It’s a shame to start this piece with an apology, but I’m afraid I’ll have to. Normally when I sit down to sum up the year nearly gone, as is traditional by now, I’m fairly chipper: the working year is close to done and dusted, the presents are all bought and good times, socialising and shedloads of booze are just around the corner. By contrast as I write this I’m still recovering from Covid – which I’ve managed to catch for the first time ever, unfashionably late, in December 2023 – I’ve not left the house in a week and have only just reached the stage where the coughing isn’t stopping me from getting to sleep, although my sense of smell isn’t quite what it was yet. Ho ho ho!

So this year the Christmas break can’t come soon enough, although I might well spend it under a blanket watching old episodes of Frasier or one of my favourite not-quite-a-Christmas-movie movies, The Apartment. Even the thought of opening a bottle of wine or an imperial stout, right now, makes me feel a tad queasy and, with the exception of chocolate, food has somewhat lost its lustre. What better mood to accompany a look back at 2023 in the world of Reading and its restaurants, eh? Precisely.

I always feel like a bit of an Eeyore writing these roundups, or I have since the pandemic, because it seems like every year I basically say well, fewer restaurants have closed this year than I expected but mark my words, next year reality is going to bite and the bounceback loans have to be paid off and the bills go through the roof. Next year is going to be grim.

And here we are, December 2023, and I’m delivering that speech again. Fewer restaurants have closed this year than I expected, and I’m impressed that so many are hanging in there. I hope they all have a very busy festive season to keep them going through the drought that is January. And this time next year, having no doubt been proved wrong again, I’ll try to say something different.

That doesn’t mean we didn’t lose hospitality businesses in 2023, or that we didn’t lose some really cherished ones, but looking at the numbers it could have been an awful lot worse. First of all we lost O Portugues, the Iberian outpost on the edge of Palmer Park, in the weirdest way: they shut their doors in March, put an update on Facebook to the effect that it wasn’t goodbye forever and they just never returned. Google still has it marked as temporarily closed, but it’s been temporarily closed for most of the year.

The following month, the same thing happened on the west side of town: Buon Appetito’s lights went out, and stories began to spread of people turning up for reservations to find the place closed with no sign of what was going on. It, too, was temporarily closed. Rumours swirled around of issues with the landlord, or the building, but five months later something new opened in that building and so we knew Buon Appetito was gone for good. I was desperately sad about that one – it made my list of the ten saddest closures of the last ten years.

Also in April we said goodbye to Cairo Café, and that also really saddened me. I wish I’d been there more often, and I wish others had been there more often too. It reminded me of the closure, many years before, of Cappuccina Café a few doors down, both of them a constant reminder that however hard you try or however good a business is, sometimes things just don’t work out. A shawarma place is there now, and at some point I should bring myself to review it.

Another restaurant that has been temporarily closed for a very long time is Oishi, the Japanese restaurant down the Oxford Road. They announced on Facebook in June that they were closing for renovations, but with every passing month the site looks less renovated and more derelict, panels in the windows patched up with boards. They may come back next year, but then so might Philip Schofield.

Who else? Well, Bel and the Dragon finally gave up being a waste of one of Reading’s loveliest spots in July and now Fullers pub The Narrowboat trades in its place. The menu doesn’t look hugely different from that at the Three Guineas in town, but if they pull it off it could be a lovely spot, especially when summer comes around again.

Perhaps even more significantly, August was the month that Oracle neighbours Franco Manca and The Real Greek decided to jump before they were pushed by the ongoing redevelopment work. It’s a funny illustration of the Joni Mitchell principle: I’d never really considered stopping into Franco Manca for a quick post-work dinner, until I couldn’t. August was also the month that Mr Chips, fresh from a refurb, was badly damaged by one of several fires seen in the town centre in the second half of the year. It too is – those two words again – “temporarily closed”.

The other really sad closure of 2023, for me, was San Sicario, which didn’t make it to a year in that ill-starred spot on the roundabout at the bottom of the Caversham Road. There is something unjust about the fact that Cozze, serving awful food, managed to limp on in that spot for years while San Sicario didn’t even get to blow out a solitary candle on its first birthday. I always thought it was a good restaurant with the potential to be a great one, and maybe one day when all the flats are built in that part of town it will be able to support a place like San Sicario. Until then, people will just mutter about the site being cursed, and how there’s no parking. As we’ll see shortly, someone has already stepped up to give the site another whirl.

But of course, the most significant closure of the year, the one that got all of town talking and pondering whether we deserved nice things, was the shock closure of the Grumpy Goat at the end of October. I say “all of town”, but more than anything it illustrated that the food and drink social media echo chamber isn’t necessarily representative of the town as a whole: for all the devastated comments on Berkshire Live’s Facebook posts about this there were always a few saying “I hadn’t heard of that place.” But for once, the closure wasn’t down to the business lacking customers: the Goat was always busy, and seemed to be thriving, but the owners put it all down to the landlord.

