Restaurant review: Côte

On January 31, 2025January 30, 2025 By ediblereadingIn Reviews4 Comments

Here’s what happened: I was making Friday night dinner plans with my friend Graeme and I said I’d give him some restaurants to choose from, a mixture of places I wanted to review (or re-review) and others I just fancied eating at. My text was all ready to send, and then I stopped for a minute and thought what about Côte? So I added Côte to the list of places I was due to re-review and pinged the message over to Graeme, fully expecting him to pick somewhere else.

Why don’t we do Côte? came the reply. I haven’t been for a while, and it’s such a good chain restaurant.

Appropriately Graeme’s reasons for choosing it were the same as mine for including it in my selection. The last time I went there was something like eighteen months ago, with my family, to celebrate my just having got engaged. But before that? I honestly couldn’t tell you. And yet before the pandemic I used to go an awful lot – it was one of my regular spots.

I do wonder whether the pandemic had something to do with it. Because when Covid struck national Côte did what many restaurants did, diversifying into heat at home options. But Côte did it differently to everybody else, and unlike nearly everybody else they are still doing it years later, when for most restaurants their schemes, entirely born out of necessity, were shelved ages go.

Côte decided to take advantage of the fact that many of its dishes were prepared in a central kitchen and then finished in the restaurant, turning what you could potentially see as a weakness into a Covid-era hidden strength. And it continues today: Côte At Home still offers many of the dishes you can get in their restaurants, portioned for two people, for decidedly less money.

Back when I was reviewing takeaways and meal kits, I reviewed Cote At Home. And the truth was that I didn’t know what to make of it: it was good value, and undeniably polished, and somehow occupied a completely new genre that wasn’t takeaway, wasn’t meal kits, wasn’t eating in restaurants and wasn’t ready meals. What on earth was it, then? I’m still not entirely sure.

But I can’t help feeling that Côte At Home, although it may have saved the chain from going under, slightly changed the way I thought about the restaurant. Because if many of Côte’s dishes were just glorified ready meals you could cook at home, was there still a point to going to the restaurant to eat them there, spending more money in the process? And if that was the case three years ago when the shockwaves from the pandemic started to subside, wasn’t it even more the case now, when eating out is more and more of a luxury?

I didn’t know the answers, and it felt like a return to Côte might provide them. Besides, it was a Friday night at the end of an incredibly long week at work, and I figured I’d earned a good meal, a catch up with a good friend and at least a bottle of wine, and I was hoping for an enjoyable evening irrespective of whether my visit also solved those bigger, thornier questions. After all, nobody can dissect stuff for its deeper meaning 24/7. Not even me.

I always forget how nice Côte’s dining room is. You could be forgiven, eating at one of its former neighbours – Brown’s, or TGI Friday – for thinking that these deep, largely windowless rooms are uniformly unlovely spaces. But Côte’s has always been both a luxe and comforting spot. The tables at the front, that catch the daylight when there is some, are great if you’re having brunch or lunch.

But the rest is equally agreeable once the sun’s gone down. It has a certain je ne sais quoi, there’s something about its banquettes, bentwood chairs, booths and clever lighting that makes it feel like a little oasis amid the Oracle Riverside’s brashness and bluster. I don’t think the room has changed in the ten plus years that I’ve been going there. It’s never needed to.

Graeme was already at a table when we got there, but otherwise the restaurant was close to empty.

“It’s worrying, isn’t it?” he said. “When I went past the burger place I thought it was closed, and even Nando’s was dead. Nando’s!”

“I guess January’s a very long month, and it’s the weekend before payday for most people.”

“I’m so glad we picked Côte though. Wine, meat and cheese – all the main food groups.”

We ordered a drink and began catching up while I tried to work out which of the items on the menu were least likely to have been produced in a central kitchen. I was looking forward to a cider – Côte always stocked proper, old-school Breton cidre – so I was disappointed to see that they’d switched to a brand called, of all things, “Sassy”. I had a beer instead.

If I’d looked at their website, which says that ‘SASSY brings a naughty nature to the world of Cider and sets out to premiumise this wonderful drink,’ with ‘one foot in the traditions of Normandy and the other striding towards the future of cider’ it would have made me doubly unlikely to try it. Apparently it’s “inspired by the cider served at Château de Sassy” which is, to my astonishment, a real place. Unlike premiumise, which is absolutely not a real verb.

The menu at Côte hasn’t changed significantly in over a decade, which again I find oddly comforting. Not for them attempts to modernise, introduce fusion flavours, or provide low calorie options. Prices are definitely higher than they used to be, which mainly signifies that it’s 2025: starters are between seven quid and a tenner, the mains approach the twenty pound mark but are careful, for the most part, not to overstep that.

All that said, Côte’s prix fixe is available all evening on weekdays, which I’m not sure was always the case. At eighteen pounds for two courses or twenty-two pounds for three, it’s roughly the price that LSB’s set menu used to be back in the day, another barometer of how eating out has got more costly in recent years. Côte was also offering some Alpine specials, a range of small plates which sorely tempted Graeme – especially the tartiflette, combining the holy trinity of spuds, bacon and cheese.

I was impressed by how resolutely French the wine list was. With the exception, of port, you won’t find a single wine on it from any other country. The one concession to modishness was a solitary orange wine, which seems also to be an Alpine special. Graeme gave to job of choosing to me and I was delighted to see a Alsatian producer on there, Trimbach, that I liked. I’ve always had their whites before, but their pinot noir was a real treat, with plenty of depth. At thirty-seven pounds, it was something like twice the retail value, a relative bargain.

People started trickling in and taking up tables as we had those beautiful first sips and carried on setting the world to rights. Graeme told me that the last time he’d been to Côte was something like a couple of years ago for his daughter’s eighteenth birthday, and I told him that I too had been here last for a family event.

“But that’s the thing about Côte” said Graeme. “I’ve been here for family events and with a big group of friends, or just with Amy, and it’s really, really good for all of them.”

I thought about it and I realised that it was true for me too. I’d been here with big groups and small groups, with a partner or on my own. I’d descended on it with a gang for a pre-beer festival brunch, back when Reading had a beer festival, and I’d taken up a sunlit table outside with the prix fixe, a bottle of cidre and a good book, back in the days when I lived in the centre and had a spouse who was overseas with work. It was hard, really, to think of an occasion which I hadn’t marked at Côte.

“Back in the early days of the blog when I first started doing features I did one about the best place for al fresco dining, and another about the best place for solo dining. And Côte ended up on both of them. Actually, with pretty much any feature I wrote – al fresco, solo, pre-theatre – it was hard not to pick Côte.”

This was the point when I began to worry. Because the review I really didn’t want to write was the one where the overarching narrative was this: Reading’s favourite chain used to be Côte, but then Honest and Pho came to town and everything changed. What we wanted from a chain became different, and Côte got sadder and sadder, a shadow of its former self, all on its own on the Oracle Riverside as each of its neighbours gradually gave up the ghost.

Don’t get me wrong, I still would have written that review if it had turned out to be that kind of meal. But my relief began when the starters arrived, and gradually became replaced with something else – if not euphoria, then definitely delight. I’m sorry if that removes the element of suspense, but I didn’t feel like leaving you hanging. And besides, I know a lot of you scroll down and look at the rating at the bottom first anyway, don’t you?

