wendy house

Eating out in downtown Reading (Berks, UK) is sometimes yummy and othertimes not quite so yummy.  Depending on the event, ambience, service, company, and sometimes even the food.  With a few notable excpetions (Loch Fyne, Wetherspoons, Yo Sushi) this review list covers restaurants with local uniqueness rather than corporatised chain eateries.   

Hero Worship.   Realised genius, lets do it again,  and again,  and again.  There’s a stong risk that Wendy’s planning a proposal.

None yet…

Gorgeous.  Oh!  that was good for me.  Expect this review to include a bit of gushing because the work has genius potential

Colleys supper rooms (Cemetery Junction) Outstanding anytime and excelling for Sunday lunch with friends and family.
Colleys website   
Blog post
Full meal with tipple price range £17 – £30 
Wendy visits 15 times per year

Global Cafe (London Street) for a Thursday evening Ethiopian buffet with friends, or alone.  The food is locally produced, organic, fair traded, GM free and tastes darn good. The cafe is part of the Reading International Solidarity Centre (RISC).  It is a friendly small venue with a meeting room above that is used by organisations like amnesty international.
Glodal cafe website 
No blog post yet
Full meal with tipple price range £10 – 15
Wendy visits 10 times per year

Lovelly.  Simply world class talent.  Easily recommended and probably even remembered,  which given my scattiness is a major achievement

Lyndhurst (London Road) for a Sunday evening light meal before the Quiz
Reading Restaurants.com website review   
Blog post 
Full meal with tipple price range £10 – £20
Wendy visits 15 times per year

Nags Head (Russel Street) for Sunday lunch alone or with friends.  A traditional ‘no frills’ pub with a piano stacked with games,  lino floor, rough wooden tables and chairs.  Excellent music. Good English comfort food and they don’t tax your brain with a huge range of menu choices.  Hoorah!  A full Sunday lunch for £6 and a choice of 12 real ales 
Nag’s Head website
Blog post
Full meal with tipple price range £7 – £10
Wendy visits 10 times per year

Warwick arms with friends or alone for a cheap and cheerful Thai meal in an wonderful atmosphere,  they have lots of ‘offers’ available on different days like 2 main courses for the price of one or a free bottle of wine with 2 meals.  The staff are very obliging and there is very good internet access.  The Thai food tastes like an English version than something authentic. 
Listings in pub and restaurant guide websites are out of date   
No blog post yet
Full meal with tipple price range £10 – 20
Wendy visits 10 times per year

Darn good.  Like a pint of well kept real Ale from a cask in good company,  or a Sunday morning reading a broadsheet in bed with the fluff-balls snoring nearby

London Street Brasserie (London Street) with friends, family, or alone for Saturday lunch.  A small quaint building on the edge of the Oracle offense of a chain-store shopping black hole,  with outside seating along the River Kennet.  The food is good if perhaps a bit overpriced, I pay for the downtown convienience, atmosphere and good serivce.  The other customers are varied but tend to be people over 30 years in family groups included a dash or two of wrinklies.  They look like they probable watch ‘Grand Designs’ and have just escaped from a trip to the Oracle. I take the biddies there after a dose of downtown Reading.  The kitchen staff huddle on the kitchen-steps out back to smoke their cigarettes.
London Street Brasserie website 
Blog post
Full meal with tipple price range £20 – £50
Wendy visits 12 times per year

China Palace (Oxford Road) for a long Saturday afternoon lunch ideal for family eating.  People that look like chinese people chatter in a friendly, busy atmosphere.  The tables are large and the decor is beautiful.    I got a bit confused by the menu on my first few visits and the wait staff were a bit dismissive as they told me that I couldn’t order the combinations that I’d asked for.  I made 3 ordering mistakes.  But once you’ve got the hang of it,  its wonderful!
China Palace website
No blog post yet
Full meal with tipple price range £20 – £40 
Wendy visits 4 times per year

Forburys (Forbury Square) for a Sunday lunch with friends and family.  French food and the staff also sound French.  They recognise me and smile,  they’ve learned where I like to sit.  The food varies from outstandingly excellent to rather too chewy.  White table-clothes and white linen serviettes.  Presentational quality is excellent.  I normally drop in for their set-meal market lunch at the weekend.  They have few other guests,  the quiet, quality, atmosphere is lovelly.  Other guests are often couples who look over 50 years. 
Forbury’s website   
No blog post yet
Full meal with tipple price range £20 – £60
Wendy visits 8 times per year

Loch Fyne (The Maltings, Bear wharf) for meeting with an old friend, or eating line caught seafood in the company of none-meat eaters.  Staff are polite and smiley with an undercurrent of coorporate anonymity.
Loch Fyne website   
Blog post
Full meal with tipple price range £30- £50
Wendy visits 4 times per year

Mining required.  Get your spade out,  if you are prepared to put the effort into digging for it you’ll find some virtue buried somewhere in this

Carluccios (Forbury Square) doesn’t really work for a person alone.  The architecture makes the inside overly noisey,  in 4 visits my presents has not been noticed by the wait-staff before I’ve had to actively seek their attention.  
Carluccios website 
No blog post yet
Full meal with tipple price range £ (to be checked)
Wendy visited 4  times last year, not planning to go again

