Wolf

On October 2, 2015February 3, 2023 By ediblereadingIn Reviews11 Comments

As of February 2023, Wolf has closed. I’ve left the review up for posterity.

Although a lot of people complain about the proliferation of coffee shops in the centre of town, for me the biggest growth has been in places to lunch. In the old days your choice was between Picnic, Pret and Workhouse but now there are a plethora of options, from Shed to My Kitchen, from Artigiano to Manhattan Coffee Club, with new ones seemingly opening every month.

So far so coffee, but two of the most recent arrivals, Itsu and Wolf, are more centred around food and have sprung up near John Lewis (the closest thing Reading has to a cathedral), changing the balance of town slightly and drawing footfall slightly away from the Oracle. Both have been on my list for a while, but Wolf gets the nod this week because it’s slightly better established, and I wanted to give Itsu a little longer to settle in. Besides, Itsu is a well-known chain (admittedly in London), whereas Wolf is a much smaller affair, with two branches in Reading and – rather randomly – another couple in Chiswick and Leeds.

I was a bit sniffy about the prospect of “Italian Street Food”, which is apparently what Wolf offers, mainly because I wasn’t convinced it existed. But in fairness, I’ve never been to Italy so I did a bit of research and it seems that there is indeed such a thing – paper cones full of fried seafood, meat on skewers, stuffed fried olives, arancini, delicious fatty porchetta packed into bread. A quick Google and I’d gone from zero to ravenous in about two minutes.

So far so good, but there’s a catch: standing outside Wolf, I had a quick look at their menu and it bore no relation to anything I’d seen, to the extent that I’m not sure whoever designed the menu had ever been to Italy either. Going inside, the concept was explained to me by one of the people behind the counter: first you decide whether you want bread, piada (a wrap not unlike a tortilla), pasta or salad. Then you pick some protein or vegetables to put in it. Then you pick a sauce, and finally you select a few toppings, from salad, olives, cheese and various other antipastoid options.

I’m going to run out of positive things to say very quickly in this review, I’m afraid (right after I point out that the staff were very friendly, I suspect) and this concept felt very much like it had been appropriated from elsewhere. You pick your options as you move down the counter, being served by a different person at each stage, in an assembly line which feels very familiar to anyone who’s ever been to Mission Burrito. You choose what to go in what is fundamentally a sandwich, just as you would at Pierre’s or Shed. Then they wrap it up in foil and put it in a bag for you, which is reminiscent of Five Guys. The feeling of disappointment and being underwhelmed, though, might be unique to Wolf.

So my sandwich was lemon and garlic chicken, in a big cheese-topped bap which was described on the menu as focaccia but was nothing of the kind. Also inside were an inoffensive tomato sauce, some sundried tomatoes, some artichoke hearts and some rocket. The bap was too big and floppy to eat tidily, but there wasn’t quite enough chicken to fill it. Everything tasted pleasant enough but impossible to get excited about. I half expected the chicken to be hot, but it wasn’t – the only warmth came from the split second the bap had spent on a hot plate, not enough time to give it any toasted texture or any real interest. All that for a fiver, and the only concession to street food was that they didn’t bother to give you a plate.

In the interests of trying all aspects of the menu I also ordered one of the eleven inch stone-baked pizzas. I was expecting (perhaps a little too optimistically) a thin, hand stretched pizza dough with a sprinkling of fresh-looking toppings – in this case sun dried tomato, red onion, olives and feta. What I got was a thick based pizza (perhaps not quite as pillowy as the sort that gets delivered by moped) with mostly mozzarella on it. Lots and lots of mozzarella. There was enough tomato sauce to identify it, a few flecks of feta cheese and rather more black olives (that looked like rubber washers from a tin) than I was expecting. If I’d been ravenously hungry or, perhaps, drunk, this might have been right up my alley. Instead it felt like way too many calories for not enough flavour. Except salt. All that cheese made it extremely salty. I left half of it and I wish I had left more. Again, no plate.

I haven’t talked about the room, something I normally do earlier on in the review. That might be because it’s not very nice. It’s another long, thin space – barely wider than a corridor – with tables along one side, big mirrors on the opposite wall and no natural light. The tables outside (yes, with yet more Tolix chairs) are nicer, but even in an Eames lounger this food would taste pretty ordinary. One sandwich, one pizza and two cans of San Pellegrino fizzy drinks – with plastic cups, no glasses either – came to just under fourteen pounds.

