Zoë and I were in town the Monday before our holiday, we’d finished all our errands and there was time to fit in lunch somewhere before taking the bus home to face the mountain of ironing and packing. Zoë wanted to go to Shed, which I could completely understand, and then it occurred to me – we could try out Notes, the first of the raft of hospitality businesses we’ve been promised on Station Hill, and I could get a review of it under my belt.
For childfree people like me, the tail end of August is possibly when you most keenly feel the disconnect between you and the rest of the world. At work everyone’s back from their holidays, preparing for the beginning of the academic year, already mourning their week or fortnight on a sunbed, by a pool or in a villa. My Instagram has been full of holidaymakers squeezing the last few drops out of the month. They have got excited, packed and prepared, touched down, drunk cold beers or glasses of rosé, topped up their tans, raced through some novels. And now they’re all coming back, like migrating birds, refreshed but, most likely, a little sad.
I’ve watched everybody embark and return, seen the Instagram posts and stories, and told myself each time that my time will eventually come. And it will, soon, but not quite yet: by the time you read this I will be hours away from setting my out of office and closing the laptop, but as I write this I’m running on fumes. The rhetoric at work will all be about how everybody is full of beans and ready to go, to close out the year: I am depleted, and ready to go to the airport. Our timelines won’t synchronise until I return, when we all prepare to put the clocks back, put the central heating back on, contemplate the end of the year.
Anyway, the last day of August found me with a day on my tod, feeling a little melancholy and looking for some feeling of escape. So I decided to make my way to Mon Chéri, the Greek café on West Street, to see some Hellenic sunshine might illuminate my mood. It opened at the end of last year, I think, and has been on my list ever since, but it’s taken a little while to reach the top of it.
And when I say Mon Chéri is open, I mean that it’s very open indeed: if Google is to be believed, they start trading at 6am every day, not closing until 8 in the evening. When I commute to work, my bus trundles down West Street around half-seven. Mon Chéri is always open by then, awning out, with some customers in already. Is any hospitality business in Reading open quite that long, with the exception of Gregg’s and Wetherspoons?
So. yes, I partly picked Mon Chéri this week because I’m so very ready for a holiday and, for me, Greece is the place I most powerfully associate with holidays, even now. The first time I ever left this country I was thirteen years old and my parents, heady with the rush of having remortgaged our suburban semi-detached, took us to Corfu to share a villa with some friends. I had never been on a plane, never known sunshine like it, was fascinated by the way Greek lemonade tasted different, couldn’t get enough of the music of the cicadas – when I could tear myself away from a book or my chess set, that is.
Early on in our stay we found a taverna, run by a chap called Tassos, and it was love at first sight. The food took forever to arrive, but nobody cared because we were sitting outside, on those balmy evenings, and my parents had access to a steady supply of Retsina. Tassos had an ancient stereo that played Greek music, but it was on the blink so it was always randomly speeding up or slowing down, some kind of weird bouzouki remix. The overall effect was of an establishment inches from collapse.
Sometimes customers at a neighbouring table would be so angry about the interminable wait that a blazing row would ensue. My parents’ friends Carol and Frank wanted the earth to open up and swallow them; my dad found it hilarious. We went every night, and by the end we were such regulars that after other customers complained, as they often did, Tassos would come to our table and say something to the effect of What was their problem?
As a trip, it had a lasting effect on me. It was the only time I remember my family going out for dinner more than once a year, and I think it made me fall in love with food and restaurants. Specifically, it made me love Greek food. My dad was keen that we enjoy ourselves but not go financially mad, so we were limited to the least expensive things on the menu, the souvlaki, the sofrito – veal in garlic – and the stifado. And I became addicted to the last of those, the rich stew of beef braised to surrender with tomatoes and soft, whole shallots. I can’t remember if it was Tassos’ wife or mother in the kitchen – or even his grandma – but whoever it was, the chef was a genius.
Since then I’ve been to Greece many times. I’ve done Rhodes, which I liked even more than Corfu, although I’ve only once managed to stay in Lindos, the bit of it I adored the most, once. I went to Kefalonia just after the Captain Corelli film, and had dinner with a pre-fame Simon Pegg, sporting a Beckhamesque mohawk, at the next table. I’ve stayed in Mykonos, which I loved despite a nagging feeling that I didn’t see the best of it. I’ve holidayed in beautiful, scruffy Athens, walking among the city’s ruins just before my first marriage went the same way.