Graeme was set on the tartiflette from the moment he saw it on the menu, and it didn’t disappoint him. Côte’s menu says that its Alpine specials are small plates, but there was nothing small about this. It was an enormous bowl, filled with a brick of potatoes, cheese, onions and bacon and looking at it I was simultaneously sad I hadn’t ordered it and worried about how far I’d have made it through the meal if I had.

That said, the forkful I tried was excellent.Everything was how you wanted it to be, from firm, almost waxy potatoes to the liberal quantities of Comte and Tomme de Savoie in the mix. Now, I’m always a bit dubious about people who refer to a single dish, especially a starter, as a “meal in itself”. Partly because I’ve never felt that way about any single dish, and partly because I feel it lacks ambition. But if you were ever going to say that about something that was supposed to be a starter, you’d say it about this.

“And the bacon is amazing” said Graeme. “Really smoky.”

I had chosen an old favourite of mine, the calamari, mindful that I wanted at least one thing you couldn’t eat from the Côte At Home menu. This is a dish I feel like I’ve ordered a lot in recent months and often, at the likes of Maidenhead’s Storia or Reading’s The Cellar, my main reaction to it has been relief that it wasn’t as bad as calamari can sometimes be. And when these arrived I wondered whether I’d be talking in those terms again – they seemed too big, too regular and homogeneous to be anything more than adequate.

And then I tasted them, and I felt bad about doubting Côte. Because they were far and away the best calamari I’ve had in a long time, belying their unassuming appearance. They were properly tender, no rubberiness whatsoever, cooked so the coating adhered, a real joy to eat and dip in what was apparently Provençal mayonnaise. Fair play to them for not pairing it with aioli like literally everybody else, but I seem to remember that Côte used to serve them with tartare sauce, which I always liked.

Graeme smiled, as did I. Any fears I had appeared to be unfounded: we were still in safe hands. And I wondered what was going on here – I must have had Côte’s calamari many times over the years, so was it that it had improved, or had I forgotten that it had always been this good?

Although the menu is extensive, Graeme had warned me in advance that it was pretty narrow for him, as far as main courses were concerned (“I only ever order the beef bourguignon or the Breton chicken”). That gave me a free hand, but I saw duck confit on the menu and I always find that hard to resist. Virtually impossible on a chilly winter evening miles from your last payday, so my choice was made.

When it arrived, a well-paced half hour or so after our starters, it was good but still the only misstep of the meal. The duck itself was beautiful – duck confit is one of my favourite things in the world (I ate it on my wedding day, after all) and I’ll never understand why more restaurants and pubs don’t offer it. And I liked the red cabbage it was served on: it probably wouldn’t ever have been my choice of accompaniment, but it went just fine. “It looks a bit forlorn, doesn’t it?” said Graeme, and he had a point, but that’s because the potato gratin came separately in a little cast iron casserole. It was a bit like a Tesco Value version of the tartiflette, but I liked it all the same.

But where this fell down was those plain weird orange segments that felt like they’d escaped from a tin. The menu talks about the whole thing being served with a bitter orange sauce, but there wasn’t a drop of sauce to be seen. Three bits of citrus fruit is no substitute for a sauce. It’s the rail replacement bus of sauces. It was irksome, but I still loved the duck.

Graeme, true to form, chose the bourguignon and, as with the tartiflette, I think he picked not only the thing that was perfect for him but the dish that was perfect for the occasion. A single slab of beef, an enormo-quenelle of mash and a sea of rich sauce, the kind of dish that keeps winter properly at bay. I didn’t try a forkful of this, but Graeme had no regrets about his choice.

It did mean that in one evening Graeme probably ate more potato than most people get in a week, but I imagine that suited him just fine. The man’s from Middlesbrough, for goodness’ sake, and he hasn’t lost the accent: so much so, in fact, that when he told me that last time he’d been to Côte I honestly thought he’d said the last time I went to court, which raised all sorts of interesting questions. Graham has not, as far as I know, been in court.

“It’s mental” said Graeme. “This is a main course, and I swear it’s about the same size as my tartiflette was.”

Graeme’s spud consumption was not helped by the fact that both of us saw confit potatoes on the menu as a side order and decided we needed to have some. I was wondering whether this would be anything like the legendary potatoes at Quality Chop House, much in vogue in recent years, and I made the mistake of describing them to Graeme, which meant that anything which turned up could only disappoint.

And they slightly did: there was no layering or pressing involved. Instead you got four cuboids of potato, nicely fried and golden, with a pot of serviceable béarnaise for dipping. They were like hash browns for Guardian readers, which meant that I rather liked them. Just over a fiver for these, and I should add that Graeme’s and my mains were the two most expensive on the menu. But crucially, nothing felt like bad value.

You could tell we were having a good time, because we threw caution to the wind when it came to dessert. They had a few traditional options on there – a Paris-Brest, or a crème caramel – although they also attracted Graeme’s ire with an piste macaron (“I’m not eating anything with yuzu in it”, he said). But perhaps more interesting was Côte’s cheese selection.

I remember back when I ate at Côte pre-pandemic and the cheese selection was a bit of an afterthought, three or four of them to choose from, which meant that I almost never had it. But nowadays Côte has really pushed the bâteau out when it comes to fromage – an impressive ten to choose from, all French, with the option to assemble a cheeseboard for sharing.

We did exactly that, and carried away by just how enjoyable Côte was we also ordered a bottle of dessert wine to go with it, a muscat from the Languedoc. I’d had it before, so I thought it was probably a banker but even so, it was so straw-coloured that I was relieved when it turned out to be just the thing, sweet and zippy. Fearing for the worst and ending up delighted seemed to be the theme of the evening, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

I won’t list all the cheeses, because Côte’s website does that, but you have a great range of soft and hard, of blue and goat, and it’s hard to go wrong. We ended up choosing eight of the ten, so we got an excellent selection. Highlights for me included both of the blues – we got Roquefort and Fourme d’Ambert, and our otherwise impeccable server didn’t tell us which was which – and the Delice de Bourgogne. I love a triple cream cheese, and always order one if spot it on a menu. It also gave me an opportunity to enlighten Graeme about one of my favourite life hacks, namely that a slab of triple cream cheese atop a ginger biscuit knocks the socks off many cheesecakes.

It also meant we got to enjoy a few slices of Côte’s baguette, which – at the risk of repetition – was also as good as I remembered. When my blog celebrated its first birthday, I wrote a list of the ten best things I’d eaten in that first year. Côte’s baguette made the list: like I said, Côte always seemed to nab a space on my lists.

“It’s funny, looking at that cheese down there and thinking about how much was on my cheeseboard over Christmas” said Graeme.

“I know what you mean. This is probably how much cheese you’re meant to have.”

All that cost seventeen pounds, which to me felt like a very reasonable thing for two people to share. By this point a couple of very companionable hours had passed, and all the nagging fears had been dispelled. Côte was doing very nicely on the last Friday before payday on the longest month of the year, and people were at most of the tables – a big group just behind me, the booths in front of me all occupied with people celebrating the weekend.