I’m sorry that I can’t be more positive about Wolf, but the best I can say is that the food isn’t unpleasant. Normally the lack of authenticity wouldn’t bother me, but it does here because it feels like Wolf is a Frankenstein’s monster, an attempt to patch together a bunch of food trends to try and make money out of diners. There are better pizzas all across Reading (although they do cost more than six pounds fifty) and better – and cheaper – sandwiches anywhere you care to name.

Maybe you’re paying for the choice, but I found standing at the counter that I didn’t want all that choice. I wanted a small range of good, classic flavour combinations rather than the gastronomic equivalent of the numbers round in Countdown. I used to love eating at Fasta Pasta in Oxford’s Covered Market, where you could get big, fluffy ciabatta studded with olives or sundried tomatoes, filled with fresh discs of mozzarella, salty, intense pesto and top notch Parma ham which had been sliced there and then in front of your very eyes. Authentic, classic, delicious: compared to that, Wolf is about as Italian as Captain Bertorelli eating a Cornetto on Clacton Pier. It’s not street food, just pedestrian.

Wolf – 5.6
94 Broad Street, RG1 2AP
0118 9598179

https://www.wolfstreetfood.com/location/reading-broad-st/

Revolution

On August 28, 2015January 7, 2024 By ediblereadingIn Reviews4 Comments

Revolution closed in January 2024. I’ve left the review up for posterity.

This is probably quite hard to believe, but every now and again I get offered a freebie; I receive an email talking about a restaurant that’s just about to open and I’m asked if I’d like to go along, on the house, and review it. They’re usually attractive offers, and they’re often places I’m interested in going to, but after some deliberation I’ve always said no.

I did ask the question once on Twitter: could a review ever be truly reliable if you know the person writing it hasn’t paid for the meal? The replies I got were interesting, but nearly everyone was dubious – a few people said I’d trust you to be impartial, but I wouldn’t generally trust paid reviews, which is lovely, but most people remained unconvinced. How would you know you weren’t having a different experience to a paying customer because the staff knew they had to be on their best behaviour, they said? And even if you went anonymously, however hard you tried wouldn’t you slightly be pulling your punches because you’d got your food for free?

All fair comments. A lot of people think that food bloggers set up their blogs mainly to get free food, especially in London where PRs are keen to generate as much buzz for their newly opened (or opened some time ago and dangerously close to falling off the radar) restaurants. This issue has reared its ugly head again recently after an incident where a London blogger, invited to review a bakery, was unimpressed with the level of freebies offered in return. She insisted on more macarons, the bakery told her to take a hike and then she spent her own money and threatened to give them a bad review (via Instagram, which is apparently where it’s all going on).

Both sides took to the internet to fight their respective corners and Twitter went into spasm for about six hours, which is an eon in Twitter terms. Everybody weighed in, from bloggers (saying “that blogger has let the side down”) to restaurateurs (saying “bloody bloggers”). Even the Observer’s seasoned restaurant reviewer Jay Rayner weighed in, saying that it’s not enough to be impartial but you also need to be seen to be impartial. Well, I think he might be right.

Anyway, this week’s review – and ER’s first sponsored post – is… Revolution! Only kidding. But Revolution did approach me several months ago inviting me to review them. Despite their reputation for droves of students downing vodka shots of an evening, they said they’d been growing their food offering for the last couple of years and they were keen to have a second opinion on it. I said no, nicely, but I made a mental note that I should head over there at some point. I also noticed that their menu had a surprising number of vegetarian options, another point in their favour.

It’s a very long time since I went to Revolution, and I was surprised by how, well, tasteful the interior was. It’s been given the full retro-meets-shabby-chic-meets-industrial makeover and the dining room at the front is really quite pleasant – a big wide open space, all sturdy tables and copper lampshades with a banquette down one side and mismatched Chesterfields along the other. Going on a Monday, when it was largely empty, it was hard to imagine the nocturnal horrors that Revolution probably sees every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I’d persuaded two people to come with me for once (I know! Gluttons for punishment!) so we grabbed an attractively tiled table for three and started flicking through the menu, dished up on a very à la mode clipboard.

