Restaurant review: Storia, Maidenhead

On October 11, 2024October 11, 2024 By ediblereadingIn Reviews2 Comments

Six years ago I wrote a piece on the blog, a listicle really, talking about the five things Reading still badly needed. Don’t worry, I won’t send you scurrying off to read it, but the tl:dr version is that, back in 2018, I thought Reading was still missing a proper cooked breakfast place, a tapas restaurant, a gelataria, a cafe that was simultaneously comfy, did good coffee and good food and, for want of a better expression, a “special occasion restaurant”.

Without going into detail, I personally would say that in the intervening six years we haven’t got a great deal closer to having any of those things. But that’s not why we’re talking about Storia in Maidenhead this week: we’re talking about Storia because when I posted about this on Facebook a couple of weeks ago somebody commented saying that, in addition, Reading was lacking a decent independent Italian restaurant. And that comment stopped me in my tracks because – you know what? – that person was right.

Granted, away from the town centre you have the likes of Vesuvio out west and Papa Gee north of the river. And in town you do have pizza options, in the shape of Sarv’s Slice and Zia Lucia. But the demise of Pepe Sale earlier in the year does mean that, for the first time in a very long time, all the Italian restaurants in the town centre are chains: the likes of Zizzi, Carluccio’s and Bella Italia have a stranglehold on central Reading. And the more recent trend of pasta specialists, starting in London with the likes of Padella and Bancone and now cropping up elsewhere, like Little Hollows in Bristol, has also passed Reading by completely: no, town’s short-lived dalliance with Coco Di Mama really doesn’t count.

The one exception, arguably, is Mama’s Way. But although I love it I’m not sure that a restaurant with a capacity of half a dozen (and I’m being generous) is really even in the same ballpark as what we lost when Pepe Sale closed. And the closest thing I can think of to Pepe Sale is miles away to the west – Newbury’s Mio Fiore is a downright lovely spot, but that can be a half hour train journey.

No, that person commenting on my Facebook post was spot on – it’s a big gap in the market in Reading, and it’s striking that nobody has rushed to fill it. Perhaps in the fullness of time Zi Tore, which is going to take over the Grumpy Goat’s site on Smelly Alley, will redress the balance. But it’s hard to get excited about a place boasting Italian street food when the last place to attempt that shtick was Wolf. So this week I decided to check out Maidenhead’s Storia, which had been recommended to me by more than one reader of the blog, in the company of my good friend Jerry (regular readers will be pleased to hear that his digestive issues are now a thing of the past).

The strange thing is that Maidenhead already has a perfectly acceptable if unexciting Italian restaurant in the shape of Sauce and Flour. And Storia is a stone’s throw from that, literally two minutes’ walk away. Not for the first time on a visit to Maidenhead I wondered it if was just rubbing it in that it had some of the things Reading still lacked. Tapas bar El Cerdo was testament to that, as were our very enjoyable pre-dinner drinks at A Hoppy Place. I even had to walk past a branch of Coppa Club on my way to Storia, although that’s maybe less enviable.

That said, Storia is independent but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a chain. It’s the only Berkshire outpost of a group of six restaurants, with others scattered across Surrey, Hertfordshire and, randomly, the edge of Essex. I think that showed in the polish of the place when we arrived – it’s a handsome building which was welcoming from the off and the service was very slick. It was a grown-up space, too, quite classy with good use of mirrors and lighting to make up for what I imagine, in daytime, is a relative lack of natural light.

The tables along the walls were the ones you really wanted, all plush banquettes, but actually I didn’t mind missing out on those because our generous-sized table gave us a great view of the big and buzzing dining room. The whole thing had a feel of affluent happiness about it. It was Friday night, the weekend had arrived and Storia was going to do its damnedest to make sure people thoroughly enjoyed it.

There was very little to dislike about the menu but, simultaneously, I was surprised by how unexciting it was. Storia plays it safe with a menu that very much replicates the likes of Coppa Club down the way with very little sign of quirk or anything especially regional: half a dozen starters, a “raw” section made of up carpaccio and a strangely conspicuous ceviche, some pasta dishes, half a dozen pizzas and as many secondi.

I found it disappointing that all the pasta dishes were priced, and presumably sized, as main courses only – which again, felt more like the stuff of the bigger chain restaurants. And pricing also felt very conventionally done: starters around ten pounds, everything else between fifteen and twenty.

