Edible Reading
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Edible Reading
@ediblereading.bsky.social
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Reading's only restaurant blog, as featured in the Sunday Times and the Mail On Sunday. New reviews on Fridays at 12pm.
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ediblereading.bsky.social
UPDATED on the blog, my city guide to Bruges has been expanded with new venues and new commentary after my most recent visit. Hope you enjoy it! #Bruges

ediblereading.com/2024/04/05/c...
City guide: Bruges and Ghent (updated 2025)
The Bruges section of this guide has been further updated after two more visits to Bruges in January and October 2025 – I’ve added quite a few new venues, and removed one which has now …
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November 8, 2025 at 10:28 AM
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NEW REVIEW! This week it’s Mac’s Deli, which may just do Reading’s best burger. On an industrial estate.

ediblereading.com/2025/10/31/c...
Café review: Mac’s Deli
What were you doing when you were 21? If you’re a regular reader of this blog I imagine that. like me, you’ll have to cast your mind back to answer that question. In this sense I envy the gen…
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October 31, 2025 at 12:08 PM
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NEW REVIEW! This week, a proper curveball: has Reading acquired a new top notch Indian restaurant without even noticing? The closest thing Britain has to an unmasked Michelin inspector seems to think so, so I went to investigate.

ediblereading.com/2025/10/24/r...
Restaurant review: Club India
This week’s review partly came about because of a gentleman called Andy Hayler. Now, you might not know who Hayler is, but in terms of food he’s something of a phenomenon. The shadowy w…
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October 24, 2025 at 11:05 AM
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NEW REVIEW! This week - who has the most batshit menu in Reading? What do shark bites taste like? And what has Gilmore Girls got to do with anything? All these questions and more are answered, on a visit to brand new restaurant Stop & Taste.

ediblereading.com/2025/10/17/r...
Restaurant review: Stop & Taste
The biggest trend in Reading’s food scene this year has been the proliferation of pizza places – Paesinos, Zí Tore, Amò and Peppito, all opening in the space of five months. In the spac…
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October 17, 2025 at 4:15 PM
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NEW REVIEW! This week, an unmitigated delight of a meal at an almost-perfect pub, ushering in autumn in the best possible way.

ediblereading.com/2025/10/10/p...
Pub review: The Three Tuns, Henley
Can you believe it’s the best part of a decade since I reviewed anywhere in Henley? I didn’t realise that until I sat down to write this review, and I was so surprised that I thought it was a mista…
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October 10, 2025 at 11:08 AM
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NEW REVIEW! This week, a visit to a restaurant beloved by hospitality insiders but not talked about elsewhere, and a meditation on dying breeds of restaurants, and whether that’s a good thing or not. Hope you like it.

ediblereading.com/2025/10/03/r...
Restaurant review: Ciao Bella, Bloomsbury
Family-run trattoria Ciao Bella is at the top of Lamb’s Conduit Street, not far from the British Museum. These days that street is about as affluent as they come, home to the original branch …
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October 3, 2025 at 11:18 AM
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NEW REVIEW! How much choice is too much choice, how little is not enough and should restaurants really be allowed to describe their own dishes as famous? This week, I head off to try and answer these questions, mostly by eating a lot of steak. It’s a hard life.

ediblereading.com/2025/09/26/p...
Pub review: The Chester Arms, Oxford
The concept of choice in restaurants, I’ve always thought, brings out the inner Goldilocks. Too wide a menu and paralysis sets in, but if it’s too narrow you can’t help feeling straitjacketed. It’s…
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September 26, 2025 at 11:08 AM
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NEW POST! Bit of a labour of love, this one, but today you get my Oviedo city guide - the lowdown on where to eat and drink in this incredible (but relatively uncelebrated) city. Hope you like it.