The menu was interesting – it had far more stuff on it than you would expect Revolution to be able to execute, but there were also touches which made you think “but what if they could..?” Little things here and there, from goats cheese bonbons to n’duja balls, from chorizo ketchup to chilli and fennel pork. It still revolved around the ever-present small plates and the ubiquitous burger, but there was also pizza, burritos and – randomly – a chicken katsu curry. Revolution’s website has pictures of all of them and more (I only saw them later in the course of writing this up, but that might be just as well: some of them verge on the pornographic).

I was determined to order both a vegetarian starter and main at Revolution (just this once, not making any promises for the future) so the first thing I tried was oaky smoky houmous, which I imagine is a dish invented by Billy Ray Cyrus. It was nicely coarse, topped with sliced spring onion and a solitary sun dried tomato; I got more nuttiness than oaky smokiness, truth be told. It came with crudités and dough sticks. Carrot and green pepper were crisp, fresh and eminently suitable, the red pepper was a bit on the flaccid side. None of them came close to the dough sticks – little white fingers like the tiniest baguettes in the world. Of course they were the best bit: there was no vitamin C in them whatsoever. Overall it reminded me of my friend Jane: really lovely, means well, ever so slightly dull (don’t worry, it’s not her real name and she doesn’t read this anyway).

The other starter, shared between two, was the “street food crate”, a wooden, well, crate, filled with pots and tins of food, as is the fashion pretty much everywhere in Christendom right now. Having done that regulation piece of anti-hipster sneering (and rolled my eyes at the mention of street food somewhere that isn’t on the street) it’s only fair to go on and say that most of it was really quite nice. Pulled beef (another sneer) sliders (yet another sneer) were very tasty and well done with a little heat. The doughdogs – bockwurst snugly wrapped in a little pocket of something like pizza dough – were maybe a little closer to mystery meat than I generally like to get but they had a nice hint of smoke and I didn’t leave any.

Buttermilk fried chicken had a thin coating and was a tad bland (and all four strips came fused together, which was a pity) but again it was enjoyable enough. “Viper dusted fat chips” were very good thick chips, irregular, crunchy and quite delicious. You also got “BBQ crackling puffs” which were little hot fragments of pork rind – pleasant but ever so slightly pointless, and two rather than the three advertised dips. One was the “big easy mayo”, which one liked and the other was a hot spicy number with a whiff of bourbon in it, which the other liked (a sort of Jack and Mrs Sprat of sauces). This all came to thirteen pounds and there were no complaints with that.

Any feelings of deprivation suffered through eating vegetarian at Revolution vanished when my main course arrived. Margherita Napoli pizza, from Revolution’s summer specials menu, is billed as “a margherita pizza like you’ve never eaten before” and it actually lives up to that billing – in a good way. The pizza base was probably the best I’ve had in central Reading – crusty, chewy, reassuringly irregular and glistening with extra virgin olive oil. The tomatoes tasted fresh, not like the intense pureéd flavour of standard pizza toppings, and there was a generous amount of garlic in the sauce too. A dusting of coarsely ground black pepper made the whole thing sing. This is how good it was: not only could I have lived without the faffy micro basil shoots, I could even have foregone the mozzarella. Can you believe that? It made me feel that all the other stuff you can stick on a pizza is just window dressing, and as a devout non-vegetarian I’m rather surprised to be saying that. I just hope Revolution’s management doesn’t look outside the window and realise that summer is already over.

Having fulfilled the vegetarian obligation, the other two orders were for burgers, and they were pleasant but didn’t match the starters or the pizza. The “Brooklyn chicken” came with more of that buttermilk fried chicken (and if I’d thought it through I would have ordered something different), a few pieces of it rather than the single breast I’d been expecting. The good quality streaky bacon was perfectly cooked at one end and a bit limp at the other. The smoked cheddar and fried pickles (the latter cooked in something like panko breadcrumbs I think) were lovely but the chipotle sauce had gone awol and the whole thing just didn’t quite work.

