The reason I ask is that often it slips my mind. Itâs one of those places that feels like it has been there forever, and will be there forever, but that means it can fade into the background when youâre deciding what to eat, or talking about what Reading used to be like. By my reckoning itâs been open for nearly twenty years; I remember what was there before, an unspecial French place called Bistrot Vino, and I went there once for a Bohemian Night spinoff, but other than that itâs been Thai Corner for, well, forever.
I reviewed it back in 2014, when my blog was a mere six months old, and even then it was an old stager, having celebrated over a decade at the top of West Street. And by the time I reviewed it, it had probably already achieved that feat of fading into the background. Thai food has always been a reliable go to in this country – probably inauthentic, never amazing, rarely terrible – but itâs never had a moment where it was the hot new thing. And so Thai Corner, for those ten years and the eight that followed, has just carried on doing what it did best, whether you noticed or not.
Back before I started this blog it was a proper happy place for me, as frequently visited as the likes of Dolce Vita, and somewhere I could go on date nights or with friends visiting Reading for dinner. I had my staple dishes I always ordered – weeping tiger, sirloin steak with garlic and coriander, or pla chuchi, salmon steak with red curry sauce – and a red wine I always drank, and I never went away less than full or happy. It was a sure thing, in that way people think chains are, and I loved it there.
Anyway, the years moved on, and by the time I reviewed it for the blog I was a lapsed member of the congregation. I liked it just fine, although it didnât knock my socks off, and my review at the time was full of faint praise in a way which, with hindsight, looks a tad condescending (so unlike me, I know). Havenât you done well not to be closed yet? it seems to say. 2014 me had forgotten, I think, how much 2004 me liked the place. And 2022 me looked back at that and thought it was high time to go again.
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Thereâs a new trend in Berkshire Live which drives me absolutely crackers. Having moved on from a steady emetic trickle of âXâs quiet life in [insert name of Berkshire village here]â articles (translation: hereâs somebody who used to live in Berkshire and thatâs literally all we know about them) their latest form of copy and paste gonzo journalism is one where they knock up madlibs-style reviews of restaurants which – and you could bet your life savings on this – the âjournalistâ has never visited.
The new trend – or do I mean new low? – is to churn out articles that say âthe X restaurant so good youâll think youâre in [the most famous city in country X]â. Itâs so witless it could almost be amusing. So if you eat in lâOrtolan, for instance, you could imagine youâre in Paris (Iâve been to Paris: lâOrtolan is nothing like it). If you have tapas in Wokinghamâs Sanpa you could believe youâre in Madrid, allegedly, and never mind the pesky detail that tapas is from Andalusia, miles away to the south.
Oh, and if you eat American barbecue in Blueâs Smokehouse – and itâs great, so maybe you should – guess what? Close your eyes and you could be in the Big Apple. Again, itâs not noted for its barbecue but details are for pedants, apparently. It goes on: Quattro is just like Rome, some Chinese restaurant in Cookham is the spitting image of downtown Beijing, Sapana Home is like dining in the Himalayas (they call out the âmomo dumplingsâ at Sapana, which is like saying I very much enjoyed the chips potatoes). I thought they couldnât get more laughable but the latest says that afternoon tea at the Forbury Hotel âwill make you feel like youâre dining with the Kingâ. Stay classy, Berkshire Live.
But that isnât enough, so to pad out the article – and to further pull the wool over your eyes – they like to add a bit of bumf from the restaurantâs website and those all important customer opinions. After all, in Berkshire Liveâs own immortal words, âRecent years has brought more people online as it gives them an easy way to choose somewhere to eat. One place most of us look is the reviews – what do people really think about where we want to eat? We decided to list the last three reviews all less than a month ago to see what people have said.â
Maybe people are looking online because local papers have died and been replaced by moronic clickbait? Just a thought. But yes, the rest of their extensive research consists of firing up Tripadvisor and copying and pasting the three most recent reviews. But Berkshire Live doesnât care about that. In their mind, everybody wins: they hit their targets for pumping out meaningless content to sell ad space and you get a âreviewâ which tells you nothing about the restaurant, Ctrl-C and Ctrl-Vd by somebody who has never been there and, for all we know, has never even left their home office (are Reach plc staff affected by the train strikes? It seems unlikely). Bobâs your uncle, Fannyâs your aunt and keema, as they say, is your nan.
So this is what passes for journalism these days and the most insulting thing is that theyâre so cretinous they think nobody will notice. How times have changed. In the old days, local newspapers used to sneak ads into the paper and not tell readers that money had changed hands and many people, myself included, were outraged about that. Nowadays theyâre so desperate for content that they publish what are effectively full length ads without even being paid for the privilege. It makes you wonder who pumps out more sewage: the water companies or Reach plc?