Earley cafe (Wokingham road) small often crowded cafe that sells things with chips and English breakfasts.  The clientelle include a lot of students and a range of other locals.  The food is cheap and ok,  the internet access is available but limited table space for the laptop makes the experience a bit sub-par.  
No apparent web presence
blog post
Full meal with tea price range £5 – £10
Wendy visits 5 times last year, not planning to go again

Miah’s Garden of Gulab (Wokingham Road) great service with food aimed at people who’s taste’s don’t run to real Indian food,  way too mild with very traditional English delivery.
Miah’s website 
Blog post
Full meal with tipple price range £15 – £30
Wendy visited once

Picnics (Butter Market) for a coffee and a snack to compensite for a shopping expedition. A very small place, their food is local, home-made and tasty.  This would get better rating if the seating space was improved,  it really only works for take-out food but got a mention in this list because the food is good and its so much better than a chain like Starbucks or Costa
Review on an independent coffee shops website   
Blog post 
Full meal with tipple price range £ (to be checked)
Wendy visits 6 times per year

Sweeney Todd’s (Castle Streeet) with friends or alone for a pint and a pie.  The restaurant is like a pub and hidden behind the front of a pie-shop.  The airconditioners rumble and rattle an accompaniment to your dinner conversation.  The choice of pies is outstanding and quality of pie is tastiness supreme.   The staff are conderfully non-corporate.  Swish is not a word that describes them.  The pies are the highlight of the restaruant and these can be purchased in the Nags Head on a friday night.
Telegraph review,  listing in Reading restaurants.com
No blog post yet
Full meal with tipple price range £ (to be checked)
Wendy visited 3 times per year not planning another visit

Yo Sushi (The Oracle House of Fraser) I grew to love Sushi while living in Seattle and seek out opportunities for Sushi in England.  This is probably good Sushi for England but rather overpriced with a dull poor delivery compared to my Seattle experience.
Yo Sushi website 
No blog post yet
Full meal with tipple price range £ (to be checked)
Wendy visits 6 times per year.

Why?  Even lashings of tea and biscuits couldn’t make this work

Zero Degrees (Bridge Street) wobbly bare tables in an echoing hall that seats 130 people.  Often crowded with people celebrating stuff.  The wait-staff look harried and are often slow.  During my first visit I was the only person there,  there were 4 waitstaff talking amongst themselves,  yet I had to leave my table and walk up to them to ask to be served.  The food is good when it eventually arrives but the Beer is ‘fashion ale’ over quality brew.  I’ve not had a good pint there yet and there is no choice because its all from this brewery.  Even the US Microbreweries that rarely served ales were better than this. 
Zero Degrees website 
No blog post yet
Full meal with tipple price range £ can’t remember
Wendy visits 3 times per year because people arrange events there

Wince making.  What were they thinking?  Walk away now

Back of Beyond. Wetherspoons (Kings Street) need I say more?  Cheap beer, cheep food, lots of space with all the ambience of a marital breakdown.  The advertised free wireless is virtually impossible has poor strength and frankly I felt uncomfortable taking out my laptop in this pub.   Redeeming factors are a reasonable range of ok beers and a pub quiz on a Wednesdays.
Back of Beyond website  
No blog post yet 
Full meal with tipple price range £5 – £10
Wendy visited about 6 times before persuading friends to use the Warwick arms instead

Upin Arms.  (London Road) Dark, loud, cheap, decorated in some form of chique boutique-i-ness, full of students, sticky-tables and staff that look harried.  My table wobblied, was knocked by a pool-player which resulted in the full pint making a dash for the floor.  The nice student offered to buy me a replacement.  Good place to eavesdrop and people watch.  Decent portion food which is fine for the price.
Review in Reading pub guide lisitngs 
No blog post yet 
Full meal with tipple price range £5 – £10
Wendy visits about 2 times a year out of sheer scattiness

Thow the phone down.   Icky, icky, icky,  could prompt a minor tantrum involving some small hand-held household item hitting the floor with a little more speed then naturally supplied by gravity

none yet

No.  It’s just wrong,  so wrong.  Turn around an walk away before anything valuable like sanity or toothbrush gets broken

Nico’s (Butter Market). Don’t let the cute exterior, conventient location and table clothes lure you in. On two of the different visits I burn’t my mouth on the food in a manner that I’ve only experienced with badly microve-heated food. The wine tated like ribena with a dash of neat alcohol, all served with a surliness normally only produced by pre-exam teenagers. 
No obvious website presence   
No blog post yet
Full meal with tipple price range £10 – £25
Wendy has visited 4 times,  I blame optimisim

Don’t touch this,  lest it be contagious or induce severe fits followed by sudden brain death

Kebabish. Fast food take away (London Road) specialises in Kebabs and suspected food poisoning.  24 hours of painful gut wrenching followed the experience.
No obvious website presence 
No blog post yet 
Full meal with tipple price range -  irrelevant