Perry’s

On October 11, 2013November 2, 2024 By ediblereadingIn Reviews2 Comments

A newer review of this restaurant exists, from November 2024. Click here to read it.

Today’s restaurant has no website, almost no reviews anywhere, and even if you walked right past it you could be forgiven for not knowing it exists. And yet Perry’s, the Caribbean restaurant next to the Oxfam Bookshop on Market Place, has been there for a very long time. Shamefully, the reason I’ve never eaten there isn’t that I hadn’t noticed it, even though that would be understandable. I notice restaurants wherever I go, like a sixth sense, and when I do I always have to wander over and read the menu. No, I knew all about Perry’s, and I avoided it because every time I’ve been outside, I’ve looked through the window and felt intimidated.

It’s a funny balance, isn’t it? If you see a Chinese restaurant full of Chinese people (like China Palace) or an Indian restaurant full of Indian people (like Chennai Dosa), it’s unmistakeably promising, but only up to a point. Beyond that, and maybe it’s just me, it starts to feel like you aren’t meant to be there, like you wouldn’t fit in. It conjures up images of that famous scene in An American Werewolf In London, or some of the pubs I was warned not to enter during my first year at university. So I’m a little embarrassed to admit that, like countless people in Reading, I too have walked past Perry’s without going in, hundreds of times – not because it didn’t appeal, but because I was too chicken.

Edible Reading has changed all that for me – I suppose I partly see it as my duty to go to lots of new, different places, and sometimes that involves leaving my comfort zone. The review requests that people send are all taken seriously, so my friend and I found ourselves in Perry’s this week for an early evening meal – although, as I discovered, I suspect that eating in Perry’s in the evening is slightly missing the point.

The menu on the front door is slightly misleading. It lists a number of Caribbean dishes (salt fish and ackee, curried mutton, barbecued chicken, brown chicken stew, rice and peas, macaroni pie, I could go on – and I’m half tempted to given that they don’t have a website) but in fact what gets served varies from day to day. We didn’t know this when we arrived but soon figured it out looking at the blackboard next to the counter. It lists all the dishes, but the ones that are still available have a green sticker next to them. Perry’s closes at 8, and when we got there – with just over an hour remaining – there weren’t many green stickers left.

Some of them, sadly, weren’t even true: there was no macaroni pie, despite a green sticker to the contrary. I was a bit gutted by this, even though I wasn’t 100% sure what macaroni pie was, because I liked the sound of it. I was assuming – correctly as it turns out – that it’s a bit like macaroni cheese, which would have made it a Good Thing in my book. So, by the time we got to Perry’s it was a fairly straightforward choice: barbecue chicken, fried chicken, fried fish or oxtail, accompanied by either rice and peas or plain rice. The only other choice is whether you have a small or large portion.

Even writing this, I do wonder whether this is really such a tragedy. I’d rather go to a restaurant which has a limited range of dishes and owns up when it sells out, rather than a restaurant with dozens and dozens of main courses, leaving you wondering how any chef can possibly cook all of them without getting something out of a jar. Maybe I’ve watched too many episodes of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares,

Perry himself was behind the counter on this occasion and, apart from two other diners, we were the only people in the place. I asked him about the difference between the large and small portions and he waved a medium plate (which is apparently small) and a full sized dinner plate (which is large – and believe me, it was) at us. So, that’s the difference: that and the grand total of an extra quid.

The seating at Perry’s is pretty basic – the right side of uncomfortable, but not somewhere you’d settle in for a long meal. The whole thing has the feel of a cafeteria about it, which meant I wasn’t really sure what happened next. Should we wait at the counter? Would we be called up, like at a crappy coffee shop? Would they bring it over? Again, I realised that Perry’s wasn’t quite like most of the restaurants I eat in, and that gave me that little flash of feeling outside my comfort zone again. I wasn’t even sure how long we’d be waiting before our meals arrived.

In the end, Perry brought the food over in about ten minutes. The small portion of fried fish was seriously tasty stuff, and really not small at all – a light fried coating on a couple of decent sized chunks of what I think was salted cod. It was a little chewy, and not really crispy, although I don’t know enough to be able to say whether that was down to the time of day or how it had been cooked. The large portion of chicken was also delicious – three pieces of chicken served on the bone, coated in a fine layer of seasoning. Again, it wasn’t crispy and it was slightly on the tough side, and again I can’t tell you if that’s how it should be. I can tell you, though, that we both really liked it, and by the end all the bones were very effectively stripped, a little mass grave on a sideplate.