Anyway, by contrast this weekâs feature – no review, because Iâm away this week – is one of those lists everyone likes with one crucial difference: theyâre my opinions, born of going out there and trying as much of Readingâs food and drink as I can. So this article might come in handy if you canât be arsed to schlep through any of my lists, or to comb through the blog but just want to know, in my entirely subjective opinion, where to get the best coffee, pizza, sandwich and so much more in Reading. Read, enjoy, share, comment and – of course – disagree, because if you donât disagree with a single thing on this list Iâll be very surprised indeed.
Apart from my (entirely subjective, donât forget) guarantee of quality I can promise you one other thing. None of these places will make you feel like youâre in Naples, New York or Nagoya. Because, as weâve established, that is utter, utter bollocks. Besides, theyâll go one better than that: theyâll make you glad youâre in the Ding.
Readingâs best breakfast – Dee Caf
Dee Cafâs breakfast isnât a looker, and nothing about it is built for Instagram. But in terms of midmorning indulgence on a plate it is probably unparalleled in Reading and well worth a meander out in the direction of Tilehurst. Bacon and sausages AND black pudding, all from a local butcher? Hash browns and properly buttered toast too, on an enamel plate which is only just big enough to contain all that bounty? Count me in. When I went the only drawback was the coffee – theyâve now switched to Anonymous, which is a very smart move. (Montague House, 12 Spey Road, RG30 4DG)
Honourable mention: The Switch
What is it with West Reading and good breakfasts? The smashed avo with bacon at The Switch is unashamedly high-end, and priced accordingly, but shows what a good dish it can be in the right hands. (19 The Triangle, RG30 4RN)
Readingâs best burger – Smash N Grab
Smash N Grab is quietly doing great things down on Cemetery Junction and their inimitable take on smashed burgers easily justifies a trip out of the centre. These are indulgent, overloaded burgers – messy, stuffed, deeply sinful things, and you will feel replete, satisfied and a little ashamed of yourself at the end of one. The chips still need work, and the cake shakes are a little artery-hardening for me, but the burgers are still unbeatable. If itâs on the menu, the MacBook Pro (topped with a slab of breaded, deep-fried macaroni cheese) is every bit as so-wrong-itâs-right as it sounds. (124 London Road, RG1 5AY)
Honourable mention: Honest Burgers
Readingâs branch of the small chain is the best town centre option and very rarely has a bad day at the office. The burger, served pink, is reliably terrific and the monthly specials mix things up nicely. Theyâve just added a buffalo fried chicken burger to their menu, if beef isnât your bag. (1-5 King Street, RG1 2HB)
Readingâs best coffee – C.U.P.
C.U.P. just edges it for me, and both its Blagrave Street and Reading Minster outposts have a lot going for them. Blagrave Street is great for people watching passers-by, and the seats outside Reading Minster are great for people watching your fellow customers. Either way, although the latte is superb the signature here is the mocha, made with an awful lot of real chocolate – a dessert, a pick me up, a treat and a necessity all crammed into a single takeaway cup. (7 Blagrave Street, RG1 1PJ/53 St Mary’s Butts, RG1 2LG)
Honourable mention: Workhouse Coffee
The eminence grise of Readingâs coffee culture, Workhouse is superb and reliable for latte and my espresso-drinking friends swear by their espresso. Itâs a shame the greed and neglect of the Mercure Hotel has robbed them of what was one of townâs best and sunniest al fresco spaces, and the interior feels like it needs a bit of love. But the staff are great and the coffee remains top notch. (10-12 King Street, RG1 2HF, also 335 Oxford Road, RG30 1AY)
Readingâs best fish and chips – Finnâs
I know nobody will agree with this unless they live near Finnâs, and I canât remember the last time I had fish and chips at Wingâs, or Deep Blue, or that other place you like. But I maintain that Finnâs, the pride of east Reading, does wonderful fish and chips with a light, crispy batter and chips that have the perfect balance of floury stodge and crunchy shrapnel. I must work up the courage to try their masala cod one cold winterâs evening. (42b Erleigh Road, RG1 5NA)
Runner-up: The Lyndhurst
The Lyndhurst serves up the epitome of pub fish and chips, an excellent portion of battered leviathan and some of Readingâs very best chips. Those of you who like mushy peas will enjoy these, and those of you who tend to leave them have something in common with me. Spoiler alert: this is not the Lyndhurstâs only appearance on this list, you may not be surprised to hear. (88 Queens Road, RG1 4DG)
Readingâs best fried chicken – The Lyndhurst
See? Told you. The Lyndhurstâs chicken karaage has been tweaked and tinkered with steadily since it first appeared on their menu last year. They took it off the menu just as I was developing a serious karaage habit (forget ketamine: this is the real K hole) and then this year I was overjoyed when they brought it back. The texture is unbelievably crunchy and gnarly, the portion size is so generous that you wonât mind offering your companions a piece and making them jealous and the little shards of fried kale add an extra savoury note. What was a kewpie mayo has now been swapped – another tweak – for a wasabi mayo which adds just enough sinus-clearing power. (88 Queens Road, RG1 4DG)
Runner-up: ThaiGrr!