“It’s still a really good restaurant, isn’t it?” I said to Graeme as we contemplated getting the bill.

“Such a good restaurant.”

Our bill came to one hundred and seventy pounds, including tip. Now, I know that isn’t cheap – and by way of illustration, three courses, a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses of dessert wine would set you back roughly half that when I reviewed Côte eleven years ago. But we did go for it, and it is 2025, and you could eat there more cheaply if you wanted to. I know some people will see that number and just think it’s too expensive, but nowadays everything is. I had a lovely meal, I had brilliant company, I was in a gorgeous room looked after by very good, very hard-working people and I strongly believe that the people who make that happen should be recompensed for that.

I started this review wondering if Côte’s lockdown diversification had somehow cheapened what they do. But actually, I should have paid more attention – specifically to my own review of Côte At Home, where I said that although the food was nice at home, something was missing. And eating here again, after too long, I understood that. Because Côte truly fulfils the promise that many nationwide restaurants make but so few keep, and a meal here reminds you that restaurants are never just about the food.

I can’t tell you how glad I am that this review is that kind of review, and that I can remind myself, if not any of you, that Côte is a little special, in its way. This felt like the latest in a long chain of happy evenings in a restaurant for which I feel a surprising amount of affection.

And the truth is that Côte’s fate is far from certain: as I said earlier, its neighbours on either side of the canal have gradually turned out the lights and shut the doors as their leases have come up, conscious that the Oracle is going to be redeveloped and much of it turned into flats. That might well happen to Côte before too long.

It’s a good argument for eating there while we can. Nice though they are, it would be sad to have to travel to Newbury or Wokingham to be reminded of this place.

Côte – 8.0
9 The Riverside, The Oracle, Reading, RG1 2AG
0118 9591180

https://www.cote.co.uk/restaurant/reading

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Restaurant review: Good Old Days Hong Kong Ltd

On January 24, 2025January 25, 2025 By ediblereadingIn Reviews2 Comments

If I asked most Reading residents to name Reading’s most famous restaurant, the chances are the majority of them would say either Kungfu Kitchen or Clay’s Kitchen. And that makes sense because those two, the Lennon and McCartney of Reading’s food scene, are the ones that have broken out into the national consciousness, as much as Reading ever does. If we had a round of Reading restaurants on Family Fortunes, asked 100 people to name a restaurant in Reading, those two would top the leaderboard. God knows what else would be on there – Sweeney Todd, probably, and a rogue vote for Munchees.

But that would only happen if you asked Reading residents, and is indicative of the bubble we live in. Because, last year at any rate, the most nationally known restaurant in Reading was Good Old Days Hong Kong Ltd, a nondescript Cantonese restaurant just the other side of Reading Bridge. And the reason for that is that last February it was reviewed in the Observer by journalist, jazz musician, TV show judge, relentless self-publicist and life president of the Jay Rayner Appreciation Society, Mr Jason Rayner.

He raved about the place, and explained that the chef used to cook at the Hong Kong Jockey Club, and Hong Kong’s Four Seasons Hotel. “It feels like finding a senior chef from the Ritz… doing their own thing in your local caff” he declaimed. The unspoken implication was that this was almost as extraordinary as finding the U.K.’s greatest restaurant reviewer doing his own thing in a Chinese restaurant most Reading folk had never heard of, slumming it for the greater good. Lucky us!

Now, don’t be fooled into thinking Rayner had come to Reading specifically to review Good Old Days. He was in Reading recording an episode of his Radio 4 series, and I suspect he decided to kill two birds with one stone before heading back to London: after all, if there’s one thing people like to moan about below the line on his reviews, it’s how many of them are of London restaurants.

That roving Radio 4 series must be a positive boon, as it gives Rayner an excuse to visit parts of the country he otherwise wouldn’t touch with a barge pole. And I think we can include Reading as one of those, given that he described Caversham as “Reading’s Latin Quarter, as nobody has ever called it”. Such a charmer. But anyway, it was close enough to the station and he had a friend who recommended it, so Good Old Days it was, rather than one of Reading’s more high profile restaurants.

And he did seem to enjoy it, sort of. He said that “if… you happen to live nearby, get the food to go. Because in truth Good Old Days is a takeaway that just happens to have a few tables.” And that’s the funny thing about Rayner’s review – it didn’t make me fall over myself to visit. And I don’t think it galvanised Reading either, because I still know relatively few people who have had a takeaway from Good Old Days and fewer still who have eaten in there. The ones who have, that I’ve spoken to, have told me that it was “nice”, or words to that effect. I’ve never had an oh my god, you really must go – can I come?

Especially that last bit. Despite it being on my to do list for almost a year, every time I mention it to someone in terms of joining me there on duty they ask if we can go somewhere else instead; people just didn’t seem to fancy the place. In that respect, Rayner’s review is a remarkable one – if you can praise food and still leave people lukewarm about going to a restaurant you definitely have some kind of skill, albeit not one most restaurant reviewers would want to develop.

Very few of the comments on the Observer review were from people in Reading, and what ones there were were evenly split between Don’t give the secret away and We went there on your recommendation and it was awful. So it looked like there was a gap in the market for a reliable review of Good Old Days, and I was happy to fill it.

Gladly, at the start of this year I finally found an accomplice for my review. It was Liz, Reading’s elite level bellringer – her words, not mine – last seen exploring The Cellar with me the night Trump won re-election and the world turned to (even more) shit. I’m beginning to think Liz might be a lucky charm as I’m yet to have a bad meal with her on duty, so I made my way to Good Old Days at the appointed time with high hopes.

I should add, because unlike broadsheet critics I like to offer some practical help, that you can book online through their website, although it’s a little convoluted and you’re never sure it’s actually worked. You then get an email and texts which tell you that if you want to change your booking you have to call their mobile number, because you can’t amend it online. On the Wednesday night when we went, there was one other table with diners, who left shortly after I arrived at seven, and one other table seated that evening. So you may be able to turn up on spec: for some reason the Observer review doesn’t seem to have precipitated a tidal wave of demand.

It is indeed a very basic space, if not necessarily an inhospitable one. With just over a dozen covers, and most of the tables seating four people, it’s compact and resolutely unfancy. The walls were a mixture of municipal white tiling and faux wood panelling with just a few flashes of identity – a handful of framed pictures of dishes on one wall, and a framed copy of Rayner’s review on the other. It meant that he glared balefully down at us during our meal. Like the new President, it’s hard to find a photograph of Rayner where he’s smiling. Maybe he never does, or perhaps he thinks it gives him gravitas. At least the eyes didn’t follow you round the room.

I’d checked in advance and there was no alcohol licence, so I’d brought a bottle of white from home. When I asked we got two very basic tumblers, which did just fine. I was however glad that I’d also brought a corkscrew, because I wasn’t sure we’d otherwise have laid our hands on one. The menu was big – just under a hundred dishes – but somehow managed to feel compact, perhaps because they’d crammed it onto two sides of A4.

By Reading 2025 standards the prices were so reasonable that I wondered if I’d fallen through a timewarp – the vast majority of the dishes cost less than ten pounds, which meant that without an alcohol licence you could eat a lot of food for not much money. Maybe it was predominantly priced for takeaway but, not for the last time that evening, it made me think that Rayner was wrong and that this was a positive argument for bums on seats and eating close to the kitchen.

