The service, food and experience as provided by the supper rooms was outstanding, the customers sat near to me were not typical of the softly spoken guests at other nearby tables and I have to say they were perhaps a little below par for such a well tailored experience.
A selection of quotes from the most verbose fellow at the next table, overheard inbetween the sombre aubergine ceiling, loud floral-print wallpaper, dizzying geometric pink diamond-design carpet, and flamboyant floral chandeliers In Colleys supper rooms.
the journey was crap… …Lynne can’t come because she has a hangover…
Tottenham have a brilliant mid-fielder from Barcelona…
tuck your nape in…
we don’t know what they are (to the waiter about the starter list)
You’ll be alright if you keep your mouth shut, Lynne doesn’t think I’ll be able to keep my mouth shut…
I’d never go to Moscow again, its crazy, its not like Spain or Greece, its crazy, all the words are like squares the only things I understood was Macdonalds and even that was squares. (about a trip to watch a football match)
Loch Fyne is a chain of fish restaurants that has a premisis in downtown Reading on the banks of the river Kennet. Loch Fyne restaurants serve only line-caught fish.
Excellent.
Bangladeshi restaurant in Earley, Reading.
Dressed in white shirts and black neatly ironed trousers the Garden of Gulab staff welcomed me into their restaurant and were able to find a table for one in the crowded restaurant. The customers looked and sounded pale skinned English, the staff looked and sounded more Asian.
My choice was a Balti. I love Balti’s, ever since I started eating them in the mid 1980s in a local Birmingham Sparkbrook restaurant on Ladypool Road. The Ladypool road restaurant I used had no flatware and the staff would treat you as if you were an irritant if you had the afrontery to insult their food by asking for flatware. I learned to eat my food properly, with my fingers.
It’s not easy.
In the Garden of Gulab I ate my meal with my fingers leaving the impressive, superfluous, traditional English flatware untouched. In Birmingham I was given a thick soft damp heated flanel to clean my hands after the meal. In the Garden of Gulab I was given an individually plastic-wrapped disposable wet-paper-wipe. Functionally sufficient yet lacking the touch of quality that I had learned to enjoy. The food was excellent if disappointingly mild compared to my Birminghan experiences. The balti arrived in an ordinary metal dish, not the sizzling hot Balti bowl that it had been cooked in.
Mumzie doesn’t like Indian food, I think she’d thoroughly enjoy this place and the food.
The waiter bought a complimentary small brandy to my table explaining it was because I had finished my main meal quickly.
Excellent English-i-fied version of an Indian restaurant and charming staff.
customer: what is blue cheese souflee?
French Waiter: …..
The Great Western Hotel in Reading has been re-branded to a Malmaison Hotel. This style appears to be referred to as ‘chic boutique’. Judging by the internal decor boutique chic means purple velvet furnishings, lashings of pink, large-swirly-print dark-wallpaper and an angular-geometric floor covering all held together with elevator music and a hint of stale cigarette smoke.
According to the Malmaison-branded paper-wrappers on the Napkins: Malmaison. Eats. Drinks. Sleeps.
This sounded uninspiringly basic
I tried the eggs benedict, or rather egg benedict, just the one egg and half a muffin. The ‘eats’ were not impressing me, the ‘drinks’ didn’t include any real ales. Apart from myself the only other customers in the bar on this Saturday afternoon were a couple of Hotel guests from the romantic together while speaking in Dutch. After trying the ’sleeps’ while waiting about 15 minutes for any member of the Bar staff to actually come into the bar I gave-up on the ambition of eating a pudding and walked into the boutique reception area to ask if they could arrange to bring me my bill (US = check).
It was unisnpiringly basic
However, all of that said, I do have it on good authority that they have a fabulous suite with an en-suite train-set that is mumzie-impressingly-good. I may have to get a second, mumzie, opinion on this. Certainly I can see how a train-set is in keeping with the original, pre-boutique, Great Western Railway (GWR) branding…
Luckily, the chic boutique rebranding hasn’t yet spread to the external original architecture that conveys something of the original standing of the GWR.
Teatro Zinzanni, a show called ‘dinner and dreams’. After a poor start to the evening the performance was colourful and fun, the food was interesting and tasty. A very good evening. 
:-)
Ratings explained
Apparantly they were expecting us the week before we turned up. They didn’t have our reservations. I had a confrimation number and when I subsequently checked their confirmation email had not cited the day of the performance. I was sure I’d stated the right night when booking, they were sure I’d stated a week before my parents arrived.
Mum looked upset, dad looked anxious, the tent looked dark and sumptuous.
I asked if they could fit us in. They waited until all the expected guests had turned up and then found 3 places for us. It took the shine off the beginning of the evening. That they were able to let us see the performance despite this misunderstanding was very much appreciated. That there was room for this misunderstanding was not good. Mum and Dad laughed through the evening of bawdy jokes and Vaudevillian sketches.
Mum really liked the original theatre tent with bevelled glass windows. Both parents had trouble reading the menu in the very dim candle light or hearing the waiters above the general noise of the tent. The wine supplied with the meal was outrageously expensive and the corkage fee (if you bring your own wine) was less, but still, outrageous ($30).
Nonetheless, the whole experience of the evening is worth paying for, once.