The rice and peas was the revelation, for me: rice cooked in spices, herbs and stock with kidney beans mixed in, with just enough heat to make you blow your nose but not enough to blow your mind. We spent a bit of time trying and failing to work out exactly what was in there – there was definitely some chilli, definitely some thyme (I know that because I had a naked stem tucked in my rice), plenty of onion, but beyond that we weren’t sure. Something had to give it that tangy, almost fruity flavour, but what was it? I still don’t know now, but whatever it was it made the rice so tasty that I even used it to accompany the little fresh salad on the side – iceberg lettuce, tomato and some thinly sliced cucumber. It might not sound significant, but it is: I never eat the token salad garnish.

There’s no alcohol licence, so it’s all soft drinks. In our case, it was pineapple soda (because I’ve never tried it before) and grape soda (which I’m told is surprisingly tasty, once you get used to it). We decided to pass on a soft drink called “Bigga” on this occasion, despite all the puerile potential for mirth it would have offered.

When we’d finished we weren’t sure what the normal procedure was. Perry was busy in the kitchen – cleaning up, presumably, as no other customers came in while we were in there. Since there were no other customers finishing up there was nobody to copy. In the end we took our plates up to the counter – again, not quite sure if we were in a restaurant or a canteen – and we ended up having our bill totted up by the woman at the other table, who we’d mistakenly thought was another customer (I think that means we may have been their only customers that night). The total for two dishes and two cans of drink was £16, which made me wonder if we’d been undercharged.

If you’ve gathered from the previous paragraphs that I still don’t quite know what to make of Perry’s, you would be spot on. Both dishes were delicious but I couldn’t help feeling that I’d missed the boat by visiting early evening on a weeknight – the range of options was limited and the place was empty, so there was no buzz or chatter. The building used to be a kebab shop, in a previous incarnation, and it still feels like it’s very much a functional place – walk in, get fed, walk out.

That said, if you’re in the mood for a quick meal Perry’s could be perfect for you. The food was really tasty, and it’s something you can’t get anywhere else in the centre of Reading. I’m told, too, that grape soda could prove to be quite habit forming. And the service, if basic, was really warm and friendly – when I was pondering what “ground food” (also on the blackboard but bereft of a green sticker) was, the lady at the other table told me in great detail. It turns out that it’s like a savoury doughnut made from yams, and it sounds pretty magnificent to me.

All told, I’m glad that I got over my preconceptions (and over the threshold). This would be a sad town indeed if you could walk past an interesting looking restaurant and not go in just because you’re too busy sticking to the tried and tested, and in a way that’s what Edible Reading is all about. So yes, Perry’s isn’t the place for an epic drawn out dinner. It’s not a place for going mad with the wine list, or for that matter drinking at all. It’s not a place, either, where you’re going to have a starter or a dessert. But having said all that, next time I walk past Perry’s on a Saturday lunchtime, when it’s packed with diners and I don’t feel quite so nervous, I think I might just go in. Maybe you should too.

Perry’s – 6.7
7 High St (off Market Place), RG1 2EA
0118 9594001

The Warwick

On October 4, 2013September 27, 2021 By ediblereadingIn Reviews5 Comments

N.B. The Warwick reopened as Bali Lounge in Jan/Feb 2015 with a slightly different emphasis and a different, shorter menu. Bali Lounge itself closed in early 2018. I’ve left the review up for posterity.

First the bad news; as much as I wanted to like The Warwick there were a few hurdles to get over.

The decor is pleasing to the eye, with lots of Buddhas (is that the plural of Buddha? Buddhae?) and Ganeshes (likewise) dotted about the place. The lighting is muted (you’ll be able to see that from the photos) with fairy lights strung around the windows and signage which give it a romantic feel. Sadly, though, the furniture is an odd mish-mash of things; they’re all in keeping but the variation from hard wooden rustic style chairs (which, worryingly, all sway slightly when pushed) to fully upholstered dining chairs means that there are definitely good and bad places to sit, which means good and bad tables.