And then there’s my very favourite part of Greece – Parga, just around the coast from Preveza airport, a beautiful harbour town full of winding lanes where you can completely forget about the world, sit in one of the many tavernas, eat fresh fish and drink sweet rosé and, for a little while at least, become a twenty-first century lotus eater. One one holiday there I took a boat trip to Corfu Town, strolled the Napoleonic esplanade of the Liston, felt the whole thing coming full circle.
All that said, I’ve not been to Greece in nearly a decade. At first it was Covid’s fault – my trip to Lindos, booked in hopeful ignorance at the start of 2020, was shifted back again and again until we accepted, reluctantly, that it just wouldn’t happen. But the world has gone back to normal since then, something has stopped me returning and I’m not sure what it is.
Analysis paralysis, possibly: I am never able to pick the island, pick the resort, pick the accommodation. I see everyone else going there and I envy their certitude but that magic combination of the right airport, the right flights, the right place to stay has never jumped out at me. I’ve contemplated Chania, or Agios Nikolaos, or going back to Parga, but I’ve always chickened out and booked a city break instead. For many years I wanted to go to Hydra – because Leonard Cohen – and someone I knew on Instagram who went every year even sent me her guide, but the sheer faff of getting there just put me off. You’d need to be there two weeks for that journey to be worth it, and I never take two weeks off.
So the closest I would get, this year at least, was Mon Chéri. It’s always saddened me that Greek food has never really gained a foothold, either in this country or in Reading: we had Kyrenia, which I revered, but since then it’s been Spitiko, which I ought to visit. We had The Real Greek, which left the Oracle before it could be pushed, and we still have Tasty Greek Souvlaki which is indeed tasty, and Greek(ish), but not the full taverna experience.
But Greece is better represented by cafés, with our branches of Coffee Under Pressure and now with Mon Chéri. And I truly love Greek cafés and bakeries – in Parga, most mornings began with breakfast at a place called the Green Bakery, on a sun-dappled terrace with coffee, pastry and a paradisiac, indolent day ahead. When I came in off the drizzle-spattered pavement of West Street, I guess that’s what I was hoping to recapture.
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Last year, in one of the more baffling developments in Reading’s food and drink scene, wine bar Veeno changed its name to Vino Vita. It wasn’t initially clear whether this was because the people running it had bought the business from Veeno or if something else was going on. If you read the details on Vino Vita’s website you’d be none the wiser. “We’ve rebranded, but our commitment to excellence remains unchanged” it said. “Join us as we start an exciting new chapter that expands our offerings and vision.”
More details emerged when the owners spoke to the Chronicle last month. “A big reason why we became independent was so we could have more say over the produce” said the restaurant’s Head Of Sales. “We developed our whole menu, and everything is done on site.” I remember reading the article and thinking that this potentially merited a revisit, but the main thing I took away was They have a head of sales? It felt like a role Veeno, a chain with 5 restaurants across England and Scotland, might need but that Vino Vita, a single spot opposite Forbury Gardens, probably didn’t.
So what were the differences, and had Vino Vita improved on the Veeno formula since taking their destiny into their own hands? The only way to be sure was to eat there – which clearly I did, because you’re reading this – but before that I carried out some research. Because I visited Veeno on duty nearly 8 years ago, not long after they opened, and at the time I would have said that there was plenty of room for improvement.
Vino Vita’s menu does indeed offer a slightly wider selection of dishes than Veeno’s, with more nibbles, bruschette, small plates and so on. It has about as many pasta dishes, although I’d say Vino Vita’s sound less interesting. The big difference, and again this is baffling, is the sheer volume of pizza: between conventional pizzas and Pinsa Romana, Vino Vita offers almost twice as many options as its estranged siblings.
Did Vino Vita move in this direction to compete directly with the likes of Mama’s Way, who clearly have superb access to produce? And if so, wouldn’t you maybe change course given that Reading has seen pizza place after pizza place open this year, at least two of them – Paesinos and Amò – being truly first class? I did wonder.