The menu leaned more Cantonese than Szechuan, so no offal and more of the dishes that, for me, bring back memories of my childhood in Woodley, of weekend treats at Hong Kong Garden in the shopping precinct coupled with the latest release from Blockbuster Video. It evoked those feelings of familiarity and wonder, because when you’re twelve these things are exotic and different, and a pancake with crispy duck is a magical world away from a Findus Crispy Pancake.

“Can you believe I’d never had Chinese food until I lived in China for a year?” said Liz. I knew she’d grown up in Cheltenham but even so, this surprised me; imagine doing it in reverse, having all the authentic stuff and then coming home to the Anglicised version.

We had plenty to natter about, and the wine was very nice, so before we got to haggling over our order we ordered some crispy dumplings with pork and vegetables. These were a neat, compact treat and they made me happy with anticipation for what was to follow – deep-fried, brittle, remarkable easy to pick up with the stainless steel chopsticks and dip in a little pot of sweet chilli sauce. Well, that’s what Liz did anyway, with her far more evolved chopstick skills: I on the other hand tended to drop mine in the sauce and then mount a cack-handed rescue mission.

We spent so long chatting while we ate our dumplings – about our respective Christmases and New Years, about the vicissitudes of Reading Buses which had made getting to the restaurant harder than it needed to be – that it took quite a while before we got down to the serious business of choosing our order. And that’s when it became apparent that Liz and I had certain philosophical differences when it came to food.

Getting to know someone is always a gradual thing; you try to be your best self and promote the version of you that you’d like to be all the time. And then, over successive meetings, you slowly reveal your true nature, if only because it’s too hard not to. What I’ve discovered, going on duty with different dining companions, is that this also happens in restaurants.

On my first meal with Liz we went to The Coriander Club, where we shared a couple of starters but then had our own personal mains. For the follow up we went to The Cellar, very much a starters/mains/desserts model. So it was only on this third meal, at a place where we would order and share several dishes, that I realised I had unwittingly gone to dinner with someone who regarded a plate of broccoli as a feature attraction.

“I have to have the broccoli with garlic sauce” said Liz. And actually, that made sense – this was a woman who had snuck aubergine, somehow, into both of our previous visits to restaurants. I mentally ticked off at least one of the carnivorous delights I’d spotted on the menu.

“And… how do you feel about tofu?”

“Well, it’s not my favourite. I like Jo’s salt and pepper tofu at Kungfu Kitchen, but that’s probably as far as it goes.”

I looked on the menu, which had a very similar dish. Would Liz go for it?

“I’d really like the mapo tofu, if you don’t mind. I have such fond memories of it from China.”

The irony is that I know, rationally, that this is good for me. Because going for dinner with people who eat the same stuff as you is like recruiting in your image – it makes the world very homogeneous, and I’m occasionally conscious that I should introduce more variety into the things I order when I’m reviewing restaurants. I also know that probably, a proportion of you might be reading this and thinking at last, he’s actually going to talk about the kind of things I like. So I accepted my part vegetarian, part-tofu driven meal with good grace. Besides, it had been Liz’s birthday the day before, so I figured she was entitled to call the shots.

I did insist on sweet and sour chicken, though, which I suspect was to Liz what broccoli in garlic sauce would be to me. We placed our order, with a beef and black bean ho fun thrown in, and our server wandered off with the order, came back, and asked me to confirm it. Which I did, absolutely certain that they had captured everything we’d ordered.

The first dishes to arrive were the ones Liz had been craving. I don’t know whether it was the lighting, or the cooking, or the slightly recherché lino on the tables, but everything seemed to have an almost hypersaturated, Martin Parr feel about it. That definitely showed in the broccoli – enormous emerald-green florets, really only just cooked, glazed in a thickened, pungent sauce which coated every irregularity and lurked in a pool at the bottom of the bowl. Dragging a floret through the sauce and eating it I realised that, although I had to unhook my jaw, I was enjoying myself against my better judgement. Liz was beaming.

“This is exactly how I wanted it to be.”

The tofu, on the other hand – I’m not sure you’ll ever get a glowing writeup of a tofu dish from me, and this was not the occasion to change that habit of a lifetime. I’m yet to find anything with tofu in it that isn’t all wobble and no flavour, and although I know people talk about mapo tofu in glowing terms I still don’t understand why. You couldn’t fault the generosity, though. This dish was huge, in the way that things you have to wade through, like bad novels or to do lists at work, so often are.

“This isn’t quite as I expected” said Liz. “It should be much redder, and much hotter.”

And I got that – instead it was a sort of glossy ruddy-brown. And although there was minced pork in it, and little bits of mushroom, nothing really made its presence felt. And yet, as we worked through it I found it exerted a strange kind of hypnotic power. I liked it more and more, appreciated its subtleties more and more.

I remember when I reviewed The Imperial Kitchen there was a suggestion from some people that I just hadn’t “got” Cantonese food, that I had expected the crash-bang-wallop flavours of, say, Kungfu Kitchen and judged it harshly when they never turned up. Well, this may count as personal growth but maybe, just maybe, there’s something to that. I would never have ordered this dish in a million years, but I was perhaps quietly pleased that somebody had.

Now, having said all that I can wax lyrical about the dish I insisted on, because Good Old Days’ sweet and sour chicken made me very happy indeed. It’s hard to explain why it was so good, but I shall try nonetheless.

My memories of this dish, my good ones anyway, are all fuelled entirely by nostalgia. And nostalgia is wonderful, but these things only really taste amazing in the past, in your mind, inextricably linked to who you were back then. If you eat a Wagon Wheel now of course you’ll say they’ve shrunk, which they have, but you’ll also think they’re rubbish. Nice N’ Spicy NikNaks, these days, are neither nice nor spicy. Maybe they never were, but when I was sixteen I thought they were. I thought they were the shit.

Late last year I had a Chinese takeaway from a place near me and I chose sweet and sour chicken. And it was dreadful. All sweet, no sour, chicken smothered in jam and pineapple, a gloopy saccharine monstrosity. And Good Old Days’ rendition was completely unlike that. Beautifully coated chicken – thigh, not breast, in a sauce which looked the same as that but had subtlety and nuance, peppers with crunch, pineapple a welcome surprise.

But the thing is, if I had to guess, the sweet and sour chicken I had from that takeaway in December was probably exactly like the stuff I’d loved as a teenager at suburban Hong Kong Garden. Whereas that dish at Good Old Days tasted how I’d wanted to remember it tasting, even though it probably never had. I’d never eaten the real deal, and Good Old Days served the real deal. The difference wasn’t colossal, and yet it was everything.

I’m also delighted to confirm that this dish had the same effect on Liz that her sodding tofu and broccoli had on me. She liked it in the way she hadn’t expected to, and I was simultaneously delighted to have gained a convert and disappointed that I couldn’t scoff the lot myself. As we ate dishes the other had picked and talked about TV (she loved Taskmaster, I’ve never watched it, I am hooked on The Traitors, she hasn’t seen a minute) I wondered if we were a very middle-class take on the Guardian’s “Dining Across The Divide” feature.