It made me wonder, not for the last time that evening, whether I was just jaded. Because I saw loads of things I could eat but nothing I was dying to try, and that in turn made me think about San Sicario, which closed last year, and what a terrible pity that was. And it also made me think of the interesting, resolutely all-Italian wine lists at San Sicario and Pepe Sale: would they have been seen dead having, as Storia did, an Argentinian Malbec, a Chablis and a Rioja on there?

We ordered a bottle of Valpolicella at £42. They brought a posher bottle by mistake, one twenty pounds more expensive, and I just managed to stop them before they opened it. Our wine was quite nice, but throughout the meal I wondered what the costlier one would have been like.

Jerry loved his starter – a sardine bruschetta with two filleted sardines perched on a pile of roasted peppers and aubergine, punchy with harissa. It was a riot of colour, and ironically one of the best things about it was the bread – properly golden and grilled, the perfect vessel. I got to try a bit and I liked the sardines a lot – in fairness I always do – but the rest of the dish felt a little incongruous, like an attempt to do something North African rather than the more obvious caponata. I quite enjoyed it, but it made me crave caponata more than anything.

“I’m in Lisbon towards the end of the year. Would you like me to bring you back a couple of tins of sardines?”

“That would be marvellous!” beamed Jerry.

My starter was the best thing I ate all evening. Storia’s calamari was very, very good – fresh, not bouncy, with a crispy, craggy coating which felt like it had some polenta flour in the mix. The whole thing was lightly scattered with red chilli and the decision to serve it with black garlic aioli rather than its more prosaic sibling was an excellent one, even if the smear slightly detracted from the undeniable visual appeal. It made me wish that Storia did a fritto misto, or perhaps it made me wish that Storia was the kind of restaurant that had fritto misto on its menu.

The secondi on Storia’s menu, I’m sorry to say, are really stuff. Forget your lamb rump, your saltimbocca or your suckling pig, because you won’t find them here. Instead there’s a chicken Milanese, a grilled chicken breast dish with marsala, a couple of fish dishes, steak and a risotto. I suspect that, rather than a craving for carbs, is what sent Jerry and I scuttling for the pizza and pasta.

Jerry absolutely adored his pizza salsiccia, a very well-trodden combo of salami, ‘nduja, chilli and basil. Again, he was kind enough to let me try some and I had to agree that it was a very solid effort. Slightly better than Zia Lucia’s – and a darned sight less wet and floppy – and not quite as good as the finest examples from Sarv’s Slice. A bit wayward with the toppings and with a lot of crust, crust that wasn’t quite as puffy, airy or leopard-spotted as the very best examples.

It was a nice pizza, and if I ate in Storia again I might well order one. It was not, however, as good as the one you can get in Knead, a five minute walk away.

I’ve saved possibly the most disappointing until last. When it comes to pasta, I often find myself ordering a carbonara these days. There are probably two reasons for that. One is that it’s a very good benchmark and a sign of whether a kitchen knows its stuff: does it come out glorious and golden, or closer to the magnolia horror of Cozze? But an even better reason – durr! – is that when it’s good it’s one of the happiest, most comforting things you can eat. And now there was a nip in the air I found myself drawn to it, far more than some chicken and pesto concoction that had a whiff of Prezzo about it or a conchiglie dish with yet more of that harissa.

It could have lived up to that promise, and nearly did. The taglioni were beautifully al dente and toothsome, so easy to anchor with a spoon and swirl with a fork, capturing all the sauce you needed. The sauce was good stuff – no adulteration with cream or egg whites here – and topping it with a strip of crispy pancetta was a nice touch, if an obvious one.

But the other star of the show is guanciale, and it needed to be crispy nuggets of the stuff that disrupted all that unctuousness (I mean that in its true sense, by the way) with spikes of smokey salt. And this was underdone, a bit too bouncy, a bit too fatty, falling short. If this dish had been the platonic ideal of a carbonara the rating at the bottom would probably have been a whole point higher and I would be making plans to return before Christmas. But it wasn’t, so the search goes on.

We nearly ordered dessert, but we were that terrible combination of not hungry enough and not fussed enough. But we were having a lovely time, and we had wine left, so we did the next best thing and ordered coffee, just to keep the evening alive that little bit longer. Latte came in a walled glass and was really surprisingly good, so much better than I thought it would be.

