Tag: Zoe

Restaurant review: Quality Chop House, Farringdon

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As the proud partner of somebody who proudly works in retail, I accepted long ago that my weekends wouldn’t be like most people’s. For many years, we’d get a Saturday together if we were very lucky, a Sunday if we were a little less so. Whole weekends together were a chimera, generally speaking, and had to be booked and planned far in advance. And sometimes I’d get entire weekends to myself where I learned to like my own company better and make myself find things to do: I’m sure, on some level, they were character building. 

It hasn’t all been like that. When lockdown hit and the shops shut, we were in each other’s company all day; I was between jobs back then, and all that time together felt like a present from the universe. For all the fear of getting seriously ill, all the wondering where your next supermarket shop will come from, I’ll always be grateful for that. Walks every day round the deserted business park feeling like we were in a post-apocalyptic movie, hearing Zoë on conference calls on the front step in the sunshine, the buzz of the neighbourhood WhatsApp group as everyone prepared to step outside at 6pm and wave hello. In hindsight it was a lovely time, even if I never read Proust or wrote that novel. 

Then at the beginning of last year Zoë was on a secondment which meant that, for six months, she worked Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. And we got to experience together that life that we non-retailers take for granted – of shutting your laptop on a Friday afternoon, pouring that first drink and opening that glorious parcel of time that’s all yours. Living with someone in retail, I hope, makes me appreciate that privilege a lot more. It also makes me conscious of the sacrifice people in hospitality, as well as retail, make for the rest of us. 

The reason I start by saying all this is that for the past six months Zoë has been on a stretch where she works every Sunday and has every Saturday off, a halfway house between the conventional 9-5 and what she had before. When that happened, I became the equivalent of those people who say they don’t like wasting the day. I proclaimed that we mustn’t squander those twenty-four precious Saturdays, that we should Go Places, See People and Do Things.

Of course now that the six months is coming to an end I have to conclude that we didn’t, really. They got eaten up with illness or other commitments, or kiboshed by train strikes, or a dozen other things. I often think of the quote falsely attributed to John Lennon, that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. But it’s not a tragedy, when I think of what we did instead – Saturday morning lie-ins, or afternoons spent in the Nag’s or at Double-Barrelled people watching or planning the next holiday. We still went places, saw people and did things, just without the Capital Letters Of Expectation.

But I really did want to tick off some restaurants, the ones I’ve always wanted to visit but never got round to. In that sense we made woeful progress. But we earmarked last Saturday, one of our final Saturdays together for a while, and after some deliberation I picked Quality Chop House, because of all the restaurants on the to do list I’ve talked about before, it’s been on there possibly the longest, always close to the top.

It’s a curious beast, very much in the vanguard of modern British cooking and regularly topping everybody’s list of London’s 50 best restaurants, despite the waxing and waning of food trends. And you could be forgiven, from the “Opened in 1869” on the website, for thinking it’s that kind of place, a restaurant like Sweeting’s or Wilton’s that has been around for ever. But actually, Quality Chop House is more St John than Rules and although a restaurant has been on the site for over 150 years its current incarnation began in 2012, the last year when we were all proud of Britain.

Since then it has firmly established itself under head chef Sean Searley, who was in the kitchen when they first reopened. It’s expanded, too, with a sister wine bar and small plates restaurant, Quality Wines, next door. Some say it’s even better than its big sibling, but I wanted to start with the original and best, so after a pre-lunch beer at Mikkeller on Exmouth Market Zoë and I took a short wander and passed through its handsome doors. PROGRESSIVE WORKING CLASS CATERERS was etched on a panel of the window: it’s like they saw me coming.

The interior achieves what the menu also aspires to, managing to be simultaneously Victorian and timeless. There are two rooms – the more famous one with benches like pews and the second one which is less photogenic. It’s still a convivial space though, all chessboard tiles and bentwood chairs, chalkboards on the walls listing special wines by the glass (they start at over £20, just so you know). I had a feeling that although the other room had a wow factor this one might have been comfier, and we had a decent sized table, although we had to sit diagonally across from each other so as not to butt shoulder blades with the table behind.

The menu changes daily, which meant that I’d looked at it daily in the run-up, wishing that some things would hang in there until my lunch booking, happy for others to drop out. It was compact and, to me, in the same vein as St John, with a handful of snacks, four starters, three mains and a selection of the eponymous chops.

It’s a menu you have to mentally recalibrate as you read, because a couple of the snacks nudge into starter pricing (and then some, in the case of the £24 chicken liver parfait) and the starters are between £14 and £18. As for mains, if you want a chop or a steak they start at just shy of £35 and climb from there. I was expecting that, so it didn’t bother me, but it’s worth mentioning that their weekday no-choice set lunch is a more modest £29 for three courses. From a look at their Instagram, it has some corkers on it.

But before that we had a cocktail, because it was one of our last Saturdays together for a while. Zoë’s negroni was made with Lemon Pekoe gin and a smidge of 25 year old Madeira and was a knockout. My rhubarb Collins was, for my money, too sweet, the cordial all syrup and no bite. That’s not to say, though, that I didn’t finish it.

The problem with a menu that has snacks and starters on it is that you have to have more restraint than me not to order both. We paced it so the snacks came with our aperitifs and they included some of my favourite things in the whole meal. Salami was by Molinari, a San Francisco-based salumeria almost as old as Quality Chop House, and was just exquisite – thick and coarse but with no bounce or resistance. I loved it, although I’d have liked some cornichons: it reminded me of similar dishes at Oxford’s Pompette where they just leave the jar at the table and let you serve yourself with tongs.

But far better was the dish I had to talk Zoë into letting me order. Smoked cod’s roe came topped with grated, cured egg yolk and a cluster of hot salt and vinegar doughnuts, all gloriously nubbled and irregular. This dish was close to faultless, and scooping a doughnut through the roe before popping it in your mouth was a hugely tactile joy. The smoke in the roe was subtle, the vinegar on the doughnuts beautifully in check. If I had one criticism you needed a couple more doughnuts to really clear up all the roe, but I could forgive Quality Chop House a lot for introducing me to the concept of salt and vinegar doughnuts in the first place.