Actually, I suspect they’re all bad tables, just in different ways: we started at a table where you could see what you were eating, but moved because we were sitting on rock hard yet rickety chairs and I don’t think my bum could have coped with two hours of that. We moved to a different kind of bad table; better chairs, but atmospherically lit at best and, because the table was so low, we struggled to fit our legs under the table. Never mind. We’re British, dagnabbit, so we stayed put. You can ask to move tables once and you get away with it, do it twice and you run the risk of having a foam added to your meal where no foam should be.

Another hurdle: I don’t think wine is really the Warwick’s thing. We ordered a bottle of Albarino. The bottle was coated in a fine layer of condensation and the felt cold to the touch but when poured the wine was just not cold enough. This was tricky to explain to the waiting staff who didn’t quite understand what the problem was – not in itself an encouraging sign. A friend of mine reported a similar experience when she ate there recently – which they tried (and failed) to rectify by chucking ice in the wine cooler. Maybe their fridge just isn’t turned up high enough (or low enough, depending on which way you look at it). A second bottle of Albarino felt no colder, so we turned it down and said we’d order a red instead. They were so baffled at why this wasn’t acceptable that I almost felt guilty, even though they were the ones at fault.

The red was a bottle of Fleurie – it was okay at twenty-four quid but not exceptional, and it didn’t have quite the light fruitiness I associate with Fleurie. Even ordering this was plain weird – they brought the bottle over, showed it to us and then wandered off to remove the cork out of sight. When it came back, the waitress poured some into my glass. I kept waiting, expectantly, for her to stop so I could taste it, but she just filled it right to the top and then proceeded to fill the other glass. Again, I felt like I was the one who looked stupid, even though I knew I wasn’t.

Now comes the good news. The food. We went for the Island Spice starter platter which is your usual fare – the ubiquitous fish cakes, satay chicken (out of sight in this photo), a breaded prawn and a spring roll each. Yes, I know it’s poor. I know I should have opted for a more interesting, more authentic dish rather than this greatest hits package and yet I always seem to do this in a Thai restaurant. It’s like the Quality Street of ordering – you know what you’re getting, there’s some variety, and you can always swap the culinary equivalent of the coffee cream (the Thai fish cake, in my case) with somebody else. Besides, it was only £5.50 a head, the same price as most single dishes on the starter menu.

Actually, as it happened, this selection box had no coffee creams in it and my fish cake remained untraded. Normally I find them a bit floppy and tasteless but this one was very fragrant, lightly spiced and spongy rather than bland and flaccid. The prawns were unrealistically huge (split, I think) with a thick coating of breadcrumbs but they were tasty enough, especially once dipped in some sweet chilli sauce. The satay was proper chicken rather than something which had been “chopped and shaped” or (the horror) “formed” and the spring rolls were fabulous – proper fresh tasting shredded vegetables, including red and white cabbage, in a crispy layer of pastry. These in particular were the biggest hit of the selection – and I say that as someone who will often refuse to order a dish without meat in it. In hindsight, the Quality Street analogy maybe sold it a bit short.

The Warwick does a lot of main courses – stir fries, curries, pad thai dishes and house specialities. There’s even a separate regional section, all of which have a three or four chilli rating – the menu rates all its dishes from “a little spicy” to “ouch! my mouth is on fire” or words to that effect, which I found so endearing that it almost made up for the use of Comic Sans. To compensate for the obvious choice of starters, we decided to steer clear of the usual massaman lamb or green thai curry and try something a bit more interesting.

The ped makarm – crispy duck with sweet herbs and a sweet tamarind sauce – was a revelation. I rarely order duck in restaurants, because I’ve never been a fan of pink pan fried duck with that thick layer of wobbly fat on top. But there aren’t many pairs of words more beautiful than “crispy duck”, so I took the plunge. What’s not to like? This came on a little bed of broccoli (tasteless, but I think it was just there to prop up the duck) in a pool of rich, dark tamarind sauce with a few cashews sprinkled on top. And the gamble paid off, because it was magnificent. So many gambles in restaurants don’t – we all have experiences where you stray from your usual thing and are rewarded by a truly middling meal – but there’s something magical about picking something you wouldn’t normally order and having your socks knocked off.

The other main dish was sea bass with stir fried garlic, coriander root and oyster sauce (kra tiem prig thai). Again, it was spot on. Two generous sea bass fillets, fried until crispy, skin and all, served with a rich sauce that honked of garlic (I pity the people at the desks next to us at work the following morning, put it that way). The only drawback, which I guess I should have appreciated, is that although you get a reasonable amount of sauce it’s never going to be quite as saucy as a Thai curry. The delicious bit at the end of a Thai meal, where all you’re left with is coconut rice soaked in rich sauce, was not to be a feature in our evening.