The “Smokin’ Bacon” had the same problem, bacon going from floppy to perfect like some kind of gastronomic colour chart of how a rasher should be cooked. The burger was cooked through rather than pink, but despite that it was well seasoned and nicely tender and the smoked cheese worked much better in this burger than the Brooklyn chicken. There was apparently some of the previously mentioned chorizo ketchup (I still think it sounds like an absolutely magnificent idea) but the jury’s out on whether it was really noticeable or noteworthy. There were also some Wotsits in there – “I think it’s just for novelty value”, my companion said. Both burgers came with some skin-on chips, whose main purpose was to be Ed Miliband to the David of the fat chips that came with the starters, and some forgettable coleslaw (they probably referred to it as slaw but I point blank refuse to follow suit, and don’t start me on this “mac n’ cheese” nonsense).

Service throughout was absolutely superb, especially considering that there was only one visible member of staff and he seemed to be working the whole room. Despite that he was impossible to fault – personable, friendly, with opinions on the food (a particular fan of the Brooklyn Chicken burger, as it happens) and genuinely apologetic about some of the delays, even though we were in no hurry – perhaps most diners at Revolution are. In fact he was so apologetic that we did get a freebie after all; to make up for us having to wait for our mains he brought over a selection of six vodka shots. I think that would normally cost twelve pounds, and I can particularly recommend the fruit salad and peach flavoured ones (well, I wasn’t going to turn them away).

Apart from the impromptu vodka we drank a mixture of beers (Vedette in bottles, Staropramen on draft) and a couple of glasses of a good, fruity Malbec. It seems odd to say so little about Revolution’s booze offering and to focus on the food: I wonder how many of their visitors do that? One thing I did have in common with most visitors to Revolution is that I passed on dessert – the delights of the “fluffwich” (I’ve read the menu and I still have no idea what it is) will have to wait. The total bill for three people, with two drinks each, came to fifty seven pounds not including tip. We went on a Monday when there are half-price offers on a lot of the main courses: without that it would have been seventy-two pounds.

Revolution has been around such a long time that people probably don’t expect to eat there. I never thought I’d end up writing a review of it. But actually, if you judge it compared to its direct competitors, RYND and Oakford Social Club, I think it emerges from that pretty well. There’s a little more to the menu than the relentless tide of pulled pork and burgers. The room is much more welcoming. The service was far more impressive than I could have predicted (especially compared to the Oakford, where I always think they hire people for their ability to talk to each other and ignore customers). And the food? Well, some was really good – that pizza, again – and some was just decent. But for this kind of dining, at this price point, in this location that isn’t bad going at all.

So I’m not going to rave about Revolution, because it isn’t that sort of place. I’m not going to urge you to go there at all costs. It’s not the hot new thing (and nor, for that matter, am I). But what I will say is that I liked my meal there, and I’d go again; I fancy trying their brunch menu, or having that pizza again for a weekend lunch. And now, you tell me – if you’d read this positive, constructive review and then, at the bottom, you’d seen that bit in italics saying I dined courtesy of Revolution, but all opinions expressed are my own: would you have believed me?

Revolution – 7.1
12 – 16 Station Road, RG1 1JX
0118 958 7397

www.revolution-bars.co.uk/bar/reading/

Papa Gee

On March 20, 2015April 21, 2024 By ediblereadingIn Reviews14 Comments

Click here to read a more recent review of Papa Gee, at its current location on Prospect Street, from September 2022.

I’m not sure many people know that Papa Gee even exists. I was out this week with a friend who lives just round the corner from it and I casually dropped into conversation that I was due to go to a restaurant in his manor. First he asked if it was the Mod. Then he guessed at Standard Tandoori. When I shook my head again and said no, it wasn’t Casa Roma either he was stumped. “But there isn’t anywhere else round by me.” he said.

Well, there is: there’s Papa Gee, a small Italian place which has somehow been plugging away at the restaurant game for ten years. I used to walk past it on my way back from Kyrenia or Mya Lacarte and think is that even a real restaurant? The lights always seemed to be off, and I’ve never met anybody who’s eaten there. Even my friend, a local, had never heard of it. Surely a restaurant can’t survive for ten years if no one has ever been?