You could hold a piece of fried kale between this and the Lyndhurstâs karaage, thatâs how little separates them in terms of quality. ThaiGrrâs chicken is a ridiculously generous six jointed pieces on the bone with shatteringly crisp skin, tender meat and little slivers of garlic sprinkled on top. It comes with some very pleasant sweet chilli sauce, and you can spend all six pieces wondering if it needs the dip without ever reaching a conclusion. (1d Queens Walk, RG1 7QF)
Reading’s best pizza – Buon Appetito
N.B. Buon Appetito sadly closed in April 2023, although if you’re on the lookout for pizza Mama’s Way and Sarv’s Slice are both also worth a try.
One of my favourite discoveries of the last year has been the revitalised Buon Appetito at the end of Chatham Street which, for my money, knocks out the very best pizza in town. The base, a puffy-crusted, leopard-spotted delight, is next level good and the range of toppings is just wide enough without getting ridiculous. I am a huge fan of their Napoli which comes strewn with anchovies, olives and crispy fried capers, but there’s also a lot to be said for the Blue Parma, with twenty-four month aged Parma ham and a fair old whack of gorgonzola. It helps that Buon Appetito is one of Reading’s very best al fresco spots: they mix a mean Aperol spritz or negroni, too. (146 Chatham Street, RG1 7HT)
Honourable mention: Papa Gee
The other side of the river on Prospect Street, Papa Gee has nearly twenty years of experience of dough-slinging and it really shows. My latest visit was extremely recent, so I’m delighted to have extremely fresh memories of how good they are. The base maybe doesn’t quite have the quality of Buon Appetito’s, but you can expect pizzas topped by a man who doesn’t enjoy saying “when”. The iconic dish here, the pizza Sofia Loren, comes with pepperoni, beautiful coarse nuggets of sausage, red onions, chilli and my unqualified endorsement. (5 Prospect Street, RG4 8JB)
Reading’s best sandwich: Madoo
This is an incredibly difficult category, and I think I’ve only been able to narrow it down to two with a little cheating – wraps get their own category, and technically a burger is a sandwich too. But, to get off the fence, at the moment I’m not sure anyone can top the toasties at Madoo. Made with a variety of focaccia and pretty much customisable however you like, they are a carby, cheesy miracle on Duke Street. On my most recent visit, on the day of the big funeral, I had pancetta and scamorza in a focaccia topped with onion and thin slices of potato: try being sad after scoffing one of those. (10-14 Duke Street, RG1 4RU)
Honourable mention: Shed
Shed is still the godfather of Reading’s sandwich scene. Its lunch scene in general, to be honest. Their Tuna Turner – all tuna mayo and oozing cheese, studded with jalapenos, the bread bronzed and burnished – should earn them a blue plaque one day (other sandwiches are, of course, available). (8 Merchants Place, RG1 1DT)
Reading’s best street food: Gurt Wings
Sadly as of July 2023 Gurt Wings is not trading at Blue Collar.
Gurt Wings is a street food player with a national profile and, luckily for us, a soft spot for Reading. From their regular presence at Blue Collar’s Friday markets they took on a permanent pitch at Blue Collar Corner in March, and if the recent announcement that they’re leaving Blue Collar Corner has caused gloom and withdrawal symptoms across the land, the pill has been slightly sweetened by the news that they’re returning to the Friday markets again.
Everything they do is magnificent but the tenders, smothered in hot and sour buffalo and sharpened with a little blue cheese sauce, are truly fantastic. I also absolutely love their JFC – popcorn chicken with a hyper-punchy gochujang sauce and a smidge of sriracha mayo. About once a year they do a chicken burger in an iced doughnut topped with candied bacon – it has to be tried to be believed, but once is probably enough. (Market Place, RG1 2DE, Fridays only)
I had a rather hit and miss visit to Intoku earlier this year: the service was slapdash in all kinds of ways, but I also saw enough to convince myself that in terms of quality we finally have a restaurant in Reading that can approach the likes of Miyazaki in Maidenhead or my all-time favourite, Windsor’s Misugo. The soft shell crab rolls are an absolute dream, the maki are precise and nicely done and although the sashimi isn’t Reading’s best, it’s good enough. The fact that they also do gorgeous bao and possibly the best crispy squid I’ve had in town is just a bonus. (30a Chain Street, RG1 2HX)
Honourable mention – Sushimania
I know Osaka and Oishi have their fans, but I have a real soft spot for Sushimania, on that slightly grim brutalist corner overlooking the Hexagon. It’s all you can eat but made to order, and you can get most of the core menu that way, an inexpensive treat on a week night with a bottle of Asahi. They ration you on the salmon sashimi and the eel nigiri – make sure you get your full quota of both, because they’re bloody great. (9 Queens Walk, RG1 7QF)
Go to Cairo Cafe and order the chicken shawarma wrap. Marvel at what comes out, hotter than the sun, perfectly assembled, crisped on the outside, gooey with cheese, the meat singing with spices and mint. Eat it in that peaceful place, looking out the window at the comings and goings of the grittier end of town, and tell me there’s a better wrap in Reading. And no, you don’t feel just like you’re in Cairo: you feel like you’re on West Street, because you are.