Like my old friend, it was sweet without a hint of bitterness, and it made for the perfect end to a brilliant evening. The food had facilitated that, but never even threatened to upstage it; although in fairness I expect I could have a wonderful time with Jerry eating doner meat off a bin lid. Anyway, our meal came to just over a hundred pounds, not including tip: the service very much deserved a tip, so tip we did.

As I said earlier on, I wonder whether I am just jaded about the kind of thing Storia does, even though Storia does it very well indeed. If you want a mid-range, casual dining Italian meal which isn’t going to offend or disappoint anybody, some of which will be good and some of which will be quite nice, you can go to Storia and it will deliver exactly that.

On a good day, so will Coppa Club I imagine, or Zia Lucia. On a good day, Jamie’s Italian used to manage that too. Is that enough? I suppose for many people it will be, and if Storia does that, without fail, time and again, it will no doubt build up a happy and loyal customer base and do extremely well – as it has, I suspect, in Tring and Radlett, in Redhill and Shepperton. History has taught us that there’s definitely a place for that kind of thing.

I guess what Storia reminded me of, strangely, is Strada – remember Strada? – back when Strada only had two branches, before it was possessed by the dread spirit of private equity and went the way some promising small restaurants do. As I think I’ve said before, I used to go to the one in Richmond with an old friend of mine, long since lost in the mists of divorce, and I always loved it. I came away, every single time, wishing Reading had one.

But when it did, it was no longer the Strada I loved but just Zizzi with a different colour scheme. Storia isn’t that, yet it wouldn’t take a lot of imagination to see how it could get there. And maybe that’s what they’re aiming for – I hope not, but everybody needs to make money. Especially nowadays when the bastard stuff seems to be so very thin on the ground.

So it’s not Storia, it’s me. If you’re like me, you would probably enjoy your meal there. But if you’re anything like me, Storia might also leave you feeling that, even though there’s nothing technically wrong with it, you just want something more these days.

Storia – 6.9
11 Bridge Street, Maidenhead, SL6 8LR
01628 769350

https://www.storiarestaurants.co.uk/maidenhead

Restaurant review: Dough Bros

On July 5, 2024June 14, 2026 By ediblereadingIn Reviews4 Comments

In December 2025 Dough Bros changed hands and the new owners made changes to its menu, adding smashed burgers and removing ham, ‘nduja and presumably pepperoni with pork. In June 2026 it rebranded to Doughza. I have marked Dough Bros as closed, and kept the review up for posterity.

I moved house last week, and suddenly everything changed. My little slice of Reading, my walks, maps, routes and routines were no more. No more waking up in the Village and mooching into town for lunch, no more strolls round Reading Old Cemetery or Palmer Park, no more number 17s and Little Oranges buses, no more Retreat just round the corner. After seven years of East Reading life, it was time for something different.

So on moving day Zoë and I found ourselves standing, sleep-deprived, outside a large house that wasn’t quite ours yet, rented van parked up in the drive, waiting for the agent to arrive and check us in. Meanwhile, across town, movers were loading boxes into a far bigger van from a far smaller house that was no longer ours. The sun was blazing, and I strolled across Cintra Park to Greggs, of all places, to pick up coffee and pastries. This is my neighbourhood now, I thought to myself.

I’m writing this over a week later, after seven days of unpacking and tip slots and IKEA trips (I’d forgotten how depressing that place is) and everything is starting to take shape. A lot of the boxes are unpacked, the kitchen is in some kind of order and, best of all, we finally got a new bed – high off the ground, with a big firm mattress, like climbing on to a cloud at night. The walls are fresh-painted white, the blinds are new and Venetian and the rooms flood with summer sunlight.

And every morning I wake up and can’t quite believe I live here, in this new place.

There’s a clothes line in the garden, and I get to experience the meditative joys of hanging out the washing, taking it in when it’s been dried by the sun and smells of heaven. Let’s not talk about the huge rent hike, or the council tax band of this place, or the fact that I can’t afford to eat out quite so often: let’s just think about the smell of that washing from the line.

On our very first night, exhausted but with the rest of the week off to unpack and settle in, we wandered to pretty much our nearest restaurant, Kungfu Kitchen. Like me they moved recently, although a few doors down Christchurch Green maybe isn’t quite as big a shift as mine. And their new site is lovely and snazzy – especially the light feature projecting fish onto the floor – but it was also reassuring just how like their old place it was. The food was still outstanding, and the welcome was the same, because Jo and Steve do not change: I particularly enjoyed Jo frogmarching customers to the loo, proudly boasting that Kungfu Kitchen has the best toilets in the world. Her words, not mine.