“This is like – hear me out” said Zoë, giving me a warning about what was to come, “posh Primula.”

“Primula tastes of cheese, not fish. Or are you saying this is like a cross between Dairylea and Shippams?”

“Maybe. And I don’t even have a problem with the vinegar. Menus should make a point of this – it should say salt and vinegar doughnuts, with hidden vinegar.”

Some people. Every bit as good were the pork shoulder croquettes, little dense dice of saddleback packed into a breadcrumbed shell and placed in the middle of a coaster of lime green leek mayonnaise. These were top notch, and although they’re listed as snacks I wish I’d had a portion to myself. I’m so used to Spanish croquetas, all light with bechamel, that I’d forgotten how good something like this could be – nothing but moreish shreds of salty pork. I eked this dish out, knowing that however well I did so it would be gone too soon.

“I don’t know why they call them croquettes” was Zoë’s feedback. “They’re definitely nuggets.”

“I don’t think they’re going to rebrand as the Quality Nugget House, true though it might be. People will get the wrong idea.”

With our snacks out of the way it was time to take the meal seriously and place a proper order. By this stage what had begun as an almost-empty dining room was full, and it made me realise just how efficient the staff were. Efficient and hard working, finding the perfect happy medium between the two unpalatable extremes of matey and glacial. Always there when you needed them, too, in a manner I associate more with eating in Paris than London.

We also ordered a bottle of wine, going eventually for an interesting-looking number from Roussilon that promised peach, herbs and smoke. It lived up to that, and I thought was about its money for just shy of sixty pounds. Initially I thought that the wine pricing was a little sharp at Quality Chop House considering they had a wine shop next door – there was very little south of forty quid – but later on I saw the wine we’d chosen on sale at Bloomsbury’s Shrine To The Vine for thirty pounds, so if nothing else their markups could be a lot steeper.

Starters built on the promise of what had gone before. I am a sucker for sweetbreads so I tend to order them whenever I see them and last year – at Paris’s Parcelles and Malaga’s La Cosmopolita – I had two sweetbread dishes which raised the bar. If anything, Quality Chop House’s rendition might have exceeded them. These were veal sweetbreads cooked in beef fat, and although the fat didn’t overpower them it did give them an almost crispy texture without sacrificing their softness.

But the supporting players were just as important. I’m used to calçots paired with romesco, and I’ve enjoyed that combination many times, but having the two of them as an accompaniment to sweetbreads was not something I’d ever considered. And it all went together so beautifully: heat, nuttiness and sweetness from the alliums. A beautiful dish.

Zoë didn’t especially fancy any of the four starters on offer so decided to grab an eponymous chop from the snacks menu. As a fun-sized demonstration of the meat they bought and how they cooked it, is was difficult to fault and came on a squiggle of cumin yoghurt, strewn with pickled chillies.

A dish made with lamb chops is one of our regular midweek staples, especially when we’re trying to cut down on carbs (did I mention that I have to lose about five stone in three months for this wedding I’m having?). And I wish when I cooked lamb chops they tasted like this – the forkful I tried was impressive stuff.

At this point I was convinced that I was halfway through a record-breaking meal: the wine was slipping down nicely, everything I’d eaten was magnificent and the room was buzzing. This was what I had told myself we’d do on Zoë’s Saturdays, and even if we’d left it late we’d saved the best until last.

For me the mains didn’t reach the same heights, but it didn’t change the fact that if I’d had them in any other restaurant they would have easily made my top ten of the year. I decided to eschew, rather than chew, the chops so I’d chosen the fish course – a firm, bronzed slab of pollock sitting in a moat of crab bisque, a blob of aioli behind it and some wild garlic reclining, wilted and louche, on top.

That all sounds superb, and it wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t blown away the way I had been by the smaller courses. The fish was perhaps a few seconds too well-cooked, the bisque lacking in savoury depth. I wasn’t sure the aioli added much. Was I being ultra-critical because everything else had been so fantastic? Possibly.

Zoë on the other hand had opted for the double chop combo, following up her lamb starter with an immense pork loin chop. It was Saddleback, again, and it was undeniably a terrific, whopping piece of meat. It was so beautifully cooked, the meat tender and nowhere near dry, the fat softened to the point where it was the best thing on the plate. I was allowed a fair bit of this – 400g is a big old chop – and it made me suspect that picking the fish dish was tantamount to, as a friend once put it, going to Nando’s and having the prego steak roll.

Both dishes were lacking in carbs or veg, and you have to order those separately. Maybe it was those snacks at the start, but neither of us could work up much enthusiasm for a bitter leaf salad with grapefruit (which didn’t feel like it went with anything we’d chosen) or squash with rosemary. We did, however, gravitate towards Quality Chop House’s confit potatoes. It’s a dish they’ve become known for, perhaps more than any other, and it has inspired a lot of imitations. It was also the one dish I was determined not to leave Quality Chop House without trying.

And yes, they were every bit as good as that picture down there makes them look. Hefty cuboids made up of many thin layers of spud, pressed and then fried until the outside is a salty, brittle treat. If you like starch in general, or potatoes in particular, I’m prepared to go out on a limb and say that this is a death row dish. I am struggling to thing of anything – the crispiest chip, the most buttery mash, the creamiest dauphinoise – that quite matches this as the apex of potato perfection. Personally I probably wouldn’t have piped mustard on them. But it’s their place, so they can do what the hell they like.

But the strange thing is this – I loved them, but I wasn’t sure they really went with either of our mains. That, and the lack of some kind of veg, made the meal feel a little lop-sided, a tad needlessly beige. Was I being ultra-critical because everything else was so good? There’s that question again.