There’s a lot of chicken in this list, isn’t there? Reading really needs another restaurant reviewer who likes chicken a little less than I do. (13 West Street, RG1 1TT)
As a restaurant reviewer, however assiduously you do your research, however good you think you are at reading the runes of a menu to try and figure out whether a Brakes lorry regularly pulls up outside the crime scene, however much you trawl through Tripadvisor or other blogs – good luck finding those, by the way – restaurants always retain the capacity to surprise.
You can expect somewhere to be good, all the signs can say it will be, but thereâs always a possibility that youâll wind up with an underwhelming meal if youâre lucky, an out-and out-duffer if youâre not. This is especially the case when hype is involved. Or plain gratitude that a place has opened at all, either because a big name is gracing a town with its presence or because the town in question is a wasteland for decent places to eat.
The more refreshing phenomenon is when it happens the other way round, when you go to an unspecial-looking restaurant with no particular expectations only to discover that you have a proper find on your hands. That realisation that dawns gradually throughout the meal, that sense of hold on, this is really good, is one of my favourite things about restaurants, and about reviewing them. Itâs happened to me a fair few times, but one thatâs always stayed with me was the March evening over seven years ago when I crossed the threshold of Papa Gee.
Papa Gee, back in 2015, was an Italian restaurant on the Caversham Road, on the ground floor of the Rainbows Lodge Hotel. Iâd never heard of anyone who had been to Papa Gee, and at the time I knew people who lived in Little Wales, the maze of streets on the other side of the Caversham Road named after Cardiff, Swansea, Newport. Every time I walked past Papa Gee, probably en route to a booking at Mya Lacarte, the place seemed closed.
Inauspicious was putting it lightly. So nobody was more surprised than me when I found Papa Gee wasnât some kind of white elephant but was instead a hugely creditable little restaurant doing belting pizzas, rather nice pasta and antipasti, a family business with owner and Neapolitan Gaetano Abete, the eponymous Papa Gee, in the kitchen. I had a splendid evening, although arguably the cherry on the cake was not having to stay in the hotel upstairs afterwards.
I walked away with my faith in the world somewhat restored, and it turned out to be one of the most delightful curveballs of the very early days of this blog. And the weird thing is, people definitely went to Papa Gee before I reviewed it. Itâs not as if I discovered the place: it had decent writeups on TripAdvisor and had been trading for over ten years. Itâs just that Iâd never met a Papa Gee customer, back then. Maybe they didnât want the rest of us finding out.
I was worried about Papa Gee after that, because the owners of Rainbows Lodge sold the building to the Easy Hotel chain a couple of years later and the restaurant was out on its ear. But then they announced what, with the benefit of hindsight, was a perfect move – and in October 2017 they took over the old Mya Lacarte site on Prospect Street, closer to the action in Caversham.
It was a brave move to open slap bang opposite Quattro, Cavershamâs long-serving Italian restaurant, and the conditions got even tougher a couple of years later when the Last Crumb, also offering pizza, opened at the top of the road where the Prince Of Wales used to be. And yet here we are in 2022 and, post-pandemic, Papa Gee is still going.
And thatâs partly why theyâre the subject of this weekâs review. The thing is, Iâd never visited them in their new home and I was starting to feel bad about that; I didnât want them to be continually on my to do list only to find, one day, that theyâd closed before Iâd got round to visiting. So I made my way there with ZoĂ« on a Friday evening, post work, the weekend stretching out ahead waiting to be filled with units and calories. Like the very first time I visited Papa Gee, a lifetime ago, I wasnât entirely sure what to expect.
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No blethering preamble for you this week, talking about the history of Readingâs food scene and putting things In Context (because there always has to be a Context). Things are much simpler this time around, because by the time you read this Iâll be off on my holidays and I just wanted to eat somewhere really nice the weekend before I went.
Thereâs something magical about the weekend before you go away, right from the moment you close the work laptop on a Friday afternoon: the knowledge that the weekend youâre about to have wonât be bookended by opening the sodding thing again on Monday morning, knowing that instead youâll be at the airport, putting your phone and house keys in the plastic tray at security, browsing the duty free fragrance, daydreaming about that first holiday beer or glass of wine.
Thatâs why I found myself in Wallingford on Saturday afternoon with a reservation for Five Little Pigs that evening. Five Little Pigs received national attention earlier in the year when it got a rave writeup in the Observer. And whatever you think of Jay Rayner, his review of the place talked about deep-fried olives, a burnished toastie with cheese from nearby Nettlebed Creamery and a deep, savoury venison ragu. Reading that was enough of an incentive.