It’s not the loveliest place, and (apologies to my friend if he’s reading this) not in the loveliest part of town. The Caversham Road is a busy street for traffic but it’s far from the footfall of the town centre and only really comes alive during Reading Festival week. Papa Gee has no real view, no garden to speak of and is pretty anonymous-looking. So why am I reviewing it? Well, you can blame Tripadvisor for that: the reviews are very positive, with repeated claims that it serves the best pizza in Reading. Could the pizzeria I’ve been waiting for all this time really be attached to the not hugely appealing Rainbows Lodge Hotel? Probably not, I thought, but I was too curious to stay away (and hopefully by now you’re curious too).

Passing the bigger, more polished places on a Tuesday night made it very clear that not many people eat out in this part of town during the week; Casa Roma and Standard Tandoori both had three of four tables of guests but were far from busy. Papa Gee’s, on the other hand, had people at seven of its dozen or so tables. At the risk of sounding creepy, I did watch most of the diners leave and only one table was occupied by hotel guests. The rest seemed to be locals. A good sign, right? The interior of the restaurant was very basic with small tables laid with cutlery and paper napkins, signs painted on the window and food themed pictures on the wall. It reminded me of something Marco from Pepe Sale said to me once, that Italians are much more interested in the food than the room. Another good sign, I hoped.

The menu at Papa Gee’s is huge, one of the biggest of any restaurant I have reviewed. It’s a bit bonkers, too: if you want to get an idea of it, look on the website. It has a mixture of fonts, some rather eccentric spelling, some comments in inverted commas after some of the dishes (Buonissimo it says about one of them, Simply Delicious is the commentary on another) and a few – very – random photographs dotted through it. Reading through it I couldn’t decide which to do first, frown or sigh. Fortunately, the waitress was superb: I said I couldn’t decide what to order and she asked me “are you in a pizza, pasta or meat mood tonight?” I asked her to recommend one of each and she did so right away – strong opinions, firm preferences, no nonsense. Suddenly my urge to either frown or sigh had vanished.

The first starter, funghi ripieni, however, jumped off the page – a dish so appealing that it kicked off a bout of plea bargaining (you can pick mains first as long as I get the funghi etc.) It was worth the battle: what arrived was a single field mushroom, stuffed (or, rather, topped) with gorgonzola and mozzarella on a bed of rocket, the whole thing drizzled with balsamic glaze. The mushroom had the balance just right – cooked enough to be soft but not watery. The cheeses were also perfectly balanced – creamy but with enough of a salty tang of blue. The balsamic glaze added just a touch of sweetness. This was divine: simple, unfussy and heavenly.

Picking a second starter wasn’t so easy – who wants to be understudy to a dish like that? – but I thought that the prosciutto and mozzarella would be an interesting choice just to see what their basic ingredients were like, even if it hardly tested the kitchen’s skills. This wasn’t quite as successful. In fairness, the headline acts were both good: the ball of mozzarella was cold, fresh, firm and clean-tasting and the ham – two slices – was nicely salty. I didn’t for a second think it had been freshly sliced but it didn’t quite have that chilly plastic-wrapped texture you get in many restaurants. The green and black pitted olives on top were decent if not wildly exciting. The salad, though, really put me off: more undressed frisée (why places dish up bitter leaves with the texture of wire wool I’ll never know). It was also a bit brown round the edges, which was the final nail in the salad coffin for me. I’d rather have had more of the rocket and balsamic than this rather sad pile of space-filler leaves. This was seven pounds fifty and felt – to me at least – like too much margin and not enough fun.

I went to Papa Gee fully intending to have a conventional pizza, but I was undone by the waitress’ recommendation, namely the calzone Napoli. I rarely have a calzone but she made such a good case that I found myself swept along with her enthusiasm. I’m delighted I did, because it was magnificent: a big folded pizza absolutely stuffed with meat and cheese, like the best Breville ever. As with the mushroom starter, this was a dish all about balance. It was filled with ricotta – not usually my favourite cheese, and not one I’d have on its own, but its fluffy mildness made perfect sense with the intense, thin slices of strong, salty salami. It was all bound together with that glorious molten mozzarella and – just to finish things off – the occasional surprise of a hidden basil leaf. (“Gaetano likes to put basil in everything” said the waitress when I mentioned how much I liked it, “He’s trying to convert everyone”). But the topping – or filling in this case – is only half the battle because, to quote the great Meghan Trainor, it’s all about that base. Papa Gee’s truly is splendid: crispy and bubbled at the edges but thin in the middle, with just a little note of sourdough saltiness. I could have eaten it on its own, and I did notice diners at other table rolling up their pizzas, as you should be able to do but so rarely can.