Having dessert, under these circumstances, was a foregone conclusion. But first we finished our wine and had a look at the dessert wines on offer. Many of them were available by the glass, and the menu does recommend some pairings with desserts, but when I noticed a Riesling by excellent German producer Staffelter Hof my decision, and Zoë’s, were made. I’ve enjoyed their wines both at Clay’s and Marmo, but didn’t know they did a dessert wine. And it was outstanding – golden and sweet, sticky but not sickly.

Zoe’s choice of dessert, under any other circumstances, would have been mine. And it was a lovely, classic piece of work, a cheesecake with a thin but exquisite biscuit base and a layer of mandarin orange and something called “blood orange sherbert” on top. It was as good an example of a cheesecake as you’ll find, but fundamentally it was just a cheesecake.

I think I picked better: I had the ice cream. And yes, fundamentally you could say it was “just” ice cream but that would fail to do it justice. It was an olive oil ice cream made from eye-poppingly expensive Capezzana olive oil, and it was the best ice cream I’ve had in this country. Easily up there with anything I’ve had abroad, too. I’ve not had olive oil ice cream in many years but here the oil permeated everything, giving the ice cream a perfumed, grassy note that took it up several levels.

The whole thing was drizzled with olive oil that collected brightly at the bottom of the bowl, waiting to be scooped up. And each spoonful had a little crunch of salt crystals. This dish wasn’t sweet or savoury – it was far too clever to pick a side in that way. It thumbed its nose at being either and was instead authentically, enchantingly itself. It cost ten pounds, one of the least expensive dishes of the meal, and was worth every penny: if I could teleport any one dish from the Quality Chop House to my sofa right now, as I write this, it would be this one.

We had outlasted a few tables that had arrived after us – such quitters – and as our bill came with a couple of pieces of white chocolate fudge we chatted with our server. We asked if we could buy the wine we’d had at the wine bar next door and she said no, because they’d made a conscious decision to stock completely different wines there. “It’s nice for us, because it means when we go there for a meal we get to try something new” she said, adding that the staff happily ate in the restaurant or the neighbouring bar on their own dollar because the food was so good.

“The thing is, people come for the chops but I think everything else on the menu is so good. Like the fish you ordered. And you really need to come back during the week, because the set menu is amazing.”

Our bill, with service included, came to about two hundred and eighty pounds. I know that might be the bit where many of you wince – don’t I know there’s a cost of living crisis on? – and I could say that we ordered a digestif and a dessert wine each, a decent bottle of white and four courses.

But it is difficult to deny that unless you’ve having that set lunch menu during the week, Quality Chop House is a pricey restaurant. When I compare it to Manteca, across town, where we ate easily as much food last year and spent three quarters of that amount, it drifts firmly into special occasion territory. But then Manteca was 2023, and this is 2024, and a lot of restaurants are going to the wall. Even having only been there the once, I’d like it if Quality Chop House wasn’t one of them.

After my meal I knew Quality Chop House was extremely good, but I also knew I needed to reflect to figure out just how good it was. And the answer, I think, is very, but not without a handful of bet-hedging caveats. It is classic and timeless and that is a big part of its strength. You won’t be buffeted by food trends or forced to eat anything that’s been freeze dried or agitated into a foam. You’ll have a gorgeous, comforting meal in a space that feels like it could have existed and looked like this at any time in the last hundred years. You’ll experience superlative service, and come away knowing that you’ve treated yourself.

And yet there is a slight niggle that stops me giving it one of the highest ratings I’ve ever awarded. Brilliant though it is, it is pricey. The menu is a tad unbalanced, as I said. And the most interesting things on it are at the beginning and at the end, which is why I understand the plaudits that have been heaped on Quality Wines next door.

Because as much as I liked seeing a hulking great chop set down in front of us, there was a bit of me that would have preferred a restaurant that stuck to the snacks and the small plates, and maybe offered wines at more approachable prices. This venue was great, I enjoyed it and I’m so glad I went there. But that venue, the venue I might have liked Quality Chop House to be, sounds like it’s literally next door.

But never mind. After many of the things I’ve eaten this year – for the blog or for fun, mindfully or mindlessly, out and dressed up or in my comfies on the sofa, in company or alone – are firmly in the past I will still remember that afternoon of chat, laughter and leisure. And I’ll remember that ice cream. Any restaurant that can make memories like that is okay in my book.

Quality Chop House – 8.8
92-94 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3EA
020 72781452

https://thequalitychophouse.com

Restaurant review: Hala Lebanese

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Last month, after a very successful ER readers’ lunch at Kungfu Kitchen – a total of fifty-six guests in attendance and what felt like about the same number of different dishes to try – the hardcore lunch-goers were sitting in the luxurious surrounds of Park House up on campus, shooting the breeze. It was early evening and even though it was right at the beginning of December it felt, to me at least, like the start of the festive season.

I always love that bit, when the event has gone well and everybody is full and happy and I get to have a few pints and chat to all the people I haven’t yet caught up with. The readers’ lunches have been going for six years now and although there are always newcomers, many of my regulars have been coming along for a fair old time, a few since the very beginning. 

On this particular occasion I found myself in conversation with Jonathan, a newbie who very specifically wanted to talk to me about a bugbear of his: how come there weren’t any good neighbourhood restaurants where he lived in east Reading? I thought about it, and told him I had to agree. I said that since O Portugues had mysteriously closed in the spring there was nothing that even came close.

You could eat in the likes of Rizouq on the Wokingham Road, I supposed, as it had a few tables, and I’d heard suggestions that a burger joint, Pattie N’ Pulled, was operating out of the Roebuck (it looks like they’ve since moved on). But apart from that, and the artist formerly known as the Garden Of Gulab, restaurants were thin on the ground. I thought that would be the end of the conversation, but Jonathan wanted to talk about it in more detail, as if I had the power to change it.