But Kungfu Kitchen is only one of our nearest restaurants, and I popped into one of the others to take something home the following night, just before an England match, fresh from a purgatorial trip to the tip. Dough Bros opened in March at the top of Northumberland Avenue and has built up quite a following in three short months. It’s run by a couple of friends, one of whom also runs the neighbouring barber Short, Back & Vibes.

I stopped by on a sweltering hot day and picked up a couple of takeaway pizzas, and as I waited I chatted away with Robbie, one of the owners. He seemed to know his stuff when it came to pizza, and told me that he was a fan of Sarv’s Slice (“they use the same flour and tomatoes as us”, he said). But he also said that his pizza was a little different from Sarv’s, and different from the floppy Neapolitan style that’s taken over the U.K. I saw that in action as he took both my pizzas out of the oven, tapped the bottom and decided they needed a little longer.

I didn’t have to talk to Robbie for long to realise that he was a proper pizza obsessive, and as I watched him pipe ricotta onto one of the pizzas I found myself thinking that this place, if it lived up to my experience up to that point, could be something very special. Robbie said that business was picking up, although there were some quiet weeks, and that they were trying other channels, mainly Instagram, to get more customers.

I liked his candour, as evidenced when I asked whether Dough Bros made its own chicken tenders. “No, we buy those in. Pizza is the thing we’re passionate about here.” I respected that, and later on he gave me Dough Bros’ mission statement in one short, simple sentence. “We’re trying to transcend Whitley,” he said.

Anyway, not to put too fine a point on it, or spoil what follows, I liked my pizza very much. It was significantly better than England’s ropy performance against Slovenia that night, and both of them were better than the torrent of dross that came out of the gob of ITV’s chief prattler Sam Matterface. I liked it so much that I recommended it to my sister-in-law when she came to visit the new house, and she collected a couple of pizzas to take home to the rest of the family.

And I even liked it so much that at the end of the week we ordered a couple more, this time via Deliveroo, which we ate on our big comfy sofas in the new house while watching the last televised debate between our old prime minister and the new guy: for some reason, I associated Dough Bros takeaways with stodgy bore draws.

When I put a picture up of my pizza on Instagram I got one of two responses. Either people said “that looks good, where is it from?” or “that’s from Dough Bros!” That, more than anything, made me think that Reading was divided into two camps: Dough Bros fans, and people who hadn’t been there yet. So this week, one night when Zoë was working a late shift, I ambled back across Cintra Park to have my pizza in for a change.

Dough Bros is near the end of a run of shops at the top of Northumberland Avenue, before it descends the hill into the heart of Whitley. Short Back & Vibes is next door, and brand new Indian restaurant Curry Rasoi is at the other end. Inside you get a clear idea that a lot of Dough Bros’ trade is probably takeaway, because it was on the basic side: a few no-frills tables and chairs on one side of the room, two booths on the other.

The ceiling tiles were black and white checkerboard, which gave the disconcerting feeling that the room was upside down. One wall had a couple of guitars mounted on it, the other had some framed LPs and various pieces of wall art which looked like they came from a section in Home Bargains called “I just opened a pizza restaurant”. I promise this is affectionate, by the way: I rather liked it. I felt like I could have been in America, by a dusty freeway, instead of in RG2.

The menu was extensive, but also interesting in terms of what was and wasn’t on it. Many of the tried and tested combinations weren’t offered – no capers, olives and anchovies for me – and the menu gave a refreshingly wide berth to some of the on-trend toppings you see everywhere. That means ‘nduja only crops up in a couple of places, there isn’t any burrata to be seen and even hot honey, which seems to be ubiquitous in pizza joints lately, is deployed sparingly.

The overall choice was more American than Italian but even then there were some interesting curveballs designed by Dough Bros – one involved biltong, and might have tempted me but for the presence of sweetcorn. A couple involved a barbecue base rather than the classic tomato and again, appealed but perhaps for next time. And most tempting was the most oddball of all, the “Rogan”: Robbie had told me on a previous visit that it was based on a conversation between Joe Rogan and Elon Musk on a podcast about whether anchovies and pineapple was a genius pizza combo or an aberration.