I’d love to tell you about the beef and black bean ho fun, but despite ordering and checking, it wasn’t what we got. First we discovered that they’d brought us a dish that was all beef and no noodles, then we discovered that it wasn’t black bean but black pepper. sauce

I was so taken aback that I didn’t get a photo, and so English that I didn’t say anything about it. But that’s me in general – on a recent holiday we swapped accommodation partway through because we really didn’t like our B&B, but rather than have it out with the owner we waited until he was out, got our luggage, legged it to another hotel and then sent him a long WhatsApp message apologising. It was excruciating; I told people at work that I’d accidentally done an escape room.

Anyway, that’s a round the houses way of saying we ate our beef in black pepper sauce and bloody liked it, because I’m not the strident type. And, again, it had the same subtle potency as Good Old Days’ other dishes – the sauce had a slow and steady depth, where I started out thinking “I wish this was black bean sauce” and ended up thinking “isn’t it nice to try something different?” I wasn’t so convinced by the texture of the beef – more sponge than fibre – but it was still a worthwhile discovery.

It also meant that, because our meal would otherwise have been carb free, we ordered some egg fried rice. Our meal badly needed that to bring it together, and I adored Good Old Days’ egg fried rice – fresh as you like, packed with golden egg and spring onion, a simple restorative pleasure. As with everything else you might associate with takeaway food, this showed that an elevated version did exist.

Again, it made me think that Jay Rayner was wrong – why have something glorious like this and pack it in a foil container, walk home with it or get someone to bring it to your house on a moped? This was how it should be eaten, there and then.

From that point onwards our meal was a companionable delight, spooning the rice into our bowls, deciding which of our mains to top it with and repeating until nearly everything was gone. We gave a thoroughly decent account of ourselves and I thought that this was Good Old Days’ quiet power, that the meal was so much more than the sum of its parts. Taken alone, any dish was decent, combined they made for something special – all humility, no boastfulness.

By the time we’d stopped eating and were ready to leave, a couple of the staff were having their post service meal at the table behind me, and the place was serene. I headed to the Siberian loo out back – disused shower in the corner, banana-shaped wet floor sign blocking it off – and on my way back I saw a table behind the counter with kids at it. We’d kept this family business waiting long enough for the evening to end, so we settled up. All in all, it cost fifty pounds, including tip.

On the walk back across Reading Bridge, Liz and I compared notes. She loved the place, would have rated it in the 9s, wanted to go back with a bigger group. I was more circumspect, thinking that this was one I’d need to reflect on. And as I have, I’ve decided that I liked Good Old Days more than I expected, that something about it transcended the individual dishes, that even when they weren’t quite my thing they deserved respect. There was something intangible about it which I very much liked.

Does that mean it made sense that, just over a year ago, it surprised almost everybody in Reading by finding itself in a national Sunday newspaper? Honestly, no. And honestly, I’m sure Good Old Days was as surprised by that as anybody else. Is Good Old Days Reading’s best restaurant, or Reading’s best Chinese restaurant? Probably not, although that’s not the be-all and end-all. But is it a strangely lovely thing that because a man with a weekly national newspaper column happened to be in Reading recording a radio programme and he decided, maybe perversely, to try a complete curveball Good Old Days found itself known about by thousands of people? Yes, actually. It is.

My face will never glower from the wall of a restaurant, on the byline of a printed, framed review. That’s not my fate. But for what it’s worth, I liked Good Old Days too.

Good Old Days Hong Kong Ltd. – 8.2
66 George Street, Reading, RG4 8DH
07840 180080

https://goodolddayshongkongltd.com

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Feature: The 2024 Edible Reading Awards

On December 27, 2024September 7, 2025 By ediblereadingIn Features, Uncategorized4 Comments

Last year, I got Covid at the start of December and the rest of the month was a bit of a write-off, and although I enjoyed writing about the best restaurants of the year – who wouldn’t? – the experience was dulled by my still hanging out of my arse. It was like going round the supermarket when you’re really not hungry. This year has been another isolated Christmas at home, because Zoë came down with the flu just before Christmas Eve. So it’s been just the two of us, eating everything we’ve stocked up in the fridge, missing out on a plethora of family celebrations. On the plus side, we managed to watch the Gavin and Stacey finale: every cloud.

I’m still waiting to contract flu myself, and fully expect that it will turn up in time to torpedo New Year, or the annual trip to Bruges, But in the meantime I’ve just been sitting a fair distance from my poorly wife and sleeping with the window cracked open, mainlining chocolate and looking enviously at everybody’s lavish celebrations on Christmas Day. Everybody’s tables were groaning with roasted meat and bronzed spuds, and everyone looked so happy.

On Christmas Day afternoon as Zoë slept upstairs I watched The Holdovers and felt a real affinity for anybody else feeling alone on the big day. I put something on Threads to that effect: nobody responded to it, so I made another cup of tea and reached for more chocolate.

Anyway, all that means that writing up my annual awards this year is more like going round the supermarket when you’re fucking ravenous and everything looks good. Because I’ve eaten so well this year, in Reading and elsewhere in the U.K., at home and abroad. That makes narrowing things down fun but agonising, involves running through a list of all the brilliant things you’ve eaten but may not get to sample again.

It was after all the year I gave out two of my highest ever ratings in Reading (and one of my lowest), and a handful of very high ratings elsewhere, mostly in London, although a rare 9.0 came from elsewhere in England.

It was also a year of confounded expectations, where the places you expected to be good were mediocre or middling and some of the best meals I had were from unsung, hype-free places. I like that a lot, to be honest. The day you can guess a rating for a review before you even read the thing is the day that you’re doing something that could be replaced by AI – although, as food writer Andy Lynes discovered this year, that day may come sooner than you think.

So yes, as interesting a year in food as I’ve had in all my time writing this blog, and one with almost 50% more reviews than the previous year. That makes this year’s awards trickier in many respects, but also the shape of my life – getting married, moving house – has changed the places I eat and drink at regularly.

There may come a time when I’m just not qualified to judge this kind of thing any more, if I ever was, so perhaps this is better read as a list of my absolute favourites rather than some kind of weird tablets of stone declaring Reading’s best restaurants. Actually, put like that it should always have been read that way, so let’s hope it has been.

A lot of the great food I’ve eaten this year has been outside Reading and in the past I’ve limited the awards to Reading dishes, with two separate categories for the best non-Reading restaurants, in Berkshire and further afield. I’ve done that again this year, but it’s getting increasingly hard to take that approach. Because eating outside Reading is a salutary reminder that our town is falling behind the rising bar elsewhere: dishes like Quality Chop House’s cod roe with salt and vinegar doughnuts, Kolae’s biryani rice crackers or Lucky Lychee’s Marmite chicken would comfortably win hands down against most of their Reading rivals.

Maybe next year I’ll do things differently, in more ways than one. But until then, let’s celebrate the best of this year – and let me take the opportunity to wish you a very Happy New Year into the bargain. Last year I was at Double-Barrelled with my in-laws enjoying a very lively 90s party, this year I will be relaxing on the sofa watching something good with, hopefully, a bottle of something even better. But however you celebrate I hope you have a fantastic time, and that 2025 brings you everything you hope for.