I do get it though. As a proud East Reading resident myself, albeit one living far closer to the centre, it is an enduring mystery that it’s such a dead zone for restaurants. Caversham is well served, and Whitley and Katesgrove have a handful of places. Tilehurst, with the addition of spots like The Switch and Vesuvio, is seeing a bit of a resurgence and the Oxford Road has always been a crucible of culinary invention. Even dear old Woodley, where I grew up, has a handful of restaurants worth a visit.

By comparison, the Wokingham Road feels like slim pickings. It has takeaways, and two biryani places, and the likes of Earley Café and Chaiiwala, but nothing you could describe as a neighbourhood restaurant. It’s almost as if the people living near Palmer Park are expected to hop on the 17, walk to Kungfu Kitchen, settle for the Hope And Bear or, if all else fails, fall into Ye Babam Ye. If it wasn’t for the likes of Smash N Grab and Cake & Cream, you might struggle to see redeeming features at all. And Smash N Grab, sad to say, has its last ever service tomorrow.

I did remember, though, talking to Jonathan that there was one possible contender in the form of Hala Lebanese. It opened last June on the Wokingham Road, just past the stretch of shops, in a spot formerly occupied by another Lebanese restaurant, Alona. I still remembered Alona, partly for the astroturf but mainly for the wobbly shawarma that had slightly traumatised my dining companion John and me. I told Jonathan I would get to Hala as soon as I could and, what with Christmas and Covid, I think I’ve pretty much kept my promise: last Saturday Zoë and I trekked up the Wokingham Road to give it a whirl.

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Café review: Filter Coffee House

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As of October 2024 Filter Coffee House has changed its interior layout and so is now takeaway only.

Filter Coffee House, a tiny café on Castle Street offering authentic South Indian coffee, opened last August. It occupies a unit which as far as I can remember used to be home to a very small, rather unsuccessful produce store by the people behind Tamp Culture (remember them?). I found myself stopping in last year a couple of weeks after Filter Coffee House opened and, slightly bending my usual rule to wait a month, I talked about it on social media.

I couldn’t help it. I waxed lyrical on Instagram about their coffee and, in particular, their banana bun, a confection quite unlike anything I’d ever eaten before. Not quite sweet, not quite savoury but glazed, complex and moreish, it was not the kind of thing you eat and forget. Quite the contrary: you want to tell the world about it. I loved it so much that when I put together my list of Reading’s 50 best dishes last September, as part of the blog’s 10th birthday celebrations, I snuck it in at number 47. I called it a little miracle. 

Maybe I was jumping the gun but I had a feeling it was going to be huge, and I wanted my admiration of that banana bun to be a matter of public record as soon as possible. Because there are few four word combinations in the English language quite as satisfying, if you ask me, as I told you so.

Anyway, the amount of praise that bun has garnered on social media since has borne out my hunch. But not only that, if you follow Filter Coffee House’s hugely winning Instagram feed you’ll see that they’ve really flourished in the last five months. The month after they opened they teamed up with nearby Rise to expand their range of baked goods. In October they introduced a menu of Saturday specials, and in November they brought in a sandwich menu.

In December, naturally, there was a Christmas menu – the “Mistle-Toast” is still available, if you’re tempted – and now Filter Coffee House also stocks goodies by Cocolico, Reading’s vegan pâtissière. The overall picture is one of constant forward movement and innovation, and it shows no signs of stopping: last Sunday, for the first time, they had a stall at Caversham’s Artisan Market. 

And yet, shamefully, with one thing and another I had not been back since that first visit back in August. Of all the places I’d neglected in the latter half of 2023, sorting this one was right at the top of my list. So last Saturday, lured by that specials menu and fresh from the elation of having bought our wedding rings in town, Zoë and I sauntered over, keen to see how things had progressed.

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2023: The Year In Review

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It’s a shame to start this piece with an apology, but I’m afraid I’ll have to. Normally when I sit down to sum up the year nearly gone, as is traditional by now, I’m fairly chipper: the working year is close to done and dusted, the presents are all bought and good times, socialising and shedloads of booze are just around the corner. By contrast as I write this I’m still recovering from Covid – which I’ve managed to catch for the first time ever, unfashionably late, in December 2023 – I’ve not left the house in a week and have only just reached the stage where the coughing isn’t stopping me from getting to sleep, although my sense of smell isn’t quite what it was yet. Ho ho ho!

So this year the Christmas break can’t come soon enough, although I might well spend it under a blanket watching old episodes of Frasier or one of my favourite not-quite-a-Christmas-movie movies, The Apartment. Even the thought of opening a bottle of wine or an imperial stout, right now, makes me feel a tad queasy and, with the exception of chocolate, food has somewhat lost its lustre. What better mood to accompany a look back at 2023 in the world of Reading and its restaurants, eh? Precisely.

I always feel like a bit of an Eeyore writing these roundups, or I have since the pandemic, because it seems like every year I basically say well, fewer restaurants have closed this year than I expected but mark my words, next year reality is going to bite and the bounceback loans have to be paid off and the bills go through the roof. Next year is going to be grim.

And here we are, December 2023, and I’m delivering that speech again. Fewer restaurants have closed this year than I expected, and I’m impressed that so many are hanging in there. I hope they all have a very busy festive season to keep them going through the drought that is January. And this time next year, having no doubt been proved wrong again, I’ll try to say something different.

That doesn’t mean we didn’t lose hospitality businesses in 2023, or that we didn’t lose some really cherished ones, but looking at the numbers it could have been an awful lot worse. First of all we lost O Portugues, the Iberian outpost on the edge of Palmer Park, in the weirdest way: they shut their doors in March, put an update on Facebook to the effect that it wasn’t goodbye forever and they just never returned. Google still has it marked as temporarily closed, but it’s been temporarily closed for most of the year.

The following month, the same thing happened on the west side of town: Buon Appetito’s lights went out, and stories began to spread of people turning up for reservations to find the place closed with no sign of what was going on. It, too, was temporarily closed. Rumours swirled around of issues with the landlord, or the building, but five months later something new opened in that building and so we knew Buon Appetito was gone for good. I was desperately sad about that one – it made my list of the ten saddest closures of the last ten years.