The side dishes were good but not amazing, but they really weren’t the feature attraction, so it didn’t matter. Coconut rice was nice but unremarkable. The vegetarian pad thai, with cabbage and (yet more) tamarind sauce was better – fine noodles, tasty sauce and delicious cabbage, but it was a bit pricey at seven pounds. The Warwick doesn’t treat vegetarians all that well, I thought: the vegetarian dishes all hover around the seven pound mark (broccoli in oyster sauce for about seven pounds felt especially stiff). The mains we ordered were both £12.50, though there are plenty of dishes that are considerably cheaper than that.

I’ve said the ambience is a tad romantic, but really this feels like a place to go with friends. They have a number of different set menus for two or more people giving you the opportunity to try loads of different things, and that’s what this kind of food should be about (they also do daily offers ranging from buy one get one free to a free bottle of house wine with some of their set menus). Even with just the two of us, it was one of those meals where you want your dining companion to taste your food, so they can do that nod and point thing where something you’ve picked is really good.

As it was, there was lots of swapping and sharing, though I did have to put my foot down when I offered my companion an extra piece of duck and his fork hovered towards the super crispy shard of duck that I had been saving for the last mouthful (I’m nice but not that nice). And I was right to save it – so salty and crispy but offset by the sweet tamarind sauce. Yes, I know I’m repeating myself but there’s something about constructing the perfect final mouthful when you go out for dinner, and it was so, so good.

We skipped dessert, partly because we had no room and partly because the dessert menu was pub food not Thai food – chocolate brownies, sticky toffee pudding and the like (although possibly preferable to the frozen delights you often get in Thai restaurants – who can forget the dubious pleasures of the “Funky Pie” at Thai Corner?). Instead we finished up the wine, got the bill – £69 for two courses and a bottle of half decent red – paid up and left. If it looks expensive, it probably is – it’s possible to eat a lot cheaper there, and based on what I had you’d probably eat very well.

All in all, The Warwick is a mixed bag. You do feel like you’re eating somewhere that isn’t quite a pub, isn’t quite a restaurant. The furniture isn’t inviting. The service is a bit unpolished – probably partly because they were doing a brisk trade, even on a Wednesday night – but it did feel like a struggle at times. It’s on the edge of town, in a town that has a fair few other Thai restaurants (though not as many as it did before Thai Nine closed down). And yet, and yet… when I think back to that duck dish, it becomes an awfully hard place not to like. Even before I’d left a part of me was wondering what I’d choose next time, and that tells its own story. So I’d say go with friends, order carefully, don’t expect to be too comfortable (or if you are, don’t expect to get a good look at your food) and you should have a very enjoyable meal indeed.

Oh, and probably best to stick to the beer.

The Warwick – 7.2
77 – 79 Kings Road, RG1 3DD
0118 9566969

http://www.aroythai.co.uk/

Round-up: September

On September 27, 2013November 27, 2013 By ediblereadingIn NewsLeave a comment

Well, Edible Reading has been going for over a month and I thought it would be a good point to stop for a moment and say thanks to everyone who has followed on Twitter, commented on a review or passed on a link. I’ve been really wowed by all the support, which is fantastic (in fact I even got my first hater – or are they called trolls now, I can never remember – which is proof that I’ve really made it!) In case you’ve missed anything in the first six weeks, here’s what’s happened on the blog so far…

Pepe Sale, 8.3 – Lovely food, superb service and crab ravioli to die for. Read the full review here.

ZeroDegrees, 5.4 – Reading needs a place that does great pizza and delicious moules but Zero Degrees, with its cut corners and wonky service, isn’t it. Read why not here.

London Street Brasserie, 6.8 – The elder statesman of Reading’s restaurant scene still offers some really good food, but you have to pick carefully and you’re better off staying on the set menu. The full review’s here.

Picasso, 4.1 – When is a tapas restaurant not a tapas restaurant? When the tapas in question is massive, costs almost a tenner and feels like it came from a bad supermarket. The worst rating so far, see why here.

Five Guys, 5.5 – It’s just a burger… or is it? The much-hyped latest addition to Reading’s restaurant scene has attracted lots of attention. I chip in (pardon the pun) with my two pence here.