And besides, itâs not as if I had to go there with Rayner. Like most people, I have an infinitely better option: in fact, Five Little Pigs was on the list of restaurants I wasn’t allowed to review with anybody but ZoĂ« (or, as she puts it, ânot without me you fucking arenâtâ).
Wallingford is a sleepy place, although remarkably easy to reach on the evocatively named River Rapids bus. Itâs a very agreeable forty-five minute amble through Oxfordshire, out past Cane End, Gallowstree Common, Stoke Row. I expected Wallingford to be a little like Henley, or Witney, but itâs smaller than either with a couple of main streets, a pretty pub by the green and a really lovely wine shop, the neatly named Grape Minds. Thereâs also one of those antiques centres which is a succession of rooms full of tat and treasure in indeterminate proportions, and a Scandi interiors shop which mostly sells Farrow & Ball. The craft beer scene there is one bar with a fridge full of Phantom and Arbor Ales. Thatâs not to say I didnât like Wallingford, but by the time our table was ready I was very much ready for it.
From the review Iâd read I thought Five Little Pigs would be small but actually it was much larger than I expected. The front room, with the full length windows out onto St Maryâs Street, was a chic (if slightly chilly) space which was very tastefully done, an interesting mix of deep blues and golds and pastel shades from the art on the wall. It reminded me of places like Coppa Club, which isnât necessarily a compliment. Further back was a longer, plainer room with banquetted booths. Itâs a surprisingly hard space to photograph (as you can probably tell) but it was packed at seven oâclock on a Saturday night: a good review in the Observer will do that for you.
The menu read well and had plenty on it to appeal. Starters clustered around eight or nine pounds, and only a couple of mains were north of twenty. Plenty of it was local, too, with nearby cheesemakers, growers and butchers all namechecked. âWe donât have the pigs cheeks at the momentâ said one of the wait staff, âbut they may come in later.â I found that a bit confusing – were they being delivered by drone? – but decided it was best not to ask.
By that point a bottle of red had been opened, a really enjoyable organic Rioja, and I was about to reach that happy place where the food has been ordered and you know you’re safely in somebody elseâs hands for the next few hours. Every table was full – with date nights, family gatherings and, in one case, an elderly couple who seemed to spend most of the evening glowering at each other. We were all going to have an enchanting evening. The Observer said so.
I felt a bit basic ordering the Scotch egg, but I canât remember the last time I had one so it was calling to me from the menu right from the outset. It was one of the nicest things we ate all evening, so proved to be a happy choice : the sausagement was nicely coarse, with black pudding adding a little earthiness. And if Iâd have liked the outside a little crisper, or the whole thing slightly less crumbly, the presence of a small pool of superbly tangy rhubarb ketchup mostly made up for that, as did the pickled pink onions.
âYou winâ said ZoĂ«, tackling her ricotta on toast, which sounded great on paper but in reality was disappointing. âItâs all a bit dryâ she said, and this is a woman whoâs listened to me talking about my favourite Bob Dylan records, so she knows what sheâs talking about. For what itâs worth I agreed – the ricotta was dry and anaemic, the cottage cheese of the Chilterns, and although the roasted cherries were an interesting idea they didnât add enough of the moisture this dish needed. Literal cherries on top, yes, but sadly not figurative ones. âThis could have been really nice with honeyâ was ZoĂ«âs take.
Weâd also ordered a third starter, broad bean fritters, because they sounded so magnificent. And they tasted gorgeous, with huge amounts of freshness from the mint and a dab of deep whipped beetroot on top. But plating it up with pea shoots and plenty of negative space couldnât really conceal the most obvious thing about this dish, which is that it was minuscule; it was one of those times when I wish Iâd popped a twenty pence piece on the plate before I took the photo so you could see just how small they were. We had this as an extra dish, but if this had been my starter Iâd have been looking at everybody elseâs, feeling profoundly robbed.
Things were well paced at Five Little Pigs, possibly because it was so busy, because our starter and our mains were about half an hour apart, for me close to the optimum interval between the two. I think ZoĂ« chose better with the mains and her lamb rump with yoghurt, more of those roast cherries and what the menu calls âcrispy potatoesâ was the pick of the two. But even here, it wasnât perfect. âAgain, itâs dryâ said ZoĂ«. âThe yoghurt is really good, but if anything it needs more of the cherries. They work better here than they did with the starters.â I agreed with that, although I thought the crispy potatoes were a standout, with a lot more texture than met the eye. But for me, the lamb rump was a little overdone. I found it odd, too, that they brought me a steak knife but not ZoĂ«, when her dish needed it every bit as much as mine.
My rump steak was the most expensive dish on the menu, which always adds the potential for it to be the most underwhelming. It was a beautiful piece of beef and the cooking couldnât be faulted – pretty much medium-rare throughout with beautiful caramelisation outside. But it was underseasoned, and surprisingly bland. The chimichurri underneath it had a pleasing zing, but ran out very quickly indeed. And after that the whole thing became a bit of a slog. There was some kind of puddle of juices at the edge of the plate, but it would be pushing it to call it a jus or a sauce. The best thing on the plate was a solitary mushroom cooked with cheese (again from Nettlebed) until it was salty and crispy, but when the star of the show plays such a brief cameo role, youâve got problems.