Also in April we said goodbye to Cairo Café, and that also really saddened me. I wish I’d been there more often, and I wish others had been there more often too. It reminded me of the closure, many years before, of Cappuccina Café a few doors down, both of them a constant reminder that however hard you try or however good a business is, sometimes things just don’t work out. A shawarma place is there now, and at some point I should bring myself to review it.

Another restaurant that has been temporarily closed for a very long time is Oishi, the Japanese restaurant down the Oxford Road. They announced on Facebook in June that they were closing for renovations, but with every passing month the site looks less renovated and more derelict, panels in the windows patched up with boards. They may come back next year, but then so might Philip Schofield.

Who else? Well, Bel and the Dragon finally gave up being a waste of one of Reading’s loveliest spots in July and now Fullers pub The Narrowboat trades in its place. The menu doesn’t look hugely different from that at the Three Guineas in town, but if they pull it off it could be a lovely spot, especially when summer comes around again.

Perhaps even more significantly, August was the month that Oracle neighbours Franco Manca and The Real Greek decided to jump before they were pushed by the ongoing redevelopment work. It’s a funny illustration of the Joni Mitchell principle: I’d never really considered stopping into Franco Manca for a quick post-work dinner, until I couldn’t. August was also the month that Mr Chips, fresh from a refurb, was badly damaged by one of several fires seen in the town centre in the second half of the year. It too is – those two words again – “temporarily closed”.

The other really sad closure of 2023, for me, was San Sicario, which didn’t make it to a year in that ill-starred spot on the roundabout at the bottom of the Caversham Road. There is something unjust about the fact that Cozze, serving awful food, managed to limp on in that spot for years while San Sicario didn’t even get to blow out a solitary candle on its first birthday. I always thought it was a good restaurant with the potential to be a great one, and maybe one day when all the flats are built in that part of town it will be able to support a place like San Sicario. Until then, people will just mutter about the site being cursed, and how there’s no parking. As we’ll see shortly, someone has already stepped up to give the site another whirl.

But of course, the most significant closure of the year, the one that got all of town talking and pondering whether we deserved nice things, was the shock closure of the Grumpy Goat at the end of October. I say “all of town”, but more than anything it illustrated that the food and drink social media echo chamber isn’t necessarily representative of the town as a whole: for all the devastated comments on Berkshire Live’s Facebook posts about this there were always a few saying “I hadn’t heard of that place.” But for once, the closure wasn’t down to the business lacking customers: the Goat was always busy, and seemed to be thriving, but the owners put it all down to the landlord.

That in itself led to a lot of lively debate on social media: surely the landlord couldn’t chuck them out with a week’s notice? Could they? Is that what actually happened? I suspect we won’t know how or why negotiations broke down between the Grumpy Goat and the landlord, but either way it’s tragic that Reading lost its most vital, modern, independent and inclusive business within the IDR. Anyone who liked good beer, great cheese, wonderful toasties, brilliant coffee or even just feeling proud to live in a town that could offer all those things in such a tasteful, well-executed space was immeasurably poorer when November began. And I can’t blame anyone for looking at Reading in the aftermath of that closure and feeling like a light had gone out.

But if you wanted any illustration that 2023 was still, against the odds, a year with more growth than shrinkage, look at the many and diverse businesses that opened over the last twelve months, ready to give it their best shot. Right at the end of 2022 Calico opened in what used to be Great Expectations, now Hotel 1843, offering an interesting (if strange) fusion menu of Indian dishes and pub food. I need to make my way there to see if it works, and when I do I’m not sure I’ll be able to resist the “Magic Mushroom Croquettes”, even if they can only disappoint.

Perhaps more typical of the class of 2023 were chains in the town centre, filling big units and making Reading just that little bit more like everywhere else. So in February we got Popeyes, which probably excited a lot of people but left me unmoved, and Coco Di Mama, which is owned by the same people as Zizzi and, to me, offers about the same amount of excitement. Berkshire Live went there in April and was hugely excited about the food offering there. “As is normal with Italian cuisine, it was topped with a hearty helping of Gran Formaggio cheese and a few green leaves” said the article: ah, that world-renowned Gran Formaggio cheese nobody has ever heard of.

The other big site to fall under the control of a chain was the old Pizza Hut site on the Riverside, which reopened as Marugame Udon in April. It holds an almost unique accolade in that I went there earlier in the year with a view to reviewing it, walked in, thought What the fuck, this is like a school canteen followed by Nah and then left. I promise next year I’ll try harder. Infinitely more welcoming was the hugely enjoyable Cici Noodle Bar which opened on Queen Victoria Street in February – I loved it, when I went.

Fortunately, most of the other restaurants and cafés that opened this year were independent, and far more interesting prospects. From Pasibrzusek, offering Polish food on the Hemdean Road to Minas Café’s brilliant Brazilian in Whitley, from Traditional Romanesc operating out of Buon Appetito’s old home to Portuguese Time 4 Coffee on the Oxford Road, Reading still has a procession of plucky independent places trying to convert people to new cuisines and new ways of eating. 

And as the town centre gets that little less imaginative and less interesting, things crop up on the outskirts of town to compensate. Tilehurst, for instance, got the very credible Vesuvio Pizzeria, which manages to give casual, mid-priced Italian dining a good name. Meanwhile down the Wokingham Road Hala Lebanese opened in the spot once occupied by the less impressive Alona. East Reading has needed a good neighbourhood restaurant for a very long time: could this be it?

For me, the west side of town remains where the more intriguing businesses seem to be materialising. Aside from Vesuvio, Time 4 Coffee and Traditional Romanesc, there’s also the enormously likeable Barista & Beyond, not to mention Sarv’s Slice which has taken up residence upstairs at the Biscuit Factory and, over the space of nine months, made a very convincing claim to offer Reading’s best pizza. By those standards Caversham looks positively stagnant, although I was delighted to see Spanish deli Serdio Ibericos, fresh from its short-lived stint at the Collective, opening next door to Geo Café this month.

