I imagine that you are reading this in the strange hinterland that is the time between Christmas and New Year. Whether you’re working, “working from home but not really” or have the time off, it’s a funny period when days lose their meaning, leftovers become meals, the fridge takes a lot of emptying and the liver takes a lot of punishment. It’s usually one of my favourite times of the year, even if it’s also a strange limbo. If nothing else, it’s the last seven days before I have to at least pretend to want to lose weight.

But if that is you, spare me a thought. Because this year (as you may already know) I’m at home convalescing from an impressively broken arm as I write this – or, rather, dictate it on my MacBook. Which means that my last few weeks have been like the week you’re going through now, and the next few weeks most likely will be too. Except I don’t get to do the socialising or the drinking with reckless abandon, although I still badly need to pretend to want to lose weight. Ideally, I need to genuinely want to lose weight, and not only that but I need to want to enough to actually do it. That’s a challenge at the best of times.

But this period lends itself well to reflection. So there’s no better time to look back on the year drawing to a close and ahead to the year to come. Traditionally, this annual blog post has been a bit gloomy, because ever since the pandemic either restaurants have been closing left right and centre or I’ve been saying “well, it might not have been so bad this year but just wait till next year: next year is going to be dreadful”. It’s always made for a cheery read, don’t you think?

So it might surprise you to find, as it has surprised me, that this year hasn’t been like that at all. I regularly read about London restaurants closing, or read essays from restaurateurs about how Rachel Reeves single-handedly hammered the final nail in their restaurant’s coffin (even though that is staggeringly reductive), but Reading has been weirdly buoyant in 2025. That doesn’t mean we haven’t had our fair share of farewells, but this year that’s been far outweighed by the number of hellos. 

Some newcomers have jumped in the graves of recently departed favourites, but others have opened in sites that have been dormant for some time, or that weren’t previously restaurants at all. Where’s the money coming from? Why are people gambling on this in 2025 of all years, when the consensus seems to be that the dice are loaded against hospitality like never before? 

Search me. That requires the kind of socio-economic analysis you would get from Reading-on-Thames, not me. I just report the stuff, so with that in mind let’s have a look at this year’s comings and goings, to see if we can make any sense of it all. What’s the worst that can happen?