The waitress didn’t recommend my other main course, but the menu did: after the description of scialatiello (fresh, thick spaghetti, king prawns, olives, “cappers” (sic), anchovies, chilli and cherry tomato sauce) it says “Delicious”. This felt to me a bit like when you order food and the waiter tells you that you’ve made a good choice: funny how, even if you eat out a lot, a little of that sort of validation goes a long way. When it arrived I wished that I had ordered the pizza because it looked a little underwhelming but I tucked in nonetheless – in for a penny in for a pound. Reader, I loved it: the spaghetti, thicker than any I’ve ever seen, was nicely al dente and tasted freshly made (to my amateur taste buds, anyway) and the tomatoes were crushed rather than pulped, so it had more texture than your average bowl of pasta. The mixture of flavours in the sauce was fabulous and gave the opportunity for all kinds of combinations. There were only two king prawns but in the sauce there was a respectable amount of smaller prawns and the hit of chilli at the end of each mouthful was enough to give it a bit of bite without ever becoming overwhelming. It’s another great example of how you shouldn’t judge on looks – the pictures on Papa Gee’s website look unspecial, and my photos do too, but good food is not a beauty contest. I’d eat this again in a heartbeat (if I managed to avoid the lure of that pizza base, that is).

The dessert menu is short and sweet (indeed) with five dishes plus ice cream – not gelato, which struck me as a missed opportunity. I picked just one dessert – the baba – a rum soaked sponge, filled with Nutella. This was so much more delicious than I expected, and by this stage I expected it to be pretty good. It was a light vanilla sponge, airy and open a bit like a buttery brioche, soaked in rum that I think had been sweetened, served split down the middle with hot Nutella spread on the insides. On top of this was a squirt of, err, squirty cream, a fan wafer and a preserved cherry. The cream, wafer and cherry were completely pointless – put there by the chef because he wanted to dress the dish, I think. It really didn’t need them (like I said, not a beauty contest) and this was worth eating whatever it looked like: the sponge was rich and boozy and the Nutella filling was effectively a choc and nut sauce. Simply gorgeous. My dining companion didn’t fancy a dessert so had an Amaro (one of those Italian digestifs that tastes simultaneously medicinal and faintly dangerous) and raved about that instead.

There’s not much to say about the wine list – it’s small but perfectly formed, with only one wine over twenty pounds (and that’s a barolo, so fair enough). We picked a nero d’avola which wasn’t half bad: nicely juicy, full bodied and very affordable at eighteen pounds. Service was very relaxed, with the one waitress happy to recommend food and chat. She was casually dressed – I’m in two minds about whether that bothered me, I feel like it shouldn’t but on some level it did – but she knew the menu inside out and showed genuine interest and concern to make sure we were enjoying everything. The total bill, for two and a half courses each with a bottle of wine and a liqueur, was sixty pounds. Yes. Sixty quid. Both mains were cooked fresh to order, and each one cost less than a tenner.

I think Papa Gee is a real find. It’s a gem of a restaurant: unpretentious and unfussy, serving really good food, friendly and relaxed and an absolute steal. Why don’t more people know about it? Or is it that people do know about it and they’re determined to make sure the secret doesn’t get out? Not sure. Either way, I’m already planning my return visit – no, I’m not telling you when, don’t be daft – so I can try more of those pizzas with that amazing base (I’m particularly drawn to the “Nonna Amalia” with Neapolitan pork sausage and wild broccoli tips). Yes, the location isn’t brilliant but that’s what taxis were invented for – and besides, there’s always the prospect of a post-dinner snifter in the Mod or the Greyfriar. So is it the pizza place I was dreaming of? You know what, I think it might be.