2023 was also the year when Korean food continued to increase its presence in Reading. In August The Bap opened where La’De Express used to be, offering a range of Korean fried chicken and bibimbap, and for my money they offer another excellent low cost, speedy casual dining option in town. And at the end of the year AKA BBQ Station, an all you can eat Korean barbecue restaurant, opened where Pizza Express used to be on St Mary’s Butts: I’m not sure I see the logic of calling a restaurant AKA (okay, it’s also known as that, but what’s its actual name?) but it could provide something a cut above the likes of Soju, providing it doesn’t fall into the trap of being a lot like Cosmo.

The other new openings of 2023 are all interesting in their own ways. Jieli Hotpot opened in Sykes’ Paradise in August, just down from Banh Mi QB, continuing to turn that mall into a fascinating little enclave of Vietnamese, Indian, Chinese, Taiwanese and Japanese restaurants (Fluffy Fluffy, offering Japanese pancakes, also opened there in August). Say what you like about John Sykes – say, for example, that he’s Reading’s answer to Henry F. Potter – but you can’t deny that something is afoot in the place formerly known as Kings Walk.

And then last but not least, two other intriguing establishments opened in Reading this year. In August, Filter Coffee House, possibly Reading’s tiniest café, opened on Castle Street offering Indian filter coffee, baked goods (including their already renowned banana buns – somebody hopped on that bandwagon nice and early) and now an interesting range of street food snacks on Saturdays. Watching them go from strength to strength through their thoroughly charming Instagram account has been one of the rays of social media sunshine in the second half of 2023: I plan to go back there and review it properly early in the new year.

And lastly, the new opening that provoked a lot of interest came with barely a month of the year remaining. Masakali, which apparently means “pigeon” in Hindi, opened where San Sicario used to be and offers a menu of Indian dishes not quite like anywhere else in Reading. Some of the dishes would appear to show the influence of Clay’s, some – like a samosa chaat with “Walker’s Crisps” – seem to be sui generis. 

Does the fact that the restaurant is owned by the same people as Reading’s slightly pedestrian Biryani Lounge make it less appealing? How about the fact that the menu has apparently been designed by an external consultancy company who, according to their website, “are always digging up family recipes from moms and grandmas across India”? Your guess is as good as mine: I’ll have a better idea once I’ve reviewed it, before too long I hope. Since writing this, I’ve also discovered that The Coriander Club opened on 6th December in Calcot, also offering what looks like higher end Indian food (their menu was designed by another, different, consultancy company: is this a thing now?)

Aside from that, I suppose there are a few other things to call out from the year. One was that Thames Lido, which at one point was burning through chefs like the U.K. burned through Prime Ministers, made an interesting choice this year by appointing Iain Ganson, formerly of the Bell at Waltham St Lawrence. I’ve always loved Ganson’s food, and I’ve always found the Lido hugely inconsistent, so this will be an interesting one to watch next year. So far the menus I’ve seen look like standard Lido fare, but time will tell whether Ganson spends his time there singing someone else’s tunes or creating his own melodies. Having said, several times, that I wouldn’t go back to the Lido again I guess now I’ll just have to.

And of course, I couldn’t let a round-up of the year pass without noting, again, that this was the year that Clay’s finally got that review in the Guardian, a rave writeup from Grace Dent which managed to capture exactly what makes Reading’s favourite restaurant so very special. I wonder if remembering Nandana’s and Sharat’s food was the final straw that caused her to walk out on I’m A Celebrity? I guess we’ll never know.

The other big closure of the year, of course, was Berkshire Live. It announced that it was closing on 30th November, leaving the Reading Chronicle and, I suppose, Rdg Today as the only conventional news sources in town. Now, you would probably expect me to have a good old pop at Berkshire Live at this point – and believe me, it’s tempting – but really it’s a cause for sadness more than anything. I feel for the journalists who need to find new work, and it’s typical of Reach plc to make people redundant the payday before Christmas. 

But I also think that what Berkshire Live became wasn’t good for anybody – not for people who wanted to read about Reading, not for journalists who surely wanted to write decent copy rather than regurgitating shit from TripAdvisor or solemnly announcing, on Facebook, that Walkers had discontinued beef and onion crisps. Whether you liked the Evening Post or not, you couldn’t deny that it served a community. The website Reach plc turned that into over eight miserable years was a sad parody of what it used to be: I hope everyone involved finds better, more fulfilling jobs in the new year.

And last of all, because I was bound to talk about this before the end, this was the year that Edible Reading turned ten years old. I have gone on about that quite long enough already in a series of articles in August and September, but I’ve been enormously touched that this was another record breaking year on the blog with more readers and page hits than ever before.

I know that I’ve written more reviews this year from London, Maidenhead, Oxford, Bath and Bristol (and yes, even Swindon), so I’m especially heartened that many of the most popular reviews of the year are the ones from further afield. It’s one in the eye for that “you’re meant to be Edible Reading” dullard who pops up in my comments about once a year.

So I am incredibly grateful for that, and for all your support, and for everybody who has read a review, Retweeted a review or commented (even to say “you’re meant to be Edible Reading”). I’m grateful to everybody who’s joined me on a review, or come to a readers’ lunch, or sent me an email to tell me to review somewhere, or thank me for reviewing somewhere.

I am grateful, now more than ever, for every single time someone tells me they put their faith in me and one of my reviews, went somewhere for lunch or dinner and loved it. Just as much as an independent business is moved every time you put your hand in your pocket and support it, an independent blogger is moved every time you vote with your feet and trust his or her recommendations. So thank you very much, for all of that.

Doing this roundup has been a thought-provoking wander through the last twelve months. Things aren’t as bad as they can seem, and for every Grumpy Goat or Cairo Café that closes there is a Minas Café or a Filter Coffee House or a Vesuvio Pizzeria to redress the balance. The battle for the soul of Reading hasn’t been lost yet, however deflating some of the closures can feel, and we can all do our bit.