Leaving aside the idea of ordering anything endorsed by a Covid vaccine denier, or social media’s single biggest tosspot, I think it sounds rather interesting, and I can’t rule out ordering it on another occasion. But I decided against it, and in the back of my mind I worried that ordering it would give out some weird signal that I really wanted to get drawn into a conversation about investing in crypto. I’ve lost track of the number of baristas over the years that have tried to give me the chat about crypto, come to think of it.

Anyway, for my sins I reordered the pizza I’d eaten the very first time I tried Dough Bros, the one which Zoë, stricken with pizza envy, had ordered the second time we tried Dough Bros. The Honey Honey was a comparatively simple affair – double pepperoni, ricotta and hot honey – but having tried it once I was very much in a hurry to try it again. My order, for a pizza and a can of elderflower lemonade (Dough Bros doesn’t have an alcohol licence) came to fifteen pounds fifty.

They don’t rush at Dough Bros, and nor should they. I was quite happy sipping my lemonade, looking out the full length windows at the summer evening outside, people watching and contemplating my new surroundings. I felt thoroughly transported, I thought I had a decent pizza on the way and nowhere in particular I needed to be any time soon. I was the only customer, and it seemed to be a quiet Tuesday: unlike my previous flying visit I didn’t see people turning up with their green Deliveroo backpacks, ready to find pizzas a new home.

When my pizza arrived, I remembered just how good they looked and how huge they were – fourteen inch, I think, a big, stretched, irregular wonder. This is not a pizza assembled with an eye on cost control, the way the likes of Franco Manca used to be, and the toppings were as generous as they were haphazard. It really was a beautiful thing, a symphony of red yellow and white, with a slight glimmer from the plentiful drizzling of hot honey. I’d enjoyed it at home, several minutes after it had come out of that oven, but I realised that this was the real deal: no delay, no messing about. Out of the oven, onto a plate lined with paper, sliced into eight and brought over without delay.

I sighed with happiness, and then I set about my task.

It’s kind of delightfully incongrous how on trend this little place near the edge of Whitley is, by the way. I read a piece in the Telegraph last week about how Neapolitan pizza was on its way out and American pizza was the hot new thing: crispier, more rigid pizza without that sloppy centre. It cited the much hyped Crisp Pizza W6 in Hammersmith as the vanguard of a new movement offering New York pizza, and mentioned other trailblazers in Hertfordshire, in Margate, in Brighton. But would you believe that you can also get exactly that kind of pizza here in Reading, on Northumberland Avenue? Me neither, but it turns out you can.

And it really was a beauty and, just as importantly, an utter joy to eat. Forget all those times you’ve gingerly picked up a piece of Neopolitan pizza to find the tip of the triangle drooping platewards. This was a rugged pizza, to be folded lengthways and devoured. The tomato sauce was deep and impeccable, the pepperoni a crispy guilty pleasure. And the little dabs of ricotta, offset with the slight tickling heat of the honey, made every bite slightly different but equally wonderful.

I can honestly say that it was one of my favourite things I’d eaten all year and as I’ve experienced a few times in the course of writing this blog – when visiting the likes of Clay’s, or Kungfu Kitchen, or Bakery House, or Namaste Kitchen for the first time – I had this feeling of real good fortune that of all the towns across England where these chaps could have opened their restaurant, they happened to pick Reading.

It bothered me a little that the restaurant was empty, although when I’d chatted to Robbie the week before he said it was generally very busy, and I felt that pull, familiar by now, that I wanted to do what I could about that.

There’s very little more to say: I had already settled up, so I told Robbie that it was marvellous and I prepared to make my way home through Cintra Park, full and happy, watching significantly more active people than me running, kicking balls and making the most of the long evenings. But before I did, Robbie asked my name and told me he remembered me from the previous week. I imagine he remembers all of his customers: he struck me as very good at that sort of thing.

So there you have it, that’s Dough Bros: a marvellous spot, and the unlikeliest of discoveries. If you live nearby, I recommend going. If you live further away, get a delivery and pop the oven on to pep it up when it arrives (if your oven is big enough to accommodate one of their whopping pizzas, that is). But either way, if you like pizza at all I think you might want to check it out. Whitley is very lucky to have them, but I do kind of hope that they manage to achieve their ambition and transcend the place. Fingers crossed that this review plays a small part in that.

