In late 2025 Minas Café changed hands and although the new owners haven’t changed the shop front yet the business is now called MJ Butequim. I have marked this venue as closed and will review MJ Butequim in due course.
I think it was Kierkegaard who said, very wisely, that life can only be understood backwards, but it has to be lived forward. And I think you could say the same about food trends: it’s easy to pontificate at the start of the year about what you think is going to happen, but the world of food is full of surprises and it’s far better to bide your time, get to the point where the New Year is around the corner and identify the patterns with the benefit of hindsight.
It doesn’t take much to form a food trend in Reading either, even if it is the U.K.’s largest town: two similar establishments opening in a year is a coincidence, three is a trend. So last year Reading had two main trends, I would say. The first was biryani places springing up all over the shop – Biryani Mama, Biryani Lounge, Biryani Boyzz and so on. Add in the ambiguously-named Biryanish and you definitely have yourself what passes for a trend. And of course there was the proliferation of sushi places – Intoku, Iro and You Me Sushi all opened in quick succession to challenge the primacy of Sushimania, Yo Sushi and grab and go chains like Kokoro and Itsu.
What about this year? Marugame Udon and Cici Noodle Bar opened weeks apart, but I’m not sure that’s quite enough. For me the biggest trend of the year has been a raft of interesting cafés, moving beyond the ubiquity of third-wave places like Compound or C.U.P. to offer something less generic and more regionally specific, potentially the antidote to all those “not another coffee place” bores out there (where will they go now Berkshire Live has kicked the bucket?).
So down the Oxford Road you have Time 4 Coffee, a cafe apparently offering pasteis da nata, Portuguese bread with chouriço and a range of other traditional dishes from that under-represented cuisine; I’ve not yet been, but it’s high on my list to review next year. On Castle Street Filter Coffee House is already making a name for itself with its authentic South Indian filter coffee and absolutely delicious banana buns, and continues to develop a big menu for such a little space, with intriguing specials available every Saturday morning.
And then finally we have the subject of this week’s review, Minas Cafe, which opened in April and is perhaps the most incongruous of the lot – a Brazilian café, no less, in Whitley, of all places. That I hadn’t been to check it out yet felt like it was verging on neglect, so last Sunday when I had the day to myself I hopped on the number 6 bus just before lunchtime and alighted by Buckland Road. Whitley was shrouded in a drizzly mist, the day murky and dreich: a less Brazilian scene was difficult to imagine.
Minas Café is tucked away just round the corner from the Basingstoke Road, and it looks unprepossessing, with a nice little outside space which would probably have been a lovely place to sit and watch the world on a more clement day. Inside it was a pretty unremarkable café but with a few signs that this was a little out of the ordinary. One wall was given over to all sorts of interesting produce – biscuits, cakes, hot sauce, you name it. A big TV was mounted on another showing concert footage from, at a guess, a Brazilian artist. The overall effect was fascinating, and reminiscent of Madoo, one of my favourite places, in that you were simultaneously in-Reading and not-quite-in-Reading.
So yes, it had a warm, welcoming feel to it, especially on a miserable day, and although only a couple of tables were occupied when I got there, it had a steady flow of customers throughout my time there. And a varied one too – one table of twentysomething Brits, a Brazilian family at another, and various solo diners turning up for a full English. Lots of people there gave the impression of being regulars, an excellent sign for a cafe yet to celebrate its first birthday.
I was limited in the research I could do before my visit because although Minas Café has a menu you can see there in the café, they don’t have a website and it’s surprisingly hard to track down online. Like a lot of cafés of this kind it hedges its bets to try and appeal to everybody, so the menu above the counter is all breakfasts and panini and omelettes. But on your way to the counter you get an idea, again, that there’s more interesting stuff going on. A whole display of salgados – Brazilian pastries – a dizzying array of them. A little bit overwhelmed, I ordered a latte and decided I needed to consider the options. The man behind the counter, a friendly chap with a huge mop of hair, took my order and I sat down to mull things over.
My expectations of coffee in places like this – and indeed most of the coffees I’ve ever had in Portugal – were fairly low so I was absolutely delighted when my latte turned up and was bloody gorgeous, nicely balanced with no burnt note or bitterness. It just goes to show that you don’t have to wank around with latte art to make a marvellous coffee, and it had the effect, almost immediately, of making me want to try more stuff. So I went up to the counter again, had a proper look at the cornucopia behind the glass and pondered how I could possibly choose.
This was where the friendly chap sprung into action, talking me through everything. There were savoury pastries packed with ham, cheese and tomato, others with chicken and sweetcorn, a few with ground beef. All of them looked subtly different, all were golden under the lights. Some resembled pasties, some little buns, others looked like neat parcels of joy. There were rissoles, and croquetas and things that looked an awful lot like battered sausage.
“What do you recommend?” I asked. He smiled.
“Our two most popular are this, the coxinha – it’s made with chicken and cheese – and this one, the salgado with ground beef.”
“And which one should I have, out of those two?”
“The coxinha. It’s much more…” he paused, deciding on the right word. “Interesting.”
“Those croquetas look really good, how are they different?”
“The ones on the left are minced beef stuffed with cheese, and the ones on the right are just minced beef.”
“Which do you think is better?” I asked, although I think I knew it was a silly question, even as I asked it.
“Definitely the one with cheese.” Of course. I mean, what dish, really, isn’t improved with cheese? So the decision was made, and I went back to my coffee with a mixture of anticipation and curiosity. They arrived not long after – salgados are served cold not hot – and sitting there in front of me they looked like beige-brown bundles of wonder.