And in my case, that means getting to some of the many places that opened this year so that, this time next year, I’m not talking about a bunch of places and constantly saying “of course, I’m yet to try it out”. So I will neglect Reading a little less next year, even if I can’t promise to go to Doner & Gyros.

It just remains for me to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas – however you celebrate, whoever you celebrate with and whatever you eat. Personally I’ll be at home in post-Covid isolation with Clay’s At Home warming up on the hob and an enormous amount of chocolate for afters. I’ll be back next Friday with the 2023 Edible Reading Awards, but until then I hope you all have a fantastic, happy festive period. God bless us, every one.

Restaurant review: Noah’s, Bristol

On By ediblereadingIn Reviews1 Comment

I knew a number of things about Noah’s, the newish fish and seafood restaurant that opened in Bristol at the start of May, from the research I did prior to visiting. I knew that it was run by a married couple, Daniel and Joie Rosser, and that their family ran the highly-regarded Scallop Shell just down the road in Bath. I knew that the place was named after their son, who turned one shortly after it opened. I knew that it occupied an iconic site in Bristol which used to double as Sid’s Café in Only Fools And Horses, although I had to admit I didn’t remember that at all. I knew the views out towards Clifton Suspension Bridge were meant to be quite something. And last of all, I knew that it was allegedly right under a flyover.

I didn’t really believe that last one could be true, but it was. It was a bracing half hour walk from our hotel, past M Shed and all the appealing restaurants of Wapping Wharf, and then down a long, unlovely road that ran the full length of Spike Island, until you felt like you were somewhat in the middle of nowhere. It was one of those walks that felt far longer than it was, drab and featureless, and I found myself wishing I’d taken a taxi (if you go to Noah’s, take a taxi). And then, at the end of the rainbow, there was indeed a flyover with Noah’s nestled underneath it, looking beautiful and incongruous.

It was mainly incongruous by virtue of being so beautiful. The outside, all wooden boards, tastefully curving in at the base, looked like the hull of a boat. And that motif continued inside, with big picture windows and portholes, bare wood floors and blue banquettes. It was a gorgeous, serene dining room, wonderfully lit, and managed to be vaguely nautical without ever approaching naff, in itself a considerable achievement. 

We were some of the first customers there at half past twelve and our welcome, from co-owner Joie, was warm and genuine. We took a generously sized table in the middle of the restaurant – the late morning sun was intense through those huge windows – and recovered from the walk, enjoying the space and that feeling of calm. I was concerned for them but I needn’t have been, because over the next couple of hours the place filled up nicely. Although it was an unseasonably warm autumn day I could see from the decking area outside that this place would come into its own again next summer.

One of the many things to like about Noah’s menu is that it changes daily: I had been watching it on their Instagram stories so I knew that it shifted subtly from day to day depending on what the restaurant had in and how they’d decided to cook it. Fish tended to be from Brixham or Newlyn, mussels were from St Austell but the menu always specifies where everything was caught.

Small changes notwithstanding, the spine of the menu remained constant – mains in particular involving either fried fish and chips or grilled fish with either chips or new potatoes. Simple pleasures, especially when done exceptionally well. They also have a very reasonable set lunch (which they offer even at weekends), called the Lock Keeper’s Lunch, which comes with a cup of tea and a teatime set menu which does not. I found that admirable too.

There was just the one meat free starter, which was vegetarian but not vegan, and a couple of fish free mains, one involving chicken and the other with chickpea fritters. So really, you do have to like fish to go to Noah’s or your choice is more limited than Tess Daly’s presenting skills. Starters were either side of the ten pound divide, mains clustered around twenty. I identified my first and second choice of main course, reasoning that I’d be happy with either of them, and then Zoë picked my first choice and somehow I still had FOMO. This happens, I should add, almost without fail.

But first, we had some starters, accompanied by a rehydrating bottle of sparkling mineral water to try and undo the damage from the night before. Bread was from Somerset bakery Lievito, who supply a few Bristol restaurants, and I rather liked it – nicely open-crumbed, although maybe lacking in a satisfactory crust. Giving three slices to a table for two is asking for trouble, though, if you ask me. The anchovy and rosemary butter needed two things, more anchovy and more butter. What there was I liked, but what there wasn’t is what I noticed.

Cod fishcakes were sold by the unit at a reasonable three pounds fifty and Zoë nabbed a couple. I don’t think you can go wrong with salt cod, and these were delicious spheres: from a distance they looked more blond than bronzed but the texture was bang on. Sitting them on a little moat of tomato vinaigrette and topping them with a dab of aioli was a terrific touch, too. My forkful passed too quickly: there wasn’t to be another.

Even better, I thought, were the prawns, plump fleshy commas fried until crispy and positively moreish. This dish was made by the addition of a superb sweet chilli sauce with proper heat, so well balanced that it showed up the shop-bought stuff as sugary, one-dimensional syrup.

My favourite of the starters, though, was all mine: gorgeous smoked sardine fillets loaded on to an airy rectangle of sourdough along with a tomato concasse with capers, all sweetness, acid and bite. Such a superb combination, and a reminder that salt and vinegar is not only the best crisp flavour but also the pairing that perfects so many fish dishes.

As it happens, the day I wrote this I had sardines on toast for lunch, decanted from a tin. Pale imitation doesn’t even begin to do justice to how many miles separate that lunch and this impeccable dish: perhaps I need to check out the Tinned Fish Market.

Mains were reasonably paced, turning up about twenty minutes after we’d dispatched our starters. Zoë had chosen ray wing, beating me to it – ordinarily I find it impossible not to order, when I see it on menus. It was a beautiful specimen, muscular and golden, and they’d presented it with the thinner side up: always the right way to do it, as there’s nothing worse than getting halfway through eating a ray wing, flipping it over and finding the metaphorical thin end of the wedge lying in wait.