Dough Bros – 8.4
87 Northumberland Avenue, Reading, RG2 7PT
07922 477519

https://www.instagram.com/doughbrospizza_reading/

Restaurant review: Sartorelli’s, Oxford

On June 14, 2024June 10, 2024 By ediblereadingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

I’m of the firm opinion that everyone has at least one useful life lesson you could learn from them. Someone I used to know, for instance, was convinced that you could never go wrong taking champagne to somebody’s house: we didn’t agree on much, it turned out, but on this she had a point. My stepmother has a rule, a very wise one, that you should never buy her any Christmas or birthday present she has to dust. I sometimes give her champagne, which combines those two rules nicely.

A married couple I used to know had two excellent customs. One was that using the W word, talking about work, was strictly verboten on Sundays. The other was that, once in a while, one of them could play a joker and opt out of adult life for a whole day. The other one had to make all the decisions – where to go, what to do, what to watch, everything.

I’ve tried to introduce that latter rule into my own life, but without much success. Most of the time my spouse, tired from working to the core of the bone, doesn’t want to make decisions for anybody else. And when she does, she has a bad habit of making plans for me that I just don’t like.

“I think you should stay at home and pack for the move” was Zoë’s suggestion last Friday when I was facing another Saturday on my tod and asked her what I should get up to: I didn’t fancy that at all.

So on a whim, a solo Saturday stretching out in front of me, I thought “fuck it, I’ll go to Oxford”. I headed for the station, and was sitting in C.U.P. having a mocha and making my plans when Zoë texted me. I thought I’d have one last crack at abdicating responsibility.

“I’m going to Oxford but I’m torn between grabbing a late lunch at the Magdalen Arms or trying Sartorelli’s, that pizza place in the Covered Market. What do you think?”

“Have the pizza. You can review it.”

What happened next was a series of some of the happiest events. First, that moment when your train pulls up and it’s mostly empty, no standing in the aisle holding on to the back of someone’s chair, sitting on the luggage rack or slumped in the vestibule. Instead, a leisurely trundle through Oxfordshire, just me, my phone and the music in my headphones. As Larkin puts it, all sense of being in a hurry gone.

Getting off at Oxford I was struck that although it wasn’t quiet – it never is – it wasn’t crazily busy, and as I strolled in, up George Street and Ship Street, I thought how curious it was that I’ve never quite escaped this city, just up the train tracks from home, where I spent three years learning a lot about a little but precious little about life. That used to put me off the place, but now I’ve reached some kind of accommodation with it.

Another glad event followed as I entered the Covered Market. It was that wonderful coincidence that happens when you arrive somewhere very busy literally as somebody else is just leaving, and can jump into their place. So I got a plum spot outside Sartorelli’s at one of the long tables, just by being in the right place at exactly the right time: after that, the queue just grew and grew. If I’d got there five minutes earlier, or later, the day would have had a completely different shape.

The Covered Market has always been one of my favourite spots in Oxford, even back in the early Nineties when I used to stop there to pick up a lunchtime pie from a trader called Ma Baker (Boney M fans, I presume). But its character has been changing in recent years, with many of the traditional traders driven out by high rents: the butchers and fishmongers have left, and on this visit one of the old-school mens’ outfitters had a closing down sign in the window. The likes of Fasta Pasta, who used to do the best ciabatta in the world, are gone too.

But in their place a very different sort of trader is settling in to the market. Although they recently got a little tap room from Botley’s Tap Social, I first noticed the phenomenon a few years back with Teardrop, a micropub offering beer from Church Hanbrewery, a little brewery based out past Witney. They had half a dozen or so beers on cask and keg, and sold charcuterie and the like, and they had a few barrels and tables outside. And then there was a wine bar, Cellar Door, next to it – again, selling wine by the glass. And finally, there was Sartorelli’s along from that, setting up a little ecosystem – wine, beer and pizza all in one little corner of the market.

Sartorelli’s also sprung up out of Church Hanbrewery, first offering pizza at the brewery taproom before opening in the Covered Market in March 2022. And since it opened, every time I’ve been to the Covered Market – usually to buy cheese, or grab a latte from the excellent Colombia Coffee Roasters – I’ve gone past, thought the setup looked great, eyed the pizzas being devoured outside with no small degree of envy. And then sighed. because I had a lunch reservation somewhere else. But on this occasion I was in Oxford with no plans, and this space at a table outside had miraculously come free. When opportunity knocks like that, you don’t send it away.