ediblereading.com/2025/09/23/c...
City guide: Oviedo
If you find yourself deciding to spend a city break in Oviedo, as I did, in the run-up to your holiday you will invariably be asked in the same question by everybody you tell. Where? they will all …
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September 23, 2025 at 12:15 PM
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NEW REVIEW! Notes is the first shiny new business to open on Station Hill, and is the small coffee chain’s first branch outside London. Is it a sign of exciting new things? #rdguk

ediblereading.com/2025/09/19/c...
Café review: Notes Coffee
Zoë and I were in town the Monday before our holiday, we’d finished all our errands and there was time to fit in lunch somewhere before taking the bus home to face the mountain of ironing and…
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September 19, 2025 at 11:15 AM
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NEW REVIEW! This week, as everyone comes back from their holidays I go in search of a little piece of Greece, on West Street. #rdguk

ediblereading.com/2025/09/05/c...
Café review: Mon Chéri Café & Bakery
For childfree people like me, the tail end of August is possibly when you most keenly feel the disconnect between you and the rest of the world. At work everyone’s back from their holidays, p…
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September 5, 2025 at 11:10 AM
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NEW REVIEW! This week, the last Bank Holiday before Christmas offers a perfect opportunity to celebrate summer - which is not over - with quite possibly the nicest lunch I’ve had all year. Hope you like this one.

ediblereading.com/2025/08/29/r...
Restaurant review: The French House, Soho
It would be easy to envy London-based restaurant reviewers, I think. Just imagine having such a broad canvas, such an embarrassment of riches, every kind of restaurant at every level, from the plus…
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August 29, 2025 at 11:17 AM
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NEW REVIEW! This week, it’s the turn of chain opening Cosy Club. The local paper likes it, our influencers like it… but what’s it like when you’re actually paying for food there? Only one way to find out. #rdguk

ediblereading.com/2025/08/22/r...
Restaurant review: Cosy Club
On paper at least, you wouldn’t expect me to think much of Cosy Club. It’s Reading’s second significant chain opening of the year, following Rosa’s Thai back in January. Like Rosa’s Thai, Cos…
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August 22, 2025 at 11:09 AM
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NEW REVIEW! This week, a bloody lovely meal and one of the best tortillas money can buy. Hope you like this one.

ediblereading.com/2025/08/15/r...
Restaurant review: Arbequina, Oxford
Late last Saturday morning I was sitting outside Missing Bean on Turl Street with my great friend Jerry, drinking a gorgeous latte in the summer sun, about to tuck into a pain au chocolat with impe…
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August 15, 2025 at 11:15 AM
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NEW REVIEW! This week I head to rebranded wine bar Vino Vita for what was comfortably the worst meal I've had in ages. I hope it's more fun to read than it was to eat...

ediblereading.com/2025/08/08/r... #rdguk
Restaurant review: Vino Vita
Last year, in one of the more baffling developments in Reading’s food and drink scene, wine bar Veeno changed its name to Vino Vita. It wasn’t initially clear whether this was because the people ru…
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August 8, 2025 at 11:12 AM
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NEW REVIEW! This week, one of the highest ratings I have ever awarded for one of the best meals I've had in the course of 12 years writing this blog. Hope you enjoy it!

ediblereading.com/2025/08/01/r...
Restaurant review: RAGÙ, Bristol
I was on a run of bad luck when we turned up for dinner at RAGÙ, situated in a shipping container in Wapping Wharf, on the last night of our trip to Bristol. It’s not that I hadn’t eate…
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August 1, 2025 at 11:16 AM
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NEW REVIEW! This week, it's the turn of Tanatan: they've taken the spot on London Street that used to be home to Clay's Hyderabadi Kitchen, but how do they compare to their town centre peers? #rdguk

ediblereading.com/2025/07/25/r...
Restaurant review: Tanatan
Some restaurants wind up so indelibly linked with the buildings that become their homes that years later, long after they are gone, you still can’t imagine another menu outside, someone else …
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July 25, 2025 at 11:12 AM
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NEW REVIEW! This week I take on one of *the* hot restaurants to open this year. Coren, Dent, Parker Bowles and Rayner have already gone to Town, but does it live up to all the hype? Only one way to be sure...