STARTER OF THE YEAR: Chicken satay, The Moderation

One of Reading’s great dishes, I’m disappointed that it took me so long to realise the genius of the Moderation’s chicken satay and I ate it several times this year – exactly as many times, in fact, as I went to the Moderation. It was nowhere near as good when I first visited the Mod on duty, eleven years ago, but in that time they have got it as close to perfection as possible.

It makes you realise how disappointing this dish is elsewhere when you order it at the Moderation. Elsewhere, the chicken is worryingly uniform and regular, just a beige vehicle for peanut sauce. At the Moderation it’s gorgeous stuff with marination and a lick of char. And the peanut sauce isn’t just hot spicy Sun-Pat, it’s a beautiful and brooding thing with a little heat, even more gloriously chunky than I am. The attention to detail here is spot-on, and that even extends to the cup of lettuce, generously filled with little pickles.

In a year full of excellent starters, honourable mentions go to the mutton fry at Chilis, one of many great small plates offered by that restaurant, and the deliciously inventive kaleji poppers at Calcot’s Coriander Club.

CHAIN OF THE YEAR: Honest Burgers

Last year’s winners win it again this year because they remain the preeminent chain restaurant in town. In a year when we lost the likes of Brown’s and TGI Friday, more because of redevelopment than poor takings, Honest proved that you can still pack in diners by being a reliable, known quantity and not making many mistakes. It’s been a regular stop off for me in town when I get in on the train after a day at work, am eating on my own and want to take no risks.

That doesn’t make Honest sound exciting, because exciting it isn’t, but that’s no insult because I don’t think that’s what a successful chain in 2024 wants to be in the slightest. Although that said, they have widened their appeal even further to the likes of me by putting Two Flints’ excellent Santiago on tap and finally, in the Reading branch at least, offering chicken tenders.

The best illustration I can find of why Honest Burgers has won this award is this: I ate there just before Christmas, on my own, and I decided to try their Christmas burger with some tenders on the side. The burger was a little indifferent – it could have been hotter and the puck of deep fried camembert seemed to have leaked its molten contents, leaving just a crispy shell. The tenders were also warm rather than piping hot. The chips, all that said, were as good as they’ve ever been.

By Honest standards it was probably a 6 out of 10, far from the best Honest I’ve had over the years. And it was still better than most meals I could have had at any other chain restaurant in town.

Honourable mentions go to Pho, the eternal runner-up and itself a very reliable restaurant, and Zia Lucia, which may not be amazing but is perfectly serviceable and has truly excellent service. Next year I will do my best to try them both out, even when I’m just in the mood to go back to Honest.

LUNCH VENUE OF THE YEAR: DaNata Coffee & Co

Not living near the centre, and having a partner who no longer works in the town centre, has definitely narrowed my lunch experiences this year, so in the second half of the year that meant most of my lunches happened at weekends. Even so it was a happy Sunday over the summer when I wandered down the Oxford Road, and DeNata turned out to be a little glimmer of Portuguese paradise.

Everything I had was great, especially the salt cod pasteis and the feature attraction, a floury, soggy, spectacular bifana. Oh, and the pasteis de nata. So essentially everything I had was great, and when I go back next year I plan to make inroads into the rest of the menu to see if it makes me miss Lisbon even less. West Reading residents are a fortunate bunch.

Honourable mentions go to two places. One is Tasty Greek Souvlaki, where a mixed gyros remains another of Reading’s most satisfying sandwiches, and the other is Blue Collar Corner. It can be quite vendor dependent but when it has someone decent there, like recent guest spots The Burger Society and Fornoza, it’s a wonderful spot for a weekend indulgence.

OUT OF TOWN RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR (BERKSHIRE): U. Bakery, Crowthorne

I ate out less in Berkshire than usual this year, and the field was less packed than it could have been because both my on duty visits to Maidenhead this year were so underwhelming. But in any year, in any field, U. Bakery would have been a very worthy winner. You could say it’s just a cafe, or just a bakery, but that would be completely missing what a great job owner Uri Zilberman has done in the two years since opening his Crowthorne venue.

Everything is so well realised – a beautifully put together spot, comfy and Scandi with excellent branding and cheery, ultra-competent staff. But all that wouldn’t mean much if the product wasn’t up to scratch and this is where U. Bakery excels. Brilliant baked goods, gorgeous and interesting sandwiches in outstanding pretzel baguettes, thoroughly acceptable coffee. Why Reading doesn’t have somewhere like this and has to slum it with GAIL’s – their pompous capitalisation, not mine – is a mystery. And U. Bakery’s Instagram is not only a great advertisement for what they do, but also a devilishly delicious virtual shop window.

Only one honourable mention in this category – Maidenhead must try harder – which is for the Bell at Waltham St Lawrence. My revisit this year was one of my happiest on duty meals in 2024, and I was delighted to find them still firing on all cylinders.

MAIN COURSE OF THE YEAR: Short rib green curry, The Moderation

I discovered this dish on a visit to the Moderation last month with my old friend Dave: he was my plus one when I reviewed the Mod earlier in the year and when he came to visit me again he picked it for lunch because he wanted to eat their nasi goreng again. I decided to take a punt on something new on the menu – possibly to atone for having the chicken satay and crispy squid yet again – so I thought I’d give the short rib Thai green curry a chance.

I couldn’t possibly have anticipated just how good it was. A giant slab of beef, slipping off the bone and breaking into strands, in a superlative green curry sauce, peppered with green tomato and nutty peas, it was possibly my biggest surprise of the year. I have thought about it many times since. I know that this was the year I reviewed Kolae, in Borough Market, the Thai restaurant raved about by every big nob in the food media. But on a dish against dish basis, I’m not sure I ate anything there I preferred to this number.

This was a year packed with runners-up, any of which could conceivably have won this award. Even narrowing it down to two honourable mentions is positively invidious, but since I must I should give a nod to The Cellar’s exemplary chicken Milanese and Clay’s Kitchen’s yakhni pulao, possibly the most complete plate of food on a menu shimmering with highlights.

CAFÉ OF THE YEAR: Coffee Under Pressure

A year where we lost Workhouse was a tough year, and many of us found we had to make new rituals for our caffeination. But it was less challenging for me because I have always loved C.U.P. on Blagrave Street, and this was the year it took pole position in my affections. Sitting up at the window became a little ritual – bleary eyed on a weekday morning with a latter before taking my commuter train to work, relaxed with a mocha at weekends as a special treat.

This is also the year I got married, and the place I had my last coffee as a nervous bridegroom on a Friday afternoon, my first coffee as a newlywed the following morning. If you’d asked me on New Year’s Day if I could imagine a town without Workhouse in the centre, I’d have said absolutely not. But after nine months in a Workhouse free town I’ve got my head around it. If C.U.P. shut, though, I would be devastated.

Honourable mentions go to Compound Coffee – who I fear for, given the ongoing rumours about the viability of the Biscuit Factory which houses them – and Filter Coffee, who are thoroughly lovely. It’s a pity the latter has given up what little seating it had, mind you.