The very kind couple next to me kept an eye on my stuff and I went up to order. The place was a bustle of activity, with a big wood-fired oven and a menu displayed on the wall that was simple almost to a fault. Fundamentally you can have a margherita for £8.50 and load it with whatever you fancy, at a cost of 50p per topping, or you can have one of their suggested combos. The menu explained that sartorelli means small tailor, and that as far as they were concerned you could tailor your pizza however you like.

I spotted one of the suggestions that mentioned anchovies, ordered it, paid £10.50 and scuttled back to my seat and my bag, gratified that they were still there. My tablemates then kindly agreed to keep looking after my bag while I went to Teardrop and ordered two thirds of their Teardrop Citra on keg. It cost just under four pounds and was absolutely gorgeous – cold, crisp and, I hoped, perfect pizza accompaniment. I went back to my table with my winnings, saw the queue beginning to build and felt like coming here for lunch was turning out to be a very smart decision on my part.

My pizza arrived just over ten minutes later, although I was having such a lovely time that I’d quite happily have waited longer. It came on a metal tray, à la The Last Crumb, but they’d sensibly put paper underneath it which also helped it stay warm longer. Sartorelli’s just gives you a pizza cutter, a napkin and some chilli and garlic oil, so if you’re a cutlery user, their pizza might challenge you. And this was the point where I realised I had completely missed the fact that, on the menu, my pizza was billed as coming with a “sprinkle of rocket”. It was a nice idea, but it was more than a sprinkle, and without cutlery it added a layer of complexity to eating the thing with your hands.

Initially I also wondered whether the rocket might have been used to camouflage the toppings, to conceal any caper or (especially) anchovy-related stinginess that was going on. But once I settled down to eating the pizza, I realised nothing could be further from the truth. It was liberally carpeted with tiny, punchy capers, had a respectable number of plump black olives and, most importantly, plenty of glorious, salty anchovies.

Not only that, but the base was excellent – especially the crust, all blistered, puffy and chewy. I was having an absolutely marvellous time: a bite of the pizza, a sip of the gorgeous beer, an unworthy look up at the queue, still growing, and I felt like I was properly winning at lunch.

I should have stayed for a dessert, really – it’s just ice cream, which they say is “hand crafted to a secret Sartorelli recipe” – but I had my eye on something from Swoon on the High later on, and I also felt guilty depriving punters of a seat. So I ambled off to the Oxford Cheese Company to pick something up for the evening, and then wandered out towards North Oxford in search of one of my favourite pubs in the whole wide world, the Rose And Crown.

I have broken one of the unspoken rules of restaurant reviewing by reviewing the same kind of establishment two weeks running. Last week was Zia Lucia, this week it’s Sartorelli’s: it’s the equivalent of putting two consecutive tracks on a mixtape by the same artist. But I think it’s very instructive in some ways because restaurants aren’t only about quality, or value, or service, or even convenience. They’re also about expectations, and whether they can surprise or delight.

So I expected Zia Lucia to be something special, and although you couldn’t fault their tomato sauce, or their Parma ham, the overall experience was a little underwhelming. And yet on a wooden stool, at a trestle table in the middle of the Covered Market I had a pizza from a place that didn’t shout or brag, but just did an absolutely marvellous job. Excellent craft beer from a place two doors down, a little people watching and hubbub, and an excellent lunch that, all told, set me back just under fifteen pounds.

Experiences like that are reason enough, if you find yourself at a loose end on a Saturday, to hop on a train and take your chances. I’m very glad I did. Besides, I’m asked quite often whether there’s anywhere decent to go for an informal, quickish lunch in Oxford, and now I have an answer for you. I may not have any great life lessons to impart to you – although my stepmother’s rule of thumb is a very good one – but you can usually rely on me for a restaurant recommendation.

Sartorelli’s – 7.7
21, Covered Market, Oxford, OX1 3DZ

https://www.sartorellis.com/sartorellisoxford

Restaurant review: Zia Lucia

On June 7, 2024December 30, 2025 By ediblereadingIn Reviews

It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that as a middle-aged man churning out two and a half thousand words a week about some restaurant or other, I’m about as far from the food and drink zeitgeist as it’s possible to be. Restaurant blogs have been dead for years, local papers too, and even the broadsheets are gradually fading away. Instagram influencers are passé too, even if Reading’s handful are still scrounging the occasional free meal (the latest from the Hilton in Kennet Island). Nope, apart from the occasional increasingly desperate Substack, food reviewing is all about TikTok and Instagram reels these days.