In terms of restaurant news, apart from Five Guys, the main place to open since Edible Reading opened its doors is Tasting House, on Chain Street, in a rather unlovely location round the side of John Lewis. It does a small selection of charcuterie and cheese boards, a dozen or so wines by the glass and a large range of wines to take home. I’m not generally a fan of reviewing places just after they’ve opened (although in the case of Five Guys the temptation was too great to resist), but maybe a bit further down the line. It’s only open until eight though, so don’t plan on settling in for the evening if you do go.

Also, Thai Nine has closed and reopened as Sushimania, which means it will be part of a small chain with other branches at Golders Green and Edgware. Presumably this is a takeover, like when Sahara closed and reopened as BeAtOne. It’s an interesting move, because every time I’ve been to Thai Nine I thought the Thai food was much more popular than the sushi (and I say that as a sushi lover). I imagine I’ll review Sushi Mania in due course, so watch this space.

Another piece of news is that I like to think we’re having an effect on the Reading Post. They published a review earlier this month which wasn’t one hundred per cent glowing – of Wild Lime Bar & Kitchen, which you can read here (apparently it was “pleasant enough”).

Best of all, I’m also happy to say that another local restaurant blog has started around the same time as Edible Reading (I know, I know! We’re like buses). Stuff In My Face is a lot of fun, a cracking read and I’m looking forward to seeing what he makes of places round here. His very entertaining review of Pierre’s, here, is a great place to start.

Finally, thanks too to everyone who has recommended a restaurant for me to visit. Suggestions so far range from some of the Reading classics like Mya Lacarte and Sweeney & Todd to newish places like The Lobster Room, Bhoj, and House Of Flavours. I’m keeping a list and will try to get to all of them eventually, I promise.

Right, better go – I’ve got some meals to plan.

Picasso

On September 13, 2013November 2, 2019 By ediblereadingIn Reviews5 Comments

Picasso closed in October 2019. I’ve left the review up for posterity.

One of the editorial decisions I had to make when I started Edible Reading sounds like a minor one, but it prompted much deliberation. Not where to eat, or which font to use, or whether to put captions underneath my terrible pictures, but something more basic: where do you put the mark out of 10? I quite liked the idea, like Pitchfork for example, of putting the mark right at the top so you knew before reading whether I thought the restaurant was any good. In the end, I went with the conventional method of putting it at the bottom. The idea is that people read on to the end, curious about whether I’m going to turn out to be a fan of Pepe Sale, ZeroDegrees, London Street Brasserie etc.

Most of the time this works out fine, but the only exception is when you give a bad review. People love bad reviews, and I’m no exception; there’s a certain pleasure to be had from reading one. So I think I should warn you from the outset that this is a bad review. Picasso is not a good restaurant. I won’t go again, and I’d actively encourage you to follow my example. Got that? Right, on we go then.

I started out reviewing places I’ve been before – not new places, not unknowns – partly because I wanted to find my feet and partly because I wanted to pick places you might have been, so you could get an idea whether we liked the same stuff and you trusted my judgment. But this couldn’t go on forever, so I asked for suggestions about where I should go next. “Try Picasso”, someone said on Twitter, “I’ve heard mixed reviews and I’ve never been able to bring myself to try it.” Good idea, I thought. What’s the worst that can happen?

It turns out the worst that can happen is eating dinner at Picasso.

It’s one of those places, ironically, that ought to fill a gap in the market. Reading has never had a decent tapas restaurant, unless you count La Tasca (and, having eaten there before it closed, I don’t). Picasso has been going a long time, tucked away in a quiet little spot just over Caversham Bridge, so it must be doing something right. So I booked a table for 8 o’clock on a Saturday night and wandered across town, stopping in the Moderation for a pre-prandial gin and tonic. Eating somewhere you’ve never been before always has that feeling of excitement and anticipation, like that point at Christmas when you sit on the sofa, ready to unwrap a present in front of all your relatives.

The inside of Picasso, I would guess, hasn’t changed in over thirty years; basic furniture in a long thin room, pictures on the walls, cloth napkins, tables not too close together. A few tables were in dark corners, and I carefully avoided being led to one of those. Although it was unprepossessing I was determined not to judge the book by its cover: after all, Pepe Sale does great food and is never going to feature in Elle Decoration. The interior Picasso reminded me most of was the recently departed Nino’s, in Market Place, in fact, another old school restaurant where I’ve somehow never managed to have an inspiring meal.