Just to add to the onslaught of dryness, my triple cooked chips had decent texture – and were huge – but, again, they came without anything to add moisture. Weâd ordered another portion separately, not knowing that we wouldnât really need them, and I think in a restaurant with sharper service they might have talked us out of doing that. They came with a very good aioli but, as with the chimichurri or the beetroot ketchup, there was nowhere near enough of it. We asked for some more from a passing member of the wait staff. Five minutes passed and it didnât materialise. We asked again and some time later, when the chips were nearly at an end, it finally arrived.
We looked at the dessert menu because our bus wasnât for another forty-five minutes, or at least thatâs what I told myself. By this point the couple at the next table had both ordered the hake – which looked nicer than either of our mains – and there was a certain mesmeric quality to watching them push it round the plate in that way that people who donât really enjoy food seem to do.
ZoĂ« had her dessert with a Cotswold cream liqueur (although it turned up on the bill as Baileyâs, so Christ knows which it really was) and I had a dessert wine – from Graves of all places – which went beautifully. And well done if youâve made it this far, because the truth about Five Little Pigs is that, sadly, by this point Iâm even slightly boring myself. Our bill came to a hundred and forty-six pounds, including service, and then we went outside, got the penultimate bus out of Dodge, got home, had a cup of tea and went to bed. The end.
Last week somebody commented on my Facebook page about the review I did of Sauce And Flour. âI wish youâd stop doing reviews of places outside Readingâ he said. âI prefer the Reading reviews. And after all, this blog is called Edible Readingâ. I always find it interesting when people pipe up to tell me that this entirely free blog is somehow not delivering value for money, and after I politely told him that Iâd review wherever I bloody well liked he deleted his comment. But thereâs an important point here, believe it or not. I think itâs good to review places outside Reading because it gives you that all-important context (like I said at the start, thereâs usually a Context). Otherwise how do you know if a place is good, or just good for Reading?
And it goes beyond Reading. If I hadnât been to the likes of Marmo and Caper & Cure maybe I’d have thought about Five Little Pigs very differently. But at the same price point, making similar noises, and even with some similar dishes, the difference is stark. There are better ways to spend a hundred and fifty pounds eating out than to go to Five Little Pigs. One is to go to Marmo, or Caper & Cure. Another, to be honest, is to eat at Tasty Greek Souvlaki four times. Five Little Pigs is probably an absolute boon to Wallingford, and on another night I might well have had a meal there Iâd have enjoyed better. But in truth, I canât see myself going back.
So there you go: it turns out that restaurant reviewers arenât always right. But as a regular reader of this blog you knew that already, didnât you?
Five Little Pigs – 7.1 26 St Mary’s Street, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, OX10 0ET 01491 833999
One of my oldest friends lives in Swindon. Someone has to. Whenever he comes to Reading he enjoys our street food, our craft beer and our shopportunities and he complains to me – at length – that it didnât have to turn out like this. He reckons that there was a time, back in the Nineties when all that money hadnât decided where to coalesce, when it Could Have Been Swindon. They had a House Of Fraser, well before the Oracle opened, and that designer outlet everyone used to get so excited about. And Reading – Heelas aside, of course – was a bit of a wasteland in the mid-Nineties. Things could have been very different.
But the retail and hospitality gods smiled on Reading and, like many of us, they sneered at Swindon. We got the big names and the investment and Swindon, over the few decades, withered and died. Itâs not all terrible: Darkroom Espresso is a great place to grab a coffee, Los Gatos in the old town is a tapas restaurant Reading would be lucky to have and a few doors down Rays does thoroughly likeable ice cream. But thereâs a reason people who live in Swindon go to Bath, Oxford or Cirencester at the weekend, just as people from those places donât pop over to Swindon of a Saturday.
The reason Iâm starting a review of a place in Maidenhead talking about Swindon is that lately Iâve been looking at whatâs going on in Maidenhead and starting to wonder if we might find ourselves in the Swindon role at some point in the coming years. Because although itâs early days, the businesses beginning to come to prominence in Maidenhead are the kind that youâd want to see in Reading instead of – hooray – a branch of Popeyes or our twentieth Costa Coffee.
Take A Hoppy Place, a credible, nicely fitted out craft beer bar a five minute walk from the train station with close to twenty beers and ciders on cask and keg. Last time I went it was doing a roaring trade and making the most of its outside space, and it was a wonderful place to while away a few hours. And although Reading has a brilliant craft beer scene – bolstered by the new addition of the Grumpy Goatâs upstairs bar – thereâs nothing on that scale in the town centre.