A couple of other strange things that came out of my homework. One was wine. Veeno’s selling point was that the wine was from their own vineyard: their selection was excellent, the vast majority of it was available by the glass and much of it was affordable. To give you an example, 7 of their 21 reds will set you back £30 or less. By contrast, Vino Vita’s 21 reds were more expensive – the cheapest was £29.95, the remainder all cost more than that.
It wasn’t clear where any of them came from either, because unlike Veeno, Vino Vita didn’t quote producers or vintages. It felt odd to split away from the parent company to offer greater choice, only for that choice to be more expensive and less informative. Like the name change, it had a hint of shadiness about it.
The other odd thing was something I discovered when making a reservation, because booking online with Vino Vita also raised some questions. The thing is, you don’t just book a table. You also have to tell them, and I’ve never seen this before, when you plan to give it back. Not only that, but you also have to say what you’re booking it for – is it for a meal or an Experience?
Yes, an Experience with a capital E, and the booking system asks you which one you want: Quattro Rossi, for example, Trip To Italy or Italian Afternoon Tea, without telling you what they are (they’re on a separate menu, but it’s odd that they don’t tell you as part of the booking Experience – sorry, I mean experience). And all those Experiences? Copied straight from Veeno. The grape didn’t fall very far from the vine, it seemed.
After all that research, I was in two minds about going to Vino Vita. Was it different enough? Was it promising enough? But one thing clinched it. Sometimes people specifically ask if they can join me for particular reviews: so for instance, when I get round to visiting Lebanese Flavours to discover whether the artist formally known as Bakery House has simply changed its name or changed for the worse, my friend Liz has called shotgun on that one.
Similarly, I can’t review Wendy’s unless it’s in the company of Kevin, a long-standing reader, because I promised him, and as he’s moved to the Cotswolds it won’t happen any time soon. In this case it was Zoë, my wife and number one dining companion, who put in a request specifically to go to Vino Vita, so I met her outside at the start of the weekend, to discover whether their commitment to excellence really did remain unchanged.
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Some restaurants wind up so indelibly linked with the buildings that become their homes that years later, long after they are gone, you still can’t imagine another menu outside, someone else trading behind those doors. Sometimes, no other restaurant even tries: ever since Dolce Vita left its spot on the top floor of Kings Walk nobody has taken its place, but even if they did, I don’t know how I’d feel eating somewhere that, to me, will always be Dolce Vita.
Sometimes the place stays the same but changes hands, with or without changing its name. At some point I should return to Namaste Kitchen, and people tell me it’s good, but without Kamal running the front of house and that magical menu of Nepalese small plates I’m not sure how I’d overcome the strangeness of dining there. I’ll do it, one day, and when I do the review will have to have a different preamble to this one, because this one’s taken.
Ditto Spitiko, where Kyrenia used to be. The site’s the same, the menu is similar, the furniture might be too, and Spitiko may well be a perfectly decent restaurant. But in my mind it will always be Kyrenia, the place where I celebrated my thirtieth birthday, where I’d always go for mezze and kleftiko, for a bottle of Naoussa Grand Reserva and Ihor’s twinkliest welcome. Its golden age was over fifteen years ago, yet I remember it like it was yesterday.
That’s before we get to the Lyndhurst, now under its third set of new management since they hosted guests for the very last time – my wedding guests, no less. This may sound silly, but I don’t feel ready to eat there again. Perhaps this sentimental streak should disqualify me as a restaurant reviewer. But on balance I don’t think so: these places get into our hearts, occupy a place in our affections, become part of our story. Not to feel that kind of thing is not to be alive.
But of course, nearly every restaurant was once somewhere else. Buon Appetito, that I still miss, may have become Traditional Romanesc, but before that it was Chi Oriental Brasserie. And again, when Chi closed I was devastated. You know where else Chi Oriental Brasserie used to live? The site that’s now Masakali. And I was sad when Chi left that spot on the TGI Friday roundabout, too, but I was equally forlorn when San Sicario, a wonderful restaurant, gave up the fight at that very location.
All these places come and go. They make your day one month and break your heart the next: that’s what getting attached to a restaurant can do to you. Worse still, throughout it all TGI Friday has been plugging away on the other side of that roundabout for as long as I can remember. I wonder if restaurants have their own version of that well-worn maxim that only the good die young.