Everything started well: the service in Picasso is very good, authoritative, old-fashioned service. The waiter recommended a Ribero Del Duero which was not on the wine list, was only £22 and was probably the best thing about the whole evening. He also – and this has to be a first – cautioned us against ordering too much food. Two tapas per person was enough for an evening meal, he said, so we should go easy on them.

In hindsight, I should have known at this point that something was amiss. Tapas are not meant to be big. That’s the whole point of them, and their whole appeal because it means you can try dozens of little things without being stuck with a giant portion of anything. After all, if you wanted that you’d go to a restaurant that served starters and main courses, wouldn’t you? A look at the menu proved that either the tapas were far too big or they were far too expensive: most of them were between eight and ten pounds. This is definitely the point where alarm bells began to ring, just as other couples started to take their tables. A lot of them had clearly been here before, though, so I must just have been worrying unduly. Mustn’t I?

When the tapas turned up it became apparent that they were both too big and too expensive, and worse still just not very good. A plato combinado of jamon serrano and chorizo was limp and insipid. The chorizo was barely an evolutionary step up from luncheon meat with a sun tan, bouncy and tasteless. The jamon serrano was even more of an insult, with the shiny dampness of something that had spent the previous few hours in a plastic catering pack of some description, each slice sandwiched between leaves of plastic. I wasn’t expecting them to have a leg of jamon hanging over the bar (hoping maybe, but certainly not expecting) but I did at least want to feel like this was good quality stuff. I could have walked back into town, gone to Marks & Spencer and got more, better, jamon for under three pounds. I finished it out of sheer stubbornness and almost immediately regretted it.

If the jamon was sub-M&S, the mushrooms with garlic butter were sub-Iceland, and even then I am probably being kind. A huge bowl of breadcrumbed mushrooms with a few visible patches of melted garlic butter was plonked in front of us, with a wedge of lemon in case you had pretensions about that kind of thing. Cutting them open they were flabby and damp, and the whole thing had the feel of party food at a party you wished you didn’t have to attend. A funeral, perhaps. We didn’t eat them all.

I looked again at the red wine. It was good, but it wasn’t that good.

The mains came almost as quickly as the starters had done, and were no better. Cerdo Asturiano was billed as pork fillet cooked in cider and cheese sauce. I was hoping for tenderloin, what I got was two thick slabs of steak with another slab of cheese melted on top of them. The sauce had no evidence that either cider or cheese had been used in it at all, it was the sort of anonymous red sauce that used to be made by Homepride and is now made by Dolmio. For all I know it could well have been. Accompanying it was a gigantic pile of fried cubed potatoes (presumably exactly the same thing you’d get if you ordered patatas bravas), some carrots which either came from a tin or had been cooked to closely resemble those that do, and some broccoli. It was clear that nobody left Picasso hungry, but that it was unlikely they left it satisfied either.

Swordfish in a cream, onion and mushroom sauce was just as disappointing. The swordfish was bland and flavourless and the sauce managed, if anything, to be less than the sum of its parts – thin, watery, with a hint of dill that might well have come out of a Schwartz jar. Swordfish, done well, is a beautiful thing but this was just boil in the bag cod in parsley sauce with delusions of grandeur. It came with the same piles of forgettable vegetables as the pork; in fact, I only took a photograph of one of the main courses but they were virtually identical, the single difference being which inadequate protein and sauce combination you’d been unlucky enough to plump for. The only things worth finishing in the whole restaurant, it seemed, were the wine and the experience.

It’s worth stressing what bad value Picasso is. Most of the tapas, as I said, were just shy of a tenner. The two mains were eighteen and sixteen pounds respectively. You can eat better for the same money in Reading without having to try very hard, and I’ve already reviewed two places where you can do exactly that. I couldn’t quite believe all the other diners in the restaurant didn’t appreciate this, to the extent where I wanted to stop by their tables on the way out and actively encourage them to go somewhere else next time. As I didn’t do that, I’ll have to console myself by doing it here instead.

