Tag: Whitley

Café review: Zotta Deli

On By ediblereadingIn Reviews3 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Restaurant review: Dough Bros

On By ediblereadingIn Reviews4 Comments

I moved house last week, and suddenly everything changed. My little slice of Reading, my walks, maps, routes and routines were no more. No more waking up in the Village and mooching into town for lunch, no more strolls round Reading Old Cemetery or Palmer Park, no more number 17s and Little Oranges buses, no more Retreat just round the corner. After seven years of East Reading life, it was time for something different.

So on moving day Zoë and I found ourselves standing, sleep-deprived, outside a large house that wasn’t quite ours yet, rented van parked up in the drive, waiting for the agent to arrive and check us in. Meanwhile, across town, movers were loading boxes into a far bigger van from a far smaller house that was no longer ours. The sun was blazing, and I strolled across Cintra Park to Greggs, of all places, to pick up coffee and pastries. This is my neighbourhood now, I thought to myself.

I’m writing this over a week later, after seven days of unpacking and tip slots and IKEA trips (I’d forgotten how depressing that place is) and everything is starting to take shape. A lot of the boxes are unpacked, the kitchen is in some kind of order and, best of all, we finally got a new bed – high off the ground, with a big firm mattress, like climbing on to a cloud at night. The walls are fresh-painted white, the blinds are new and Venetian and the rooms flood with summer sunlight.

And every morning I wake up and can’t quite believe I live here, in this new place.

There’s a clothes line in the garden, and I get to experience the meditative joys of hanging out the washing, taking it in when it’s been dried by the sun and smells of heaven. Let’s not talk about the huge rent hike, or the council tax band of this place, or the fact that I can’t afford to eat out quite so often: let’s just think about the smell of that washing from the line.

On our very first night, exhausted but with the rest of the week off to unpack and settle in, we wandered to pretty much our nearest restaurant, Kungfu Kitchen. Like me they moved recently, although a few doors down Christchurch Green maybe isn’t quite as big a shift as mine. And their new site is lovely and snazzy – especially the light feature projecting fish onto the floor – but it was also reassuring just how like their old place it was. The food was still outstanding, and the welcome was the same, because Jo and Steve do not change: I particularly enjoyed Jo frogmarching customers to the loo, proudly boasting that Kungfu Kitchen has the best toilets in the world. Her words, not mine.

But Kungfu Kitchen is only one of our nearest restaurants, and I popped into one of the others to take something home the following night, just before an England match, fresh from a purgatorial trip to the tip. Dough Bros opened in March at the top of Northumberland Avenue and has built up quite a following in three short months. It’s run by a couple of friends, one of whom also runs the neighbouring barber Short, Back & Vibes.

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