From my look through Noah’s menus they tend to serve ray wing one of two ways – the classic, with brown butter and capers, or as a curveball with a curried lentil dal. On paper I prefer the former, but it was the latter on the day we visited and actually I thought it worked pretty well. Zoe let me try a little and using a knife to curl it away from the cartilage, dabbing it with the dal and eating it was a mindful, almost meditative experience. More of that please, as Anton Du Beke has taken to saying on Strictly.

And the dal really was good, although it seemed a bit bet-hedging to serve it with lentils and still give you the choice of chips or new potatoes, both of which made more sense if it had been served with brown butter and capers. Minor quibbles about an excellent dish, and one I very much wished I’d ordered.

I on the other hand had chosen another kind of classic dish: haddock and chips, with tartare sauce and mushy peas. Quintessentially British, many would say, and when done well almost unimprovable. By happy coincidence, yesterday Noah’s announced that it had made the top 5 in the 2024 National Fish & Chip Awards, which is impressive going for a restaurant that has barely been open for six months. So this would be game-changing fish and chips, wouldn’t it? Just look at the photo below: what’s not to like?

Sadly, it turned out there were things not to like. It was a good illustration of how social media isn’t real life, because the ubiquitous flat lay photograph hid a multitude of sins. Looking down from above it seemed as good a portion of fish and chips as you could hope for. And it started well – the batter on top light and frilly, crinkled and crenellated, giving way to firm flakes of fish. But underneath, it was still soggy and oily, that oil glazing the chips in a way that wasn’t enormously pleasant.

And soggy-bottomed fish aside, the chips were not great. You can’t see it in this picture, because they’re entirely obscured by the fillet of haddock, but many of them were strangely grey-edged and unappealing. Plonking the fish on top of the chips is a serving choice, not one I’d personally have taken, but it happened to conceal some slightly manky chips.

They were lacking in crunch and salt, just didn’t have enough of the good stuff and, as I said, had that disconcerting hue. I left just under half of them. That might not bother you, it might be a me thing – I’ve never eaten a crisp I haven’t thoroughly inspected first – but for me if you serve fish and chips and neither of them is spot on, that feels like an elementary mistake (in fairness, Zoë’s chips looked more appetising).

It’s a pity because the tartar sauce, served artfully in a scallop shell, was also well executed. If anything, it was a bit too posh for me – I love the properly vinegary kick of the stuff in a jar, the cheaper the better – but I could appreciate it without necessarily loving it. The mushy peas must have been pretty authentic, because I didn’t fancy them at all. That definitely is me rather than the restaurant: I can handle crushed peas at a push, or pea purée, but when it comes to smushed-up marrowfat I’m very much a disciple of the Church Of Mandelson.

Anyway, in my book the best way to get over a disappointing main, unless you’ve positively taken against a place, is to dive headlong into a great dessert. Noah’s offers three to choose from, along with ice cream or affogato, but we both spotted the chocolate mousse and from that point everything else was an irrelevance. It was huge and outstanding – a dense, thick and indulgent thing with a globe of clotted cream ice cream on top. The ice cream was completely unnecessary, which is not to say I didn’t love it or finish every last morsel.

Although we’d been on the sparkling mineral water throughout, the list of sweet wines and digestifs was too good to swerve. I was very interested in an English amaretto, made by the modishly named E18hteen Gin, but I also spotted a red dessert wine, a tannat no less, that sounded too interesting to miss out on. Red dessert wines are one of my abiding loves in the world of booze – give me a Banyuls and I’m a happy man – but I’d never had one made with tannat before. I’m used to that brooding grape in Uruguayan reds, but what would it be like in a dessert wine?

The answer, it turned out, was stellar: one of the best dessert wines I’ve had in ages, all vanilla and cocoa, perfect with the mousse. “It’s one of my favourites” said our server, “and it really goes with that dessert.” I made a note of the wine, Googled it and wondered just how many bottles to get in for Christmas.

On another day we could have dallied longer and by then I had a full picture of the kind of restaurant Noah’s was – light, tasteful, full of locals and alive with chatter and company. You wouldn’t think this was a restaurant still in its first six months, or that it had such a challenging location. That’s a tribute, I think, to just how well they’ve hit the ground running and the work they’ve put into making sure they have something for everyone. Our bill for three courses, some sparkling water and those dessert wines came to just over a hundred and ten pounds, not including tip.

As so often with reviews of Bristol restaurants, I can’t help putting my Reading hat on and thinking Do we have anything like this? and, because the answer to that question is invariably no, Do I wish we did? The answer to that second question is a resounding yes – I don’t think Reading has ever had anything like Noah’s, and if you tell me we used to have Loch Fyne I would say yes we did, but it was no great shakes.

But other things make Noah’s feel special, too, I’ve seen few restaurants go to so much trouble to find their target market, to appeal to it and to try and hit so many bases without becoming some kind of bloated, all day dining behemoth that forgets what it’s all about. And yet, when I think about Noah’s some more, the one blot on the copybook is that fish and chips. It is such a shame that it wasn’t completely at the top of its game when I went – maybe I got unlucky with the fish, or picked the one day when their potatoes weren’t the best.

But even so I can’t bring myself to knock the rating down too much because literally everything else – the room, the welcome, the menu, those starters, that ray wing, that dessert – was very close to perfect. I ate at Rick Stein’s Seafood Restaurant in Padstow a couple of times earlier this year for my dad’s birthday and it was a lovely experience on each occasion, even if the whole of Padstow is like a Centre Parcs for affluent boomers. And yet, farther from the sea, many miles from the day boats, nestled in the concrete embrace of that incongruous flyover, I reckon Noah’s gives it, and certainly anywhere in Reading, a run for its money.

Noah’s – 8.5
1 Brunel Lock Road, Bristol, BS1 6XS
0117 4529240

https://www.noahsbristol.co.uk