I’ll say one thing for Picasso, it was mercifully quick. From sitting down to deciding to pass on the dessert menu took an hour and twenty minutes, on a Saturday night, a peak time for restaurants when people want to sit down and have an enjoyable, leisurely meal. The high point of the weekend when we want to sit in lovely cosy room somewhere, escaping from X-Factor and the contents of our fridge and being spoiled and taken care of by other people. There were lots of things about Picasso that were very very wrong, but the worst of all is how it betrayed that promise that every restaurant implicitly makes, that it will whisk you away from all that. It was like eating in a friend’s house, if your friend wasn’t a very good cook, had gone to about four downmarket supermarkets to get all the ingredients and tried to charge you eighty quid for the privilege. If you had a friend like that, you’d stop seeing them. If you knew a restaurant like that, you’d stop going. Believe me, Picasso is that restaurant.

Picasso – 4.1
6 Bridge Street, Caversham, RG4 8AA
Telephone 0118 9484141

http://www.picasso-tapas.co.uk/

London Street Brasserie

On September 6, 2013May 4, 2025 By ediblereadingIn Reviews3 Comments

Click here to read a more recent review of London Street Brasserie, from July 2021.

London Street Brasserie was almost the first restaurant reviewed for Edible Reading. In many ways it would have been the perfect choice, because it’s hard to imagine Reading without it. As Old Orleans has been replaced by Miller & Carter, as Ma Potter, Yellow River Café, Chili’s and Ha! Ha! have opened and shut and been replaced, it’s always been there, dragging the rest of the restaurant scene in Reading up in quality, year by year. It’s hard to believe that it only opened in 2000 (I had to check, and even then I did a bit of a double take).

It’s always done a roaring trade – not just locals, but also shoppers and the occasional celebrity, too. I don’t mean Paul Daniels and The Lovely Debbie McGee, either – apparently Prince Harry was there on Sunday night, mere hours after we’d checked it out at lunchtime, and rumour has it he very much enjoyed the crab (presumably he then dashed off to the casino next door, if past form is anything to go by). Even so, it feels remiss not to review it even if it is one of Reading’s most well known restaurants. After all, does that necessarily mean it’s any good?

The set menu at LSB has always been a good deal, so three of us went along for Sunday lunch with the very best of intentions. Three people, two courses, £16 a head: should be a bargain, right? Well. It always starts like that, but the problem is that then you have to have a quick look at the rest of the menu (the “here’s what you could have won” element of visiting a restaurant) and the next thing you know there is some complicated horse trading going on – I’ll have a starter off the set menu if I can have a main from the a la carte and what have you. So we wound up ordering a bit of everything, and convincing ourselves that it was for the good of the review.

The winner among the starters, in fact, was from the set menu: halloumi and rosemary with a rocket, peanut and mint salad. This was the one we all wished we’d ordered – the salty halloumi set off perfectly by the mint, not a combination any of us had tried before. The others, though, were less successful. The foie gras ballotine seemed in some places to be more butter than foie gras (some of which had started to melt, possibly because it had been left out too long), and lacked any real complexity. The Sauternes sultanas accompanying it were little unremarkable sugary pellets and the cocoa nibs added more texture than taste. Each section of ballotine was topped with an inadequate triangle of toasted brioche, and the whole thing was a little underwhelming. At just under a tenner, it was disappointing stuff – you can argue about whether foie gras is cruel or a delicious necessary evil, but one thing it should never be is empty calories, and this came rather close to that.

The Parma ham with artichoke and parsley salad, also on the set menu, might have been even less exciting – the ham, despite being air dried, was somehow smooth, wet and fatty and the accompanying artichoke and parsley salad, with finely chopped red and yellow peppers wasn’t anything to write home about. Having used up a large part of my adjective quota on the foie gras, let’s just use one – boring – for this and leave it at that.

The mains, happily, were a much better bunch. The fish and chips was a generously sized piece of haddock with a perfect, light crispy batter, along with chips served in one of those little frying baskets that seem to be all the rage at the moment (and which are very popular with me too, as they’re very easy to steal from). The mushy peas must have been good because I didn’t get to try any – you try stealing mushy peas without being spotted some time. The tiny jars of fresh sauces (a red pepper ketchup and tartare sauce) were a nice touch, though the vinegar came in a faddish bottle too, and personally I don’t see what’s wrong with a proper shaker.