That in itself led to a lot of lively debate on social media: surely the landlord couldn’t chuck them out with a week’s notice? Could they? Is that what actually happened? I suspect we won’t know how or why negotiations broke down between the Grumpy Goat and the landlord, but either way it’s tragic that Reading lost its most vital, modern, independent and inclusive business within the IDR. Anyone who liked good beer, great cheese, wonderful toasties, brilliant coffee or even just feeling proud to live in a town that could offer all those things in such a tasteful, well-executed space was immeasurably poorer when November began. And I can’t blame anyone for looking at Reading in the aftermath of that closure and feeling like a light had gone out.

But if you wanted any illustration that 2023 was still, against the odds, a year with more growth than shrinkage, look at the many and diverse businesses that opened over the last twelve months, ready to give it their best shot. Right at the end of 2022 Calico opened in what used to be Great Expectations, now Hotel 1843, offering an interesting (if strange) fusion menu of Indian dishes and pub food. I need to make my way there to see if it works, and when I do I’m not sure I’ll be able to resist the “Magic Mushroom Croquettes”, even if they can only disappoint.

Perhaps more typical of the class of 2023 were chains in the town centre, filling big units and making Reading just that little bit more like everywhere else. So in February we got Popeyes, which probably excited a lot of people but left me unmoved, and Coco Di Mama, which is owned by the same people as Zizzi and, to me, offers about the same amount of excitement. Berkshire Live went there in April and was hugely excited about the food offering there. “As is normal with Italian cuisine, it was topped with a hearty helping of Gran Formaggio cheese and a few green leaves” said the article: ah, that world-renowned Gran Formaggio cheese nobody has ever heard of.

The other big site to fall under the control of a chain was the old Pizza Hut site on the Riverside, which reopened as Marugame Udon in April. It holds an almost unique accolade in that I went there earlier in the year with a view to reviewing it, walked in, thought What the fuck, this is like a school canteen followed by Nah and then left. I promise next year I’ll try harder. Infinitely more welcoming was the hugely enjoyable Cici Noodle Bar which opened on Queen Victoria Street in February – I loved it, when I went.

Fortunately, most of the other restaurants and cafés that opened this year were independent, and far more interesting prospects. From Pasibrzusek, offering Polish food on the Hemdean Road to Minas Café’s brilliant Brazilian in Whitley, from Traditional Romanesc operating out of Buon Appetito’s old home to Portuguese Time 4 Coffee on the Oxford Road, Reading still has a procession of plucky independent places trying to convert people to new cuisines and new ways of eating. 

And as the town centre gets that little less imaginative and less interesting, things crop up on the outskirts of town to compensate. Tilehurst, for instance, got the very credible Vesuvio Pizzeria, which manages to give casual, mid-priced Italian dining a good name. Meanwhile down the Wokingham Road Hala Lebanese opened in the spot once occupied by the less impressive Alona. East Reading has needed a good neighbourhood restaurant for a very long time: could this be it?

For me, the west side of town remains where the more intriguing businesses seem to be materialising. Aside from Vesuvio, Time 4 Coffee and Traditional Romanesc, there’s also the enormously likeable Barista & Beyond, not to mention Sarv’s Slice which has taken up residence upstairs at the Biscuit Factory and, over the space of nine months, made a very convincing claim to offer Reading’s best pizza. By those standards Caversham looks positively stagnant, although I was delighted to see Spanish deli Serdio Ibericos, fresh from its short-lived stint at the Collective, opening next door to Geo Café this month.

2023 was also the year when Korean food continued to increase its presence in Reading. In August The Bap opened where La’De Express used to be, offering a range of Korean fried chicken and bibimbap, and for my money they offer another excellent low cost, speedy casual dining option in town. And at the end of the year AKA BBQ Station, an all you can eat Korean barbecue restaurant, opened where Pizza Express used to be on St Mary’s Butts: I’m not sure I see the logic of calling a restaurant AKA (okay, it’s also known as that, but what’s its actual name?) but it could provide something a cut above the likes of Soju, providing it doesn’t fall into the trap of being a lot like Cosmo.

The other new openings of 2023 are all interesting in their own ways. Jieli Hotpot opened in Sykes’ Paradise in August, just down from Banh Mi QB, continuing to turn that mall into a fascinating little enclave of Vietnamese, Indian, Chinese, Taiwanese and Japanese restaurants (Fluffy Fluffy, offering Japanese pancakes, also opened there in August). Say what you like about John Sykes – say, for example, that he’s Reading’s answer to Henry F. Potter – but you can’t deny that something is afoot in the place formerly known as Kings Walk.

And then last but not least, two other intriguing establishments opened in Reading this year. In August, Filter Coffee House, possibly Reading’s tiniest café, opened on Castle Street offering Indian filter coffee, baked goods (including their already renowned banana buns – somebody hopped on that bandwagon nice and early) and now an interesting range of street food snacks on Saturdays. Watching them go from strength to strength through their thoroughly charming Instagram account has been one of the rays of social media sunshine in the second half of 2023: I plan to go back there and review it properly early in the new year.

