in this argument, though, which is that central Reading does have an establishment which, on paper at least, has all the credentials to meet the criteria. It’s swish enough, and it’s certainly expensive enough. The menu makes all the right noises, the room seems opulent and the chef has over eight years’ tenure there, following on from gigs at fancy (though not necessarily renowned) U.K. hotel restaurants. I’m talking about The Reading Room, the restaurant in the Roseate Hotel – you know, the place that used to be the Forbury Hotel and used to have a restaurant in it called Cerise.
The thing was though, I didn’t think I knew anybody who had been to the Reading Room. I asked around at the first readers’ lunch of the year and nobody had, although a few people said they’d been back when it was Cerise. And come to think of it, when I reviewed Cerise 12 years ago it was the same story. You would struggle to find any reviews of the Reading Room online, apart from Google reviews, and although it has two AA Rosettes – “Global cooking in elegant hotel restaurant” said the fulsome praise from the inspector – it too has never been anywhere near the Michelin Guide or the Good Food Guide.
If you read the Roseate’s website you might fancy eating at the Reading Room, although you might also wonder whether ‘sensorial’ is really a word (it turns out it is: I checked). Dinnertime at The Reading Room is not just fascinating food and drink, it’s fashion, lifestyle, art, gastronomy and mixology! All in one seamless orchestration says the website, although it also says that breakfast is a sensorial experience that nurtures and delights in equal measure, which sounds a tad purple to me. The Reading Room has been awarded, year after year says the website, enigmatically neglecting to mention what, exactly.
Anyway, I can see why people in Reading might not have taken a risk on the Reading Room, which took over from Cerise in early 2020 – which means, incidentally, that it’s probably the same chef who was cooking at Cerise. You might not want to gamble on a menu where most of the starters cost £20 and the mains £40 or more, because those prices start to look a little Michelin and not a million miles from the cost of eating at Orwells, which has a national reputation.
So the question remains: does Reading have a special occasion restaurant nobody knows about, or does it just have a very expensive hotel restaurant to match its very expensive hotel, one which probably gets by on having a largely captive audience eating on expenses?
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