The Tuscan venison ragu with pappardelle was also very nice, or at least it was when it came out second time around; first time round the ragu was aspiring to warm, although it never quite got there. We did the English thing of apologising for being given lukewarm food and the waiter did the equally English thing of not really apologising but sending it back to the kitchen. When the replacement arrived – fortunately quite quickly – it was delicious; rich, intense, just the right size, and the pine nuts studded through the pappardelle were also an interesting surprise. I was a bit dubious about the self-assembly element of this – you are brought a bowl of naked pasta and a small saucepan of ragu and left to put it together yourself. Maybe some diners quite like being involved in the process, but I thought plating up really should be the kitchen’s job.

My main, garlic and sage marinated monkfish, was lovely. Three mini fillets of monkfish served with sweet potatoes, cabbage and a red wine jus. It sounds simple but it was definitely more than the sum of its parts. It was really delicious – quite light and compact but not stingy which is quite a challenge with an expensive ingredient like monkfish.

All this was washed down by two bottles of the Surani Costarossa, a primitivo at a very primitive £27.50 a bottle. The second bottle was a little harder work than the first but we’d already had a aperitif in the bar so things were starting to reach the stage where restraint is a wonderful, if somewhat distant, concept. By this point, the sun had come round to the terrace and a few more barges had gone past so it seemed a shame to leave our table (although naturally, if we’d known Prince Harry would turn up in a few hours maybe we’d have taken things a bit more slowly). So we finished our red in the mellow afternoon sun and looked at the dessert menu, because it never does any harm to look.

The desserts on the set menu are a fiver each, a quid or two less than those on the a la carte, so we decided to look at both menus and pick what we fancied. I had the sticky toffee pudding, from the set. So indulgent (although my main was on the lighter side so I felt I could get away with it): a simple square of moist suet pudding, served in a glorious little lake of butterscotch sauce with a quenelle of clotted cream to cut through the sweetness a little. Just divine; done well, nothing fancy, thank you very much. The caramelised lemon tart with stem ginger ice cream appeared on my left, and I’m told it was lovely but I never got to try it. I was told, between mouthfuls, that the caramelised topping in particular was a big hit.

The showpiece dessert, however, was the orange and Grand Marnier soufflé with hot chocolate sauce. A full inch taller than the soufflé dish, this had more fluff on top than Donald Trump in a windstorm. It looked magnificent, but like Donald Trump what lay beneath didn’t quite live up to the impressive topping – undercooked to the point of being damp, it didn’t quite feel right. On the other hand, once the dark chocolate sauce got poured in, the whole thing transformed into a big edible puddle and apparently it stopped mattering so much after that. Of course, that might also have been to do with the bottle of dessert wine we’d ordered. I’m a little ashamed to admit that we washed them down with a bottle of Tokaji (5 puttanyos for those who know their wine) which was incredible, even if it probably contained enough sugar to be a dessert on its own. At £42 a bottle it really isn’t cheap, though in fairness the mark-up on it isn’t unreasonable.

The dessert wine didn’t turn up until after the desserts had arrived, and we needed to give the waiter a nudge for it. Service was a bit like that all afternoon – slightly hit and miss but always cheekily apologetic, as if they’d been caught winging it. The whole thing was slightly reminiscent of people at work (and every office has one) who rely heavily on their charm to make sure they’re never quite found out for not delivering things. On a Sunday afternoon, a few bottles of wine to the good, with the sun on the terrace and the barges floating past on the canal, this was all fine, but with hindsight it could have and probably should have been a little sharper.

So, it’s been a staple of the Reading restaurant scene since the turn of the century, Prince Harry eats there and it’s always packed, but is it any good? Well, as you can probably tell from the above, the answer – frustratingly – is yes and no. But over the years I keep coming back here. The food is hit and miss, and so is the service – not all of the waiting staff have the finesse that the food deserves – but the riverside setting, the buzz and the sheer range of the dishes (especially on the set menu which I think was a much better deal on the day) mean that it has enough interesting things going on to make me return. Carried away by the summer and the sheer recklessness of exploring the menu our bill for three, for three courses, three aperitifs and three – yes, three – bottles of wine came to £195, but I would say do as I say not as I do, go for lunch or an early evening meal and it’s still a decent place to eat. In 2000 LSB was head and shoulders ahead of almost everywhere else you could eat in Reading. In 2013, it should maybe be a bit less confident about retaining that status.

London Street Brasserie – 6.8
2 – 4 London Street, RG1 4PN
Telephone 01189 505036

http://www.londonstbrasserie.co.uk/