And lastly, the new opening that provoked a lot of interest came with barely a month of the year remaining. Masakali, which apparently means “pigeon” in Hindi, opened where San Sicario used to be and offers a menu of Indian dishes not quite like anywhere else in Reading. Some of the dishes would appear to show the influence of Clay’s, some – like a samosa chaat with “Walker’s Crisps” – seem to be sui generis. 

Does the fact that the restaurant is owned by the same people as Reading’s slightly pedestrian Biryani Lounge make it less appealing? How about the fact that the menu has apparently been designed by an external consultancy company who, according to their website, “are always digging up family recipes from moms and grandmas across India”? Your guess is as good as mine: I’ll have a better idea once I’ve reviewed it, before too long I hope. Since writing this, I’ve also discovered that The Coriander Club opened on 6th December in Calcot, also offering what looks like higher end Indian food (their menu was designed by another, different, consultancy company: is this a thing now?)

Aside from that, I suppose there are a few other things to call out from the year. One was that Thames Lido, which at one point was burning through chefs like the U.K. burned through Prime Ministers, made an interesting choice this year by appointing Iain Ganson, formerly of the Bell at Waltham St Lawrence. I’ve always loved Ganson’s food, and I’ve always found the Lido hugely inconsistent, so this will be an interesting one to watch next year. So far the menus I’ve seen look like standard Lido fare, but time will tell whether Ganson spends his time there singing someone else’s tunes or creating his own melodies. Having said, several times, that I wouldn’t go back to the Lido again I guess now I’ll just have to.

And of course, I couldn’t let a round-up of the year pass without noting, again, that this was the year that Clay’s finally got that review in the Guardian, a rave writeup from Grace Dent which managed to capture exactly what makes Reading’s favourite restaurant so very special. I wonder if remembering Nandana’s and Sharat’s food was the final straw that caused her to walk out on I’m A Celebrity? I guess we’ll never know.

The other big closure of the year, of course, was Berkshire Live. It announced that it was closing on 30th November, leaving the Reading Chronicle and, I suppose, Rdg Today as the only conventional news sources in town. Now, you would probably expect me to have a good old pop at Berkshire Live at this point – and believe me, it’s tempting – but really it’s a cause for sadness more than anything. I feel for the journalists who need to find new work, and it’s typical of Reach plc to make people redundant the payday before Christmas. 

But I also think that what Berkshire Live became wasn’t good for anybody – not for people who wanted to read about Reading, not for journalists who surely wanted to write decent copy rather than regurgitating shit from TripAdvisor or solemnly announcing, on Facebook, that Walkers had discontinued beef and onion crisps. Whether you liked the Evening Post or not, you couldn’t deny that it served a community. The website Reach plc turned that into over eight miserable years was a sad parody of what it used to be: I hope everyone involved finds better, more fulfilling jobs in the new year.

And last of all, because I was bound to talk about this before the end, this was the year that Edible Reading turned ten years old. I have gone on about that quite long enough already in a series of articles in August and September, but I’ve been enormously touched that this was another record breaking year on the blog with more readers and page hits than ever before.

I know that I’ve written more reviews this year from London, Maidenhead, Oxford, Bath and Bristol (and yes, even Swindon), so I’m especially heartened that many of the most popular reviews of the year are the ones from further afield. It’s one in the eye for that “you’re meant to be Edible Reading” dullard who pops up in my comments about once a year.

So I am incredibly grateful for that, and for all your support, and for everybody who has read a review, Retweeted a review or commented (even to say “you’re meant to be Edible Reading”). I’m grateful to everybody who’s joined me on a review, or come to a readers’ lunch, or sent me an email to tell me to review somewhere, or thank me for reviewing somewhere.

I am grateful, now more than ever, for every single time someone tells me they put their faith in me and one of my reviews, went somewhere for lunch or dinner and loved it. Just as much as an independent business is moved every time you put your hand in your pocket and support it, an independent blogger is moved every time you vote with your feet and trust his or her recommendations. So thank you very much, for all of that.

Doing this roundup has been a thought-provoking wander through the last twelve months. Things aren’t as bad as they can seem, and for every Grumpy Goat or Cairo Café that closes there is a Minas Café or a Filter Coffee House or a Vesuvio Pizzeria to redress the balance. The battle for the soul of Reading hasn’t been lost yet, however deflating some of the closures can feel, and we can all do our bit.

And in my case, that means getting to some of the many places that opened this year so that, this time next year, I’m not talking about a bunch of places and constantly saying “of course, I’m yet to try it out”. So I will neglect Reading a little less next year, even if I can’t promise to go to Doner & Gyros.

It just remains for me to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas – however you celebrate, whoever you celebrate with and whatever you eat. Personally I’ll be at home in post-Covid isolation with Clay’s At Home warming up on the hob and an enormous amount of chocolate for afters. I’ll be back next Friday with the 2023 Edible Reading Awards, but until then I hope you all have a fantastic, happy festive period. God bless us, every one.