Telephone: 0118 527 770

Website: http://www.theforburyhotel.co.uk/

Date of visit: 1 February 2012

Costs: Set lunch £15 for 2 courses, £15 for 3 courses. A la carte: around £30 for 2 courses

Wines and beer: Longish wine list but most wines (except champagne) between £30-£60. Nothing stands out as good or bad value.

Likes and dislikes: Very modern restaurant under Reading’s most expensive hotel.

Cuisine: Modern European

Summary:

Cerise is the house restaurant of The Forbury Hotel.

The building was once a  court house. It is a majestic building unlike the current court house sited on top of Marks and Spencer in Friar Street.

The inside has been thoroughly modernised – about 10 years ago – with the reception and a foyer dotted with settees upon entry. The rest of the ground floor has been turned into meeting rooms. Parking (garage) is via the back of the hotel.

I was meeting my ex-colleagues for lunch.

Cerise – housed in the basement – offered a value for money set lunch. This was surprising as  the rooms –which did not have air con – starts at around £200 per night .

The set lunch offered several choices. I had crab cake followed by vegetable risotto. Both were nicely presented as well as decent size portioned. The crab cake was golf ball size, nesting on a bed of celeriac with a few streaks of green sauces on the edge of the plate. The cake was full of crab and not potato – top marks.

The risotto was bits of green vegetable with rice cooked just right. It wasn’t all that flavoursome – this suggested that the stock was a bit light. Maybe it is because it was because the stock was vegetable and not meat! A few mushrooms would have added more umami to the taste.

The others had the pavie of fish. This was a nice tower of shell and white fish at the end of an oblong plate with streaks of green and orange sauce across the rest of the plate. I assume that it was all right because the food was all devoured.

The tables were well spaced apart and there were also a lot of self contained areas. This is definitely a good place for a business lunch – reasonable food and prices, discrete sitting and little noise. As some of my ex-colleagues were still working, we didn’t have wine. I had a look at the list – nearly all grape type generic wines at around £30-£60 a bottle.

An interesting fact is that the waitresses all wore synchronised nail vanish – it was a black streak across the front with glitter on it. Well ………….

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February 2012

This can only happen in the USA or China(?)

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Feb 2012

Web site: http://www.chinapalacereading.com/

Telephone number: 0118 959 6683

Previous report:  27 October 2011

New visit: 31 January 2012

Approx. cost per head: £15 plus

Cuisine: Chinese – Cantonese

Likes and dislikes: Probably one of the the best authentic Cantonese restaurant in the UK if you stick to the dim sum and main a la carte menu. Avoid the all you can eat and set meals.

Beers and wines: £3.20 for Tiger and Tsing Tao. Mediocre wine list.

Cuisine: mainly cantonese chinese food.

Summary:

China Palace always has special dishes on offer for the Chinese New Year and the subsequent weeks.

I thought that I should try it.

In fact special 2 menus are on offer – all written in Chinese. You need to ask for it if you are non Chinese and get it translated. The “New Year” menu has a dozen dishes all in good luck and rhyming words. For example eight in Chinese has a very close sound to “make” as in “fat” (make/eight) choi (money). One of the dishes on the menu was East West in harmony which in fact is Tong Pao meat. This is Chairman Mao’s favourite dish. It is belly of pork marinated in a sugar and soy mixture then steamed over a long time until the meat nearly falls apart. This was priced at £16.50. In fact all the dishes on this menu are around £20. It was excellent.  You get four large pieces of pork with broccoli. It was worth risking a heart attack to eat this. The other dishes on this menu were various seafood and to my surprise, a few elaborate vegetables dishes.

I also ordered the sweet and sour fish fillets. Cantonese call this koo loo. This