Papa Gee – 7.8
138 Caversham Road, RG1 8AY
0118 9556906

http://www.papagee.co.uk/

Quattro

On November 21, 2014September 7, 2025 By ediblereadingIn Reviews2 Comments

One of the drawbacks of this gig is taking the photographs, especially when I visit a restaurant and find myself sitting in a very empty room trying to take sneaky pictures without the staff noticing (this is more of a problem in some places than others: where the service is poor you could probably get on a table and belt out I Will Survive without anybody batting an eyelid). Empty Room Syndrome happens much more often if I’m dining at quiet times, so Quattro immediately had me feeling hopeful when I rocked up on a Monday night to a bustling dining room.

Dolce Vita

On April 11, 2014June 11, 2018 By ediblereadingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

In a surprising move, Dolce Vita closed in June 2018. I have left the review up for posterity.

I don’t know how you approach a restaurant review, as a reader, but before I started this blog the first thing I did was check whether I knew the place being reviewed. If I didn’t, the whole process was a voyage of discovery, reading the review thinking Does it sound like my kind of thing? Could I get there? Would I want to? But when I’d already been to the restaurant in question it was a very different test involving a different set of questions which all boil down to one: Do you agree with me? And, of course, we all judge on that basis. I like people who like the things I like, just like everybody else.

This is especially the case when the reviewer has gone to a place you really like, one of your favourite places. Then you feel protective and read the review thinking I hope the restaurant don’t have an off night, or even The reviewer had better not pick on it. One of the things really successful restaurants do is make customers into loyal customers, and make those loyal customers feel like part of a club. At its best, it’s a tribal thing: look at the incredible loyalty inspired by Mya Lacarte, or Tutti Frutti.

Dolce Vita, I think, is another of those places. I’ve had a lot of people telling me I should go there – enthusing about the food and the service, saying that they return again and again. So, if you’re one of those loyal customers, reading this and preparing to bristle protectively on Dolce Vita’s behalf, you can relax: I really liked it.

Of course, you might approach restaurant reviews by going straight to the end and reading the rating first, in which case you already know that and are waiting for me to get on with it (I understand: I ruin some novels that way too).

Despite knowing Dolce Vita by reputation I’ve rarely gone there. It’s another restaurant that feels like it’s always been there, in Kings Walk, perched on that ledge above the outer reaches of the Oracle looking out over all the changes that have happened over the years (personally, I’ve tried to erase all memory of Brannigan’s, with its chilling boasts of “cavorting”). Yet it’s never really crossed my mind when deciding where to eat, because I just couldn’t remember if it was any good; a strange type of amnesia I don’t get about many places in Reading.

The dining room’s big, a long rectangular airy space with lots of light from the skylight and the patio doors leading out onto the balcony. I can imagine that, if the sun ever comes out for long enough, the balcony would be a lovely place to drink rose and eat summery food but there was no chance of that on this visit: it was wet and windy so we grabbed a table by the window and looked out at the rain-spattered furniture, daydreaming about what might have been. Speaking of furniture, this isn’t something most restaurant reviews talk about (maybe with good reason) but Dolce Vita has some of the most handsome dining furniture in Reading: solid oak chairs and tables that make some of the wobbly painted tables in otherwise good restaurants seem rather cheap.

The menu is huge, and makes no pretence at being anything else. You are handed a sheet of A3 and left to wonder how a kitchen can do all of those dishes well. It also feels like a mismatch – there are pizzas and pasta, unsurprisingly, but also several Thai dishes, a couple of Greek dishes (which may have found a home here after Kyklos, Dolce Vita’s sister restaurant closed down in January) and, randomly, a Scotch egg. This all gave me misgivings but I decided to stick to Italian and hope for the best.

The burrata suggested I’d done the right thing. It always looks like a little bag of treasure to me and so it proved, creamy and fresh, well matched by the grilled peppers and aubergines. The whole thing was brought together with a very nice tomato, chilli and mint sauce and worked very well. I did find myself wishing, though, that the vegetables had been freshly grilled and still warm rather than chilled. It was a nice dish, but didn’t involve much in the way of cooking.

The antipasti was a very similar story, a great assortment of salami, pleasingly dry and savoury Parma ham, coppa and mortadella, along with some mozzarella, sundried tomato and two dips, an aioli with a hint of citrus and a very good tzatziki (oh, and some baguette – Did I forget to mention the baguette?) If that makes it sound like a lot of food that’s because it was. In hindsight, for a tenner, it was probably meant to serve two although the menu didn’t make that clear – none the less it was excellent stuff.

