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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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Edible Reading 