ediblereading.com/2025/07/18/r...
Restaurant review: Town, Covent Garden
Town – or, as it’s sometimes written, TOWN – is the hot new restaurant on Drury Lane, with celebrated chef Stevie Parle in the kitchen. It’s been open a couple of months, and has alread…
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July 18, 2025 at 11:14 AM
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NEW REVIEW! What are restaurants for, if it isn’t just serving up nice food? And what happens when they forget their purpose? These questions may be covered in this week’s review…

ediblereading.com/2025/07/11/r...
Restaurant review: Snobby’s, Bristol
Snobby’s, a wine bar and Italian small plates spot in Redland, has everything going for it, on paper. It is on one of Bristol’s most decorated gastronomic streets, opposite the critically acclaimed…
ediblereading.com
July 11, 2025 at 11:19 AM
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NEW REVIEW! Reading has acquired two new authentic pizzerias in the space of three months, two doors apart. Paesinos, the older of the two, is great - but could even newer Amò be even better? #rdguk

ediblereading.com/2025/07/04/r...
Restaurant review: Amò Italian Street Food
In the good old days, where you stood on certain binary debates was simply a way of positioning you in the world. Cream first or jam first? Plain or milk chocolate Bounty? Cheese and onion or salt …
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July 4, 2025 at 11:11 AM
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NEW REVIEW! This week, after eleven long years, I revisit Pau Brasil, Katesgrove’s venerable institution. How much has changed in that time, for it or for me? #rdguk

ediblereading.com/2025/06/27/c...
Café review: Pau Brasil
It was a muggy Saturday, the longest day of the year in fact, the mercury was nudging close to 30 degrees and, sipping my mocha outside C.U.P., I felt like the Only Living Boy In The Ding. Scrollin…
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June 27, 2025 at 11:05 AM
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NEW REVIEW! This week, in search of craft beer and small plates in a location that may well surprise you...

ediblereading.com/2025/06/20/p...
Pub review: The Drink Valley, Old Town, Swindon
Devizes Road is about a thirty minute walk from Swindon’s unlovely train station, a building with a whiff of the gulag about it. Or you can take a bus, which winds its way uphill and will get…
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June 20, 2025 at 11:10 AM
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NEW REVIEW! This week jerk chicken, fishcakes and rum punch at Reading newcomers Dolphin’s Caribbean Bar & Kitchen. Reading has a huge Bajan community, so why has it never had a proper Caribbean restaurant? Is Dolphin’s the answer? #rdguk

ediblereading.com/2025/06/13/r...
Restaurant review: Dolphin’s Caribbean Restaurant & Bar
Believe it or not, some restaurants have opened in Reading this year that aren’t pizza restaurants. Granted, so far the culinary landscape has been dominated by Paesinos, Amò, Zi’Tore a…
ediblereading.com
June 14, 2025 at 10:54 AM
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NEW REVIEW! Are any of Reading's new pizza restaurants going to help ease the pain of losing local institution Sarv's Slice? I went to the first of the intake to open, Paesinos, to investigate - and I took a secret weapon with me. #rdguk

ediblereading.com/2025/06/06/r...
Restaurant review: Paesinos
Here’s a tip for you: if you want to discover how many Italians live in Reading just drop innocuously into conversation online, on a local Facebook page or the Reading subreddit, the question…
ediblereading.com
June 6, 2025 at 11:24 AM
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One more plug for the new review - a celebration of friendship, French food and... perfume shopping? at Bristol's Lapin:

ediblereading.com/2025/05/30/r...
May 31, 2025 at 12:29 PM
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NEW REVIEW! This week, I try out French food and basically admit to being part of something a little like the Freemasons, kind of. Hope you enjoy this one!

ediblereading.com/2025/05/30/r...
Restaurant review: Lapin, Bristol
This might come as a surprise to you – probably not – but for the best part of the last fifteen years my friends and I have regularly taken part in something called Poncefest. Nope, not…
ediblereading.com
May 30, 2025 at 11:10 AM