OUT OF TOWN RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR (OUTSIDE BERKSHIRE): Lucky Lychee, Winchester

My find of this year, and easily as good as my find of any other year, Lucky Lychee does Malaysian food in a pub in Winchester and I am still completely at a loss as to why it has so far escaped the notice of national restaurant critics. It is absolutely extraordinary, the kind of spot you wish you could pick up and drop just round the corner from wherever you happen to live.

Everything I had there when I went was phenomenal – their chicken karaage, their sublime Penang pork rolls and a main course of dreams, fried chicken in a sticky honey and Marmite sauce which took the best of both and, through some magical alchemy, made it more delicious than either could possibly have been on its own. And yet I went away sad that I’d been too full to try the rendang, or a brunch roti crammed with spiced local sausage.

I know fewer people read my out of town reviews, and that they don’t always prompt people to head to the destination in question. But I’ve been so happy that a handful of readers have gone to Winchester on the basis of this review and reported back that they liked it as much as I did. Well, almost as much anyway: my old friend Dave took his wife there for brunch. “Really good” was his verdict. “It’s a nice place.” You’ll have to take my word for it that, coming from him, that’s an A minus. I loved it so much that I’m back there tomorrow for one last visit before the end of the year.

My honourable mentions in this category come both from London and much closer to home. Quality Chop House, a London institution, was almost as fantastic as everyone says it is (which is to say that it’s still pretty fantastic), and the Plough in Shiplake was classy, polished and really well executed.

SERVICE OF THE YEAR: The Coriander Club

I’ve had excellent service nearly everywhere I’ve gone on my travels this year, but I was especially impressed by the Coriander Club, where the owner simultaneously worked her socks off while charming mine off into the process.

If I ever wanted a contrast between service where people really care about you having a good time and where people aren’t really that bothered whether you do or not, you see it in the difference between going somewhere like the Coriander Club – where the owner is passionate about the place, passionate about her food and wants you to have a fantastic time – and somewhere like, say, Bombay Brothers where the service never seemed to entirely recover from the shock of having customers at all.

The Coriander Club, on the other hand, is delighted to have customers and wants to turn them into repeat customers. My experience is that they’re very good at it.

Honourable mentions in this category go to Dough Bros, whose compact but perfectly formed team gets service instinctively right, and Clay’s Kitchen, whose young and enthusiastic squad does a fantastic job making one of Reading’s biggest restaurants feel small and intimate.

DESSERT OF THE YEAR: Strawberry pavlova, The Cellar

You don’t see pavlovas much on menus these days: restaurants are much more likely to be lazy and put on Eton mess, its accident-prone sibling. But fortunately The Cellar isn’t lazy and the resulting dessert – a graceful oval of meringue, strawberries and cream, syrup and a knockout orb of basil sorbet – is so delicious that their efforts aren’t remotely wasted.

When I reviewed The Cellar, I said “I give out awards every year for Dessert Of The Year, so thank god I went to The Cellar this week or I might have been writing a post next month saying ‘or you can just pick up a bar of Cadbury’s Top Deck from the corner shop’.” It’s almost as if I knew this moment would come, and come it did.

Having said all that, a challenger turned up right at the end of the year when I thoroughly enjoyed Thames Lido’s chocolate mousse, a classic made slightly quirky with the addition of pink peppercorns. Another honourable mention goes to DeNata’s eponymous egg custard tarts – up there with Lisbon standards, if you ask me.

NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR: Dough Bros

I’ve so enjoyed watching Dough Bros taking Reading by storm this year from its little site on Northumberland Avenue, just down the road from sister business Short Back & Vibes. They cut hair there, but they don’t cut corners at Dough Bros; right from the off they’ve made exceptional pizza – with the best flour, the best tomatoes – and have quietly plugged away hoping that if they did their best, word would get out and they would achieve Dough Bros’ stated ambition. They would transcend Whitley.

Well, they have well and truly done that. They may have started the year hoping for the best, but they end it having achieved the best. It’s genuinely heartwarming to see their Instagram stories saying that they’ve sold out of bases, week night after week night, or to see their little spot, on the edge of town, packed out with pizza enthusiasts.

I don’t know what 2025 holds for Dough Bros, whether that’s expansion, or new menu items, or an alcohol license, or just them carrying on doing what they’re doing and consolidating their position. But whatever they do, I and a lot of people will be watching: it must be five years or so since I’ve seen a new Reading restaurant capture hearts and minds the way Dough Bros has. I’ve had their Honey Honey pizza – pepperoni, ricotta and hot honey – many times this year, and I have no doubt there will be more in the twelve months ahead. I count myself very lucky to live not too far away.

It’s a shame I can’t give this award to three different businesses. But DeNata Coffee & Co and The Cellar, both mentioned elsewhere in these awards, also made Reading a much better place this year, in marked contrast to the flashy, big money places that so underwhelmed in 2024.

TAKEAWAY OF THE YEAR: Gooi Nara

When I moved I had to try out other takeaway options, because I could no longer rely on food from the town centre, or from the north side of town, arriving hot or intact. In the process I had some truly dreadful experiences – some because things went cold, others because they went walkabout. My unimpressed conversations with Deliveroo customer service had a very 2021 feel about them.

I tried one of the renowned Katesgrove takeaways, Home Cooking on Highgrove Street, and I couldn’t believe how poor it was. Had Chinese takeaways changed, or had I changed? Were they bad, or had I been ruined by the hi-falutin’ stuff I was used to from Kungfu Kitchen?

As a last throw of the dice I placed an order with Gooi Nara, the Korean restaurant on Whitley Street, and I was blown away by how good it was. Gam-poong gi, crispy chicken in a hot, sticky sauce that clung to its crags and dimples. Chicken thigh in a deep, almost-sweet bulgogi sauce. Seafood pancakes and chicken dumplings, with a glorious dipping sauce of soy and sesame. All the containers with a little hole cut in the corner, so nothing steamed in its plastic casket.

I loved it so much I ordered again and again in the subsequent weeks, and it was always good, never disappointing. I even had their food on Christmas Eve: Gooi Nara’s sweet and sour chicken is a plastic tray crammed with those crispy, battered bits of chicken. The sauce – thin not gloopy, properly sweet and sharp with a really well-judged hit of vinegar – came in a separate tub, to add at the end. This is a new award, and I get it might be of limited use depending on where you live, but I was so impressed with Gooi Nara. So they get an award from me.

Honourable mentions in this category go to Dough Bros – their pizzas travel brilliantly, although they might be too massive for you to revive them in your oven – and You Me Sushi. Sushi is a great thing to order for delivery because it travels so well, and I’ve rather fallen in love with You Me Sushi’s stuff this year.

RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR: The Moderation

Surprised? Me too.

But really, The Moderation has given me so much joy this year, on every visit I’ve paid to it. Whether that was on duty with my old friend Dave at the beginning of spring, when I returned for a post work drink and to take advantage of their street food special on Wednesdays, the time I went back with Zoë because she read the review and felt aggrieved at missing out, or when I went back with Dave around the end of the year.

Every visit I’ve paid to the Moderation has been brilliant, and made me regret leaving it so long before I visited it again. It is a real asset to Reading, and one I probably closed my mind to for a while because of a pointless disagreement the landlord and I had somehow concocted between us. Free of that, I can now see the Moderation as it really is – an excellent Asian and pan-Asian restaurant in a pub’s clothing, with a menu that roves all over the place and never disappoints, and which changes often enough to prove that nobody there is complacent.