And then thereâs Seasonality, which recently got a rave review in The Guardian. It started in lockdown as a deli also selling heat at home meals, and has since morphed into a restaurant offering an interesting and inventive menu. Itâs tasteful, gorgeous looking and independent: you could count the number of restaurants like that which have opened in Reading in the last couple of years on the fingers of one stump. With the winter we have looming, and the townâs famously charmless landlords, can you imagine one trying their luck here in the next twelve months?
Finally, the subject of this weekâs review which might be the most interesting of the lot. Flour and Sauce opened in March as part of Maidenheadâs Waterside Quarter and seems, on paper at least, to be an example of a London trend that hasnât so far made it this far west, the pasta restaurant. And by that I mean that, from a look at the menu, it seems to be modelled on Borough Marketâs famous Padella and the hugely influential Bancone along with more recent imitators.
Those places – offering starters, a selection of pasta and not much else – have been one of my favourite trends of the last few years. Theyâve given dishes like silk handkerchiefs with confit egg yolk or bucatini cacio e pepe iconic status and at their best they make for fantastic mid-priced casual restaurants. Throw in a negroni to start and a decent dessert at the end and you have the blueprint for a marvellous lunch or dinner: Iâve eaten at the original Bancone in Covent Garden a few times and never had a meal there that was less than splendid. So was Maidenhead boasting an example of this very London trend by virtue of its place on the Elizabeth Line? I wanted to find out.
It looked gorgeous from the outside, all white columns and full length windows. And it had the feeling of a fully realised concept, with clear branding, although something was niggling and bringing out my inner Mary Portas. Was it the name? Somehow it felt like it should be Flour And Sauce, both in chronological and alphabetical order. And the slogan – Wine Meats Dine – might have worked as a pun, but it didnât seem to descibe what they actually did.
Going inside and taking my table brought out my inner Michelle Ogundehin. It was a big deep room but everything was somehow disconnected. The furniture didnât match, but not in a charming way or even a calculated one, more as if theyâd run out of stuff. I saw three different types of chair, one of which was the ubiquitous Tollix I associate with far cheaper food and greater discomfort.
Likewise the lampshades didnât match, but not in a way that made sense – including the ones over the window seats which looked like grass skirts humping a lightbulb. There were some cheap shelving units from Ikea along one wall and a completely incongruous pine Welsh dresser at the back. It all felt thrown together, as if theyâd opened in a hurry – and of course it might well have been. The faux marble wallpaper along one wall, already slightly peeling at the joins, might have gone on in a hurry too.
âItâs funnyâ said ZoĂ«. âYou walk in and think âthis is niceâ but then the longer you look at it the more jarring it gets.â
I donât think it helps that we got arguably the worst table in the place. The restaurant wasnât really broken into zones, and we had the last free table – right at the front, near the open door. It was a bit chilly, and with people traipsing past in either direction it felt like eating in a corridor – especially when at one point a large group decided to stand right next to our table and chat to a couple eating up at the window for the best part of ten minutes. The window seats, by the way, are probably the best place to sit if youâre in a pair: the counter is lovely and deep, and you get a great view (and, therefore, superb people watching opportunities).
The menu was a little like the room – superficially attractive, but the closer you looked the more you wondered. At places like Bancone, the array of pasta dishes all involve different types of pasta which gives you a much wider range of choices. By contrast nearly all the pasta dishes at Sauce And Flour revolved around relatively similar shapes, and not too many of them, so you had multiple permutations of pappardelle, tagliatelle, linguine and bucatini which made up all but one of the pasta dishes on offer (the exception was a penne dish: what kind of a monster orders penne from choice?). I was hoping to see some ravioli, something like trofie or orechiette, a little more variety.
The irony wasnât lost on me: Iâve moaned for years that not enough restaurants sell wine in 125ml glasses, and here I was in a place where it was one of the only options. But it felt badly thought out. There were two beers on offer, those ubiquitous macro lagers Peroni and Moretti. I took another look, thought fuck this and ordered a large bottle of San Pellegrino.
Would the food redeem matters? Some of it came close. We started with some thoroughly decent dishes from the starters menu and for a while I thought my tetchiness would be held in check. The pick of the bunch – of the whole meal, in fact – were the short rib beef croquettes: three beautiful specimens crisp of shell and packed with soft, yielding, slow-cooked beef. They were perched in a little moat of spiced mayonnaise which might have had a kiss of ânduja, and each had a slice of pickle draped on top which was more sweet than tart and tied things together nicely.
There were three of these and I let ZoĂ« have the spare because she was so underwhelmed by the next starter, although I didnât like it much better. Squid – âbody and tentaclesâ according to the menu, which I think is TMI – was meant to come fried with ânduja but was actually in a thin, vinegary sauce with capers and no heat or seasoning. All the squid was bouncier than youâd like, and just made me think wistfully of better squid Iâve had in the not too distant past. It came with a long transverse slice of focaccia toast which was so rock hard that trying to cut it with a knife and fork left me worrying that half of it would ping off and hit the next table. A pointless blob of squid ink mayo perched on it, looking like a dirty protest.