“Would you like something with them? Ketchup, mayonnaise or chili sauce?” I asked for chilli sauce and he brought two bottles over – again with a grin. “That one’s less hot, but that one has the flavour you want.”
To cut a long story short, it all had the flavour I wanted, and more besides. The croqueta was a wonderful thing – dense, crumbly beef with a core of stretchy, elastic cheese, something like mozzarella. A dish like this always carries the unspoken terror of bouncy mystery meat, and the first forkful can be a bit of a highwire act, but from that point onwards my fears were allayed and I knew that what was in store was nothing but delight. And my server was right – the first hot sauce, thin and tangy, was very good but the second one, thicker and more menacing, had a compelling punch.
The coxinha was weirder but no less interesting. In a teardrop shape it sort of resembled – to culturally appropriate and show that I was well outside my sphere of expertise – something somewhere between an arancino and an arepa. So it was a dome of dough, but once you cut through that you got a huge quantity of shredded chicken, with a little tomato and tang, and little clouds of soft cheese – again, like mozzarella but in its unmolten state. Had I ever had anything quite like it? Not really. Did I think that was a bit of a shame? Yes, it turns out I did. I dabbed my nose, aware that the second of those hot sauces could give Vicks Sinex a run for its money when it came to decongestant powers.
By this point I was having an absolutely super time. I was well fed but determined to have another latte, and my mind was turning to dessert. But more than that, and this is the magic of some places, I felt part of something. I felt like I could stay there for hours listening to the music, watching the waves of customers arriving, being well fed and moving on, replaced by other diners. A couple of solo diners had come in, taking tables and ordering brunches, and the family next to me was in full flow, the cadences of Portuguese filling the air. Apparently I was in Whitley in November, but you could have fooled me.
I went up and told the server how much I’d enjoyed both my salgados. I asked if they did traditional Brazilian dishes like feijoada, and he told me they had a daily special which they announced on Instagram. Feijoada was on Saturdays, he said, and today it was chicken parmigiana with mash. I was glad I’d gone for something a little smaller, but I saw it waft past my table later for one of the hard-working staff to have for lunch. It looked enormous and tempting. I made a mental note to return on a Saturday before too long.
“What do you recommend for dessert?” I said, by this point convinced that the staff here wouldn’t steer me wrong. “I see you have churros on, and I really love churros.”
He pointed me to the chiller cabinet next to the salgados, pointing out something with chocolate and coconut that looked like a tiramisu, giant chocolate truffles in little paper cups, flans that he told me had been made fresh that day.
“But if you have a sweet tooth, our passion fruit mousse was made today too. It’s really good.”
I didn’t need any further recommendation than that, and again he was absolutely spot on. The mousse de maracuja, to give it its proper name, was ethereally light, sweet but delicate and full of passion fruit. From above, it looked like sunshine, and on the spoon it tasted of it too. I adored it from start to finish, and as with all the best places I was torn between wanting to come back and try everything I had previously ordered and thinking if these dishes taste this magnificent, just what’s all the other stuff like?
I’m conscious that I haven’t told you how much anything costs, for the simple reason that apart from the lattes – a ludicrous two pounds sixty – I didn’t know how much any of it cost when I ordered it. I only found out when I went up at the end and paid. Two salgados, two lattes, that passion fruit mousse and a chocolate truffle – a brigadeiro – I took back for Zoë to try came to a baffling eighteen pounds. I would gladly have paid more.
That doesn’t include tip, and frustratingly they don’t seem to be set up to take tips by card, so I made a mental promise to come back with cash next time. And I’m really sorry I couldn’t tip, because the service was outstanding throughout – not just from the chap that talked me through what to order but from all four members of staff who worked so hard. If they weren’t serving, or in the kitchen, they were mopping the floor or keeping busy. I even got a little reward card, and they told me that every time I spent over ten pounds they’d stamp it. I don’t ever keep reward cards, but I kept this one.
I am so glad I visited Minas Café this week. I think I really needed to find somewhere excellent, and it came along just when I could have started to get disheartened. Reviewing places outside Reading is terrific, although I know it pisses off some of my readers, and it’s always great to try the very best, but it can be sobering when you look at how far Reading can be from that standard.
The whole town, or at least the whole of my echo chamber, is in sackcloth and ashes over the Grumpy Goat, and it’s easy to be deflated by what happened there. It’s easy to think that this is why we can’t have nice things, and that a town with our unique combination of venal landlords and unimaginative politicians will never cast off its shackles and live up to its potential.
So this week of all weeks, I needed to be reminded that there are always brave and imaginative things going on, always people who can make you believe again. You just have to look, and sometimes you just have to look that little bit harder, and that little bit further from the beaten track. I wandered back to the bus stop just outside Morrisons, only a few steps but somehow a world away, and I took the number 6 back into town with my faith in the world decidedly restored.
You don’t get a review next week, because I’m on holiday. I am going back to one of my favourite cities to eat and drink, to sit outside and to enjoy the blue skies of Andalusia. There will be tapas and wine and beer, and one last bit of R&R before the year limps to an end. But if any review is going to sit at the top of my blog for an extra week, and hopefully get a few more readers, this is the one for the job. I am looking forward to seeing the sun again, after what already feels like too long. But I also feel like I got a sneak preview of it in the unlikeliest of places, in a little cafe on Buckland Road.
Minas Café – 8.3
1a Buckland Road, Reading, RG2 7SP
07983 560430
Edible Reading 