I’m sure many people will read this and say I told you so, or what took you so long? to which I can only say better late than never. I’ve had so many great meals in Reading this year, and Reading is still home to many great restaurants, despite 2024’s best efforts. But I can’t think of a more deserving winner this year than the Moderation. In the year that I spent a lot of time sad about losing one of the best restaurants Reading has ever had, I am very grateful to the Mod for doing such a good job of restoring my flagging faith.

Picking runners-up in this category feels even more redundant than in the others. But my two other favourite restaurants this year, both of which have fed me very well numerous times throughout 2024, are Dough Bros and Clay’s Kitchen. They are from completely different ends of Reading’s food spectrum, very different to one another and very different from the Moderation. But if you picture those three places on a metaphorical podium, I happen to think that image says quietly wonderful things about the U.K.’s largest town.

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Restaurant review: Thames Lido

On December 6, 2024December 30, 2025 By ediblereadingIn Reviews3 Comments

Can you believe that Thames Lido celebrated its seventh birthday this year? It was such an event – three articles in quick succession from the Guardian was a big deal in 2017 – and for many people it’s been a real statement piece, a special occasion restaurant that has seen off the likes of Forbury’s, Cerise and, at the start of this year, the Corn Stores. It put Reading on the map when nowhere else had, just before the two kitchens, Clay’s and Kungfu, arrived in town and changed everything.

And yet, as regular readers might know, I’ve always had a very chequered experience of Thames Lido. When I visited it on duty, over six years ago, I found things to like but wasn’t won over by the place as a whole. And on the occasions when I’ve been back, for a meal with friends or tapas by the pool, it has never completely convinced me. Consistency has consistently – irony of ironies – been the problem. There have been moments in every meal that impressed but always, somehow, an equal and opposite Newtonian disappointment.

The meal that stayed with me was one I had in the spring of 2021 with my family, just as I was emerging from a self-imposed Covid lockdown and tentatively eating outside again. We had tapas by the pool, and I had that experience – again – that some of the dishes were quite good and some were very much something and nothing. I made the mistake of posting about it on Instagram, and shortly after that I had a direct message from the head chef. It’s safe to say that dealing with criticism was not a strong suit of his.

“Looking through your account, your reviews are generally critical so may I suggest you don’t go out so much and cook a bit more at home?” he said. “I’m sure we’d all love to see the photos.”

Well, I didn’t take his advice – and I doubt he took mine in return that he might want to consider developing a thicker skin – except in one important respect, which is that I didn’t bother going back to Thames Lido after that. He left not long after those messages and for a while Thames Lido churned through head chefs like the U.K. got through Prime Ministers. I think it also had some kind of executive chef/”restaurant director” at the time – rarely a good thing – and the menu felt like it was focused more on buying and dishing up rather than cooking. So, much as others still loved the Lido, it well and truly fell off my radar.

And then, late last year, something happened which put them back on it. Out of the blue, I heard from the person handling Thames Lido’s PR, who told me that the restaurant had recently acquired a new head chef.

Nothing out of the ordinary there – it seemed to happen every few months at the time – but this time they had picked someone interesting. Thames Lido had gone for Iain Ganson, previously at the Bell at Waltham St Lawrence where he’d cooked with his brother Scott for the best part of twenty years. That made it somewhere I needed to revisit. Ganson’s food, like his brother’s, had always been exceptional and it had the potential to revitalise Thames Lido, which felt like it had been cosplaying founder Freddy Bird – not brilliantly, I might add – ever since he’d left.

So I politely turned down the PR’s very kind offers to attend pop-up guest nights at Thames Lido (and endure the horrors of what they described as “a little media table”) but I made a mental note that I had to go back before 2024 was out to find out whether the menu was remade in Ganson’s image or, like a covers band in a hotel lobby, he was playing somebody else’s hits. And finally, at the start of December at the beginning of a week off with Zoë, I made it there on a Tuesday lunchtime to try and find out the answer.

Café review: Zotta Deli

On November 22, 2024December 30, 2025 By ediblereadingIn Reviews3 Comments

About five years ago, a very nice lady called Elizabeth came to the last ER readers’ lunch of the year, at Clay’s Hyderabadi Kitchen, back when it used to be on London Street. I assumed she must have had a terrible time for some reason, as she never came to another. But then this year she returned, attending one at Clay’s new home in Caversham, and the most recent lunch at Kungfu Kitchen’s new home. She’s brought both her husband and her son to lunches this year, so I guess perhaps she likes them after all.

Elizabeth is American, and her accent has that drawl of somewhere in the southern states, although I’ve never asked exactly where. And at my lunch in the summer I discovered that Elizabeth and I were as good as neighbours. Because, just like Kungfu Kitchen, I moved house this year and it turns out that Elizabeth lives just around the corner from me – in, I might add, a really handsome-looking house. She lives so nearby, in fact, that she told me that if she’d known when I was going on holiday she’d have taken my bins out for me: I was reminded of something the great Barry Crocker sang, nearly forty years ago.

Anyway a couple of weeks back I got an email from Elizabeth, telling me I should review Zotta Deli. It was on my radar already, an institution run by father and son Rocco and Paolo Zottarelli. It made the local news this year when it announced that it was closing its Winnersh premises in July after 10 years trading there, relocating to a new site on the Basingstoke Road, just opposite the holy trinity of Aldi, the Victoria Cross pub and that massive Morrisons. Now Reading residents, they opened their doors in their new spot at the end of September: all the best people seem to be moving house this year.

I knew people who raved about Zotta as a deli, and I have a feeling it used to supply arancini to the likes of Shed, but the move from Winnersh to Whitley was more than an alphabetical one: Zotta was also changing angle somewhat, going from being a pure deli to a spot where you could eat and drink, as well as picking up produce to take home. So a combination of Mama’s Way and Madoo, you could say, just around the corner from Minas Café and Whitley’s legendary New City Fish Bar.

The comparison with Minas Café was an apt one, and part of the reason why I was so keen to get to Zotta before the year was out. Because despite all the money owners have chucked at Siren RG1 and The Rising Sun in the town centre, the gems of the last couple of years in Reading have been far more likely to be found in the less fashionable parts of town, on the Oxford Road or Northumberland Avenue.

And in particular, they were more likely to be discovered in a new breed of cafés like Minas and DeNata Coffee & Co offering proudly regional food, with a crowd-pleasing full English on the side, just to keep the locals happy. After all, that was a model that had worked well in Reading ever since Kungfu Kitchen took over the old Metro Café on Christchurch Green in 2018, keeping the breakfast menu going while cooking up authentic Szechuan dishes into the bargain. And look what happened to them.

So Elizabeth already had my interest, but she also told me that she was a big fan of Zotta’s lasagne. “They’ve just moved, and a good review from you might help”, she added. “I’ll even drop you off there sometime if you want.” I could hear Barry Crocker clearing his throat again. Now, I may not be as motivated by altruism as I should be, but I’m definitely motivated by lasagne. So on a drab and overcast Saturday afternoon I hopped on a number 6 bus and made my way down the Basingstoke Road with carbs and comfort uppermost in my mind.