Finally, I wasnât sure what âwarm buttermilk garlic bun & parmesanâ would turn out to be, and the answer is essentially this: four giant dough balls. They were about as nice as giant dough balls can be, strewn with Parmesan and rosemary, and I squidged a piece into the sauce that came with the squid to verify that yes, it really was that dull.
Mains were better but, and this is rather a theme, not exactly as billed. My linguine puttanesca was solid, I think. The ribbons had just enough pleasing bite and the sauce, a combination of all my favourite things, worked well. It had the note of acidity from the capers, a pleasant hum of chilli in the background and beautiful, plump olives. I felt like it needed more anchovy, but then I feel that way about the world in general so this dish was hardly an isolated incident. Iâd paid extra to have some yellowfin tuna in the mix and I think I spotted a couple of forkfuls, but that was it. Not bad at all, and not bad value at fourteen pounds, but in the wider context of the whole meal it was doing a lot of heavy lifting.
ZoĂ«âs dish, slow-cooked duck ragu with tagliatelle, had sounded good on paper and she enjoyed it, but from what I tasted it didnât quite work. Again, the menu was misleading: this didnât feel like a ragu at all, and the pieces of duck leg I ate didnât have that tenderness I associate with slow cooked sauces. This hadnât been reduced for a long time in red wine and tomatoes, it was a white ragu if anything, but it felt like the duck had been added to the white wine and mascarpone right at the end.
And it tasted pleasant enough, but if Iâd ordered it Iâd have been disappointed: perhaps the kitchenâs other ragus – one made with beef shin, the other with pork and ânduja – showed off their skills better. ZoĂ« couldnât finish it – you canât fault the portion size – but by the end the sauce had pretty much solidified which made it a challenge. I will say this for Sauce And Flour, though: both pasta dishes had the welcome crunch of judiciously added pangrattato, and itâs hard to completely take against a restaurant that does that.
We decided to try dessert, to give the place a fair crack of the whip. They too were pretty representative of the whole Sauce And Flour experience. ZoĂ«âs tiramisu was decent, and she loved the mascarpone and the leftfield inclusion of Kahlua, but it was a lot more cream than sponge. It didnât dampen her ardour for Buon Appetitoâs magical pistachio tiramisu, put it that way.
I went for the cheese selection and for one person, for seven pounds, I thought it was generous. They have a big deli counter just along from the open kitchen so you can see the staff cutting and preparing the cheese plate, and maybe if Iâd had better eyesight I could have worked out what they were. But with the exception of a gorgeous, crumbly Parmesan with decent age which I left until last, I have no idea what they were because the wait staff just plonked them down and sodded off (the menu doesnât say, either).
The others were a mix of a soft cheese that might have been Brie but possibly wasnât, a hard cheese that could have been pecorino but probably wasnât and a couple of other cheeses which honestly could have been anything. Maybe it was the adrenalin, or maybe I was just high on life and drunk on San Pellegrino but I have absolutely no idea. I do know that they came with crackers which tasted a lot like water biscuits and a little dish of something the menu just calls âjamâ which tasted of surprisingly little.
Not telling us what the cheeses were was pretty consistent with service in general: it wasnât unpleasant or rude, just distinctly brisk and disinterested. Maybe itâs because they were busy, but it lacked warmth – and Iâm not just saying that because I was sitting by the open door. For me, that was arguably the biggest drawback about Sauce And Flour because itâs the thing – over and above the quirks of the menu or that sore thumb Welsh dresser – that badly needs to be fixed. Our meal came to just over sixty-seven pounds, and included a ten per cent service charge Iâm not entirely sure was warranted.
On the train home, Zoë and I mused about exactly what had been missing from our evening.
âThe room wasnât that bad, and some of the food was very good, but great service would absolutely transform that placeâ she said. And sheâs right. Sauce And Flour is a curious beast. It looks, on paper, like an attempt to recreate those specialist pasta restaurants in the capital, but scratch the surface and I have a horrible feeling that itâs actually just a reasonable Italian restaurant with a more limited menu. Like the faux marble wallpaper, it might look the part from a distance but underneath, itâs already peeling. So we can relax: Reading isnât missing out, not this time anyway. If you want to leave town to eat superb Italian food, take a train to Mio Fiore.
What it really made me think about was the glory days of Dolce Vita, at the height of its powers. I loved Dolce Vita, but letâs be honest: the room wasnât the best in Reading, and a fair amount of the food didnât quite live up to its reputation (mainly, ironically, the pasta and pizza dishes). But because of the service, you never cared about that. Youâd go back time and again, and it always felt like having friends cooking for you. And if Iâd gone to Dolce Vita and there had only been one wine by the glass, I wouldnât have given a shit; I donât think I ever went there without ordering a bottle anyway. Trends or no trends, Reading doesnât need a Sauce And Flour. But there will always be room for another Dolce Vita.
Sauce And Flour – 7.0 4A High Street, Maidenhead, SL6 1QJ 07516 948421
Edible Reading 