The most prominent is an account called Topjaw. Topjaw, for the uninitiated, consists of a posh bloke with floppy hair (who used to be a model) in front of the camera and a less photogenic bloke, presumably also posh, behind it. The posh bloke with floppy hair interviews restaurateurs in London getting vox pops about where they think you can find the best pizza, burgers, coffee and so on in the capital. He’s trying to perfect that fake almost-estuary accent posh people do when they’re trying to sound less posh, like Tony Blair used to do. He’s not managed it yet.

The usual suspects come up in those vox pops time and again – the Dalston bakery Dusty Knuckle, the Dexter burger at The Plimsoll in Finsbury Park, the Soho hype factory that is new pub The Devonshire (a place where nobody can snag a reservation but there are mysteriously always tables available for celebrities, critics and, well, Topjaw). We’re never paid by any restaurant we feature, says their bio, although they’re not averse to doing paid partnerships with the likes of Bicester Village, of all places. They may not be paid a fee, but God knows if they pay for their food.

Still, all power to them: their format is quick and entertaining, and you find yourself watching it whether you like them or not. It’s already spawning imitators – mainly in Bristol, where you see some people trying the vox pop format – and maybe one day it will translate into a TV show for them, or a paid gig or an appearance on Strictly or I’m A Celebrity.

You might wonder what any of this has to do with Reading, so I should explain. A couple of months ago, during a bumper week of tosspots on Topjaw, they interviewed not only Ed Sheeran (who turns out to be as basic as you would expect) but also hereditary columnist and bigoted human bin fire Giles Coren. Coren was clearly desperate to appeal to a new demographic so was doing his usual dreary, sweary trying too hard schtick, only even more manic than usual.

But in the course of dispensing his tiresome opinions he happened to say that he thought the best pizza in London was done by Zia Lucia. “They have this charcoal base which apparently doesn’t make you fart” he added, not as hilariously as he intended. Hang on, I thought, haven’t they just opened in Reading?

Well, yes, they have. Zia Lucia opened at the start of April on St Mary’s Butts, where ASK used to be, their first branch outside London. Their website talks about their origins in Islington over 15 years ago, and they also bandy around the slightly random stat that they are the world’s 38th best pizza chain (before you get too excited, Pizza Pilgrims finished 27 places above them and the Big Mamma Group, which Coren loathes, came third). Even so a first branch outside London, coming to a town that had lost Franco Manca and Buon Appetito, felt like it was worth investigating.

Restaurant review: Vesuvio Pizzeria

On October 27, 2023October 12, 2025 By ediblereadingIn Reviews1 Comment

Vesuvio Pizzeria, an Italian restaurant in Tilehurst, opened back in May and I’ve been trying to fit in a visit ever since without quite managing it. I made a booking back in July, which I had to cancel, and then life got in the way and so it wasn’t until a couple of Saturdays ago that Zoë and I left the house, strolled to the bus stop at the bottom of the hill and hopped on Reading’s sweet chariot, the number 17, to boldly go where my blog, let’s be honest, has rarely gone before.

I’d heard few reports of Vesuvio, so had little to go on. In a bizarre twist that tells you everything you need to know about the Reading Chronicle, they reported faithfully on the fact that someone had applied to convert the old Coral bookies on the Norcot Road into an Italian restaurant. They practically foamed at the mouth when the restaurant applied for permission to serve food and drink until 2 in the morning, dubbing it a“showdown”. Why would anyone want to eat in a pizza restaurant at that time? and Why would a restaurant want to serve anybody who did? were just two of the questions the article made no effort to answer.

But since it opened? No coverage at all. I guess you can write the first two stories in your lounge in your pants without having to do any genuine journalism, whereas a restaurant review would require you to put some trousers on, leave the house and spend some actual money. Never mind, you’ve got me for that sort of thing now.

My pre-meal research was as inconclusive as they come: TripAdvisor seemed unimpressed, Google was gushing. The restaurant’s Instagram was sketchily updated and, being charitable, didn’t make the food look outstanding. Its website, such as it was, appeared to be made up entirely of stock photos, to the point where the pizzas all seemed to have different types of bases, some with flat, featureless crusts and others with the kind of bubbling and leopard spotting you see everywhere.

How were you possibly meant to know whose version of reality was correct, and whether you’d have a good meal at Vesuvio? Like I said, you’ve got me for that sort of thing.

Edible Reading

Tag: Pizza