The mains were nicely timed, turning up just at the point when I was ready. The Milan pizza – mozzarella, Italian sausage, wild mushrooms, caramelised onions, fontina and Grana Padano – was recommended by the waitress which made the selection process that bit easier. It makes such a difference going to a restaurant where the staff know what their dishes are and are prepared to state a preference, and that was pretty symptomatic of the excellent service in Dolce Vita in general (I also got great recommendations for wine and, later, for dessert). The pizza base was close to perfect – thin enough to be crisp but with enough thickness to have some flavour of its own and not just feel like transport for cheese and tomato. The Italian sausage was excellent, coarse and herby almost to the point of being fragrant and I loved the caramelised onion with the cheeses. For my taste I thought there were too many mushrooms but that’s probably just me.

If the pizza was good, the veal saltimbocca was great. It was a generous portion of veal, three good-sized pieces, wrapped in Parma ham and perfectly done. The sauce promised Marsala but I didn’t get any of that, just lemon, white wine and lashings of sage: perfection. In any case, Marsala would have made the whole thing too sweet. Similarly, the truffled mash turned up without a hint of truffle and again, I didn’t mind. Too many flavours would have made the dish a mess, instead of the simple classic I got. The French beans, however, did turn up buttered as promised: a lovely contrast to many restaurants, even good ones, that dish up bland and naked vegetables. All that was seventeen pounds – not cheap, but I’ve spent that much on many worse dishes in Reading.

The wine, also recommended by the waitress, was a bottle of Montepulciano. I’m no oenophile, which is pretty obvious from my reviews, but I like to kid myself that I got plummy red fruit and a touch of black pepper. Even if I’m wrong, it was dangerously drinkable at just under eighteen pounds (and again, hats off to the waitress for recommending one of their cheapest reds: no sneaky upselling here).

Considering I visited on a weeknight, the restaurant was surprisingly full and buzzy with a real mixture of groups – dates and birthday parties and business dinners, all equally at home. I also heard some Italian being spoken at one table which I took to be a good sign. The service was just excellent all evening, which is something I’ve always heard about Dolce Vita; I felt like I got five star treatment but watching other diners and seeing the easy way the serving staff chatted to them all, it was obvious that everyone else was getting it too.

When you’re having an evening that pleasant it’s a shame to leave without having dessert, so we gave the kitchen another chance to impress. The caramel and Baileys bread and butter pudding (again, recommended by the waitress) was divine. Rich and sticky, studded with sultanas and served with a light vanilla custard, it was a trademark example of those upmarket school dinner puddings I’m so partial to. I couldn’t detect the Baileys and the caramel notes, if they were truly there, were subtle to a fault but even so it was a great way to end the meal. Well, that and a small glass of sweet, fresh Sauternes. The other dessert – Dolce Vita’s hazelnut praline tiramisu – might be my favourite tiramisu in Reading, and I’ve tried a lot. A nice firm slab of indulgence, not too big, with a little layer of crunchy praline hidden inside like a bonus feature. Almost unimprovable (although I did have a go by pairing it with a glass of vin santo).

The total bill for two, for three courses, a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses of dessert wine was ninety pounds – not cheap (although we did have a lot of food) but nothing felt like poor value. I think at least some of that is down to the service, which was up there with any town centre restaurant I’ve been to.

Like I said at the start, if you’re a fan of Dolce Vita you can relax – I had a great evening there. I still have misgivings about the frightening size of their menu (there was also a specials menu adding another set of bewildering options – including roast chicken pie – to the mix) and I’d probably stick to what I know they do well, but on the night I went they didn’t put a foot wrong, and they did it without any of the experience ever seeming mechanical. By the end, I found myself thinking that it would be so easy to come here on another evening later in the year, sit on that patio, soak up the last of the sunshine, have a few beers and a pizza and leave having spent less than twenty pounds. And if the summer ever comes, there’s a strong possibility that you’ll find me there one evening, doing exactly that.

Dolce Vita – 7.6
Kings Walk, RG1 2HL
0118 9510530

http://www.dolcevitareading.com/

Edible Reading

Tag: Pizza