All this might go some way towards explaining that although new-ish Indian restaurant Tanatan opened on London Street last December, it’s only on a week night in July, months later, that I went there with my oldest friend Mike for dinner. Because even though the site was an empty shell for over two years, before that it was Clay’s Hyderabadi Kitchen, and it’s still hard for me to think of it as anywhere else.
Clay’s, where I ate for the first time before it opened, where I celebrated birthdays – mine and theirs, as it happens – where I went on random evenings because it was just round the corner from my little house, where I ate with friends, family and visitors, where I held lunches for my readers. Few rooms contain as much of my personal history as that one, so I knew it would be odd to eat there again, to eat Indian food there at that, and to know that it was somewhere new.
Tanatan’s story is a curious one, by the way. In the run up to it opening, the Reading Chronicle trumpeted that it was a high end Indian restaurant which very much seemed like the natural successor to Clay’s. Not only that, but they claimed that it was the first U.K. branch of an upmarket Indian group of restaurants with its other branches in India and Dubai.
That all sounds magnificent, and Tanatan’s website contains a menu full of temptations. There’s only one hitch, which is that there’s no evidence at all that Reading’s Tanatan has any connection to that chain at all. It’s not mentioned on their website, and in fact Reading’s Tanatan, for a long time, didn’t have a website of its own. Now it does, but the menu bears about as much resemblance to the other Tanatan’s menu as I do to Jude Law.
It looks suspiciously as if the Chronicle had flagged the name, put two and two together and come up with five, which is a mistake not even the AI that writes most of its articles would make. So, what was this Tanatan, our RG-based restaurant, like? Was it a worthy successor to its precursor, or an attempt to hop on a bandwagon two years after the bandwagon rolled north, over the river? It was time to brave that all too familiar room and find out.
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Amò reopened on 23rd July 2026 after closing in mid-December 2025, apparently for maintenance.
In the good old days, where you stood on certain binary debates was simply a way of positioning you in the world. Cream first or jam first? Plain or milk chocolate Bounty? Cheese and onion or salt and vinegar? Were you a fan of the Beatles or the Stones? Blur or Oasis? All these things used just to be a form of triangulation, little points on a chart that, taken together, might give someone an idea of you (and, since you’re asking: cream first; milk chocolate; salt and vinegar; the Beatles; neither).
When did that all change? 2016, I suppose, when we all became Leave or Remain, indelibly stamped, and at every stage from that point forwards. We’re always asked what side we’re on, and now it’s not a useful piece of trivia but a necessary step to place yourself on one side or another of a yawning chasm. Are you pro- or anti-Israel? Do you think J.K. Rowling is a hero or a villain? How about Farage, or Trump? Did you believe in lockdowns, masks, vaccines? Did you leave Twitter or stay? If you left, did you go to Bluesky or Threads?
Like the Tower Of Babel, we’re now all scattered to the four winds, trying to find our tribe and arguing, endlessly, with the others. It’s not a bit of fun, any more. And this is all rich coming from me, because I’m painfully aware that I’m as polarising as most. Happily, Reading faces another tricky choice now that’s potentially just as difficult, but hopefully less divisive: Paesinos or Amò?
The two pizza places opened on Kings Road, two doors and three months apart, the latest in a weird series of rivals in very close proximity, following the example of Pho and Bánh Mì QB in Kings Walk or Iro Sushi and You Me Sushi on Friar Street. What is it with that? You must be very confident in your product to open so near to a direct competitor, like Bánh Mì QB did, but with Paesinos and Amò, Iro and You Me so little time separated both arrivals that it must be an unhappy coincidence. Imagine pouring your heart and soul into a new business only to find that another one a lot like yours is doing exactly the same, a stone’s throw away.
Anyway, regular readers will know that I reviewed Paesinos a month ago with my Italian friend Enza (who is, just to confuse matters, an Amò superfan) and it received a glowing write up from me. But I knew, even as I was eating there, that I needed to prioritise visiting its neighbour, if only because Enza told me that it was as good as, if not better than, the restaurant I had so enjoyed. I couldn’t go with Enza, because she was so far from impartial, and this time I took my friend Jo, also of Italian descent, last seen checking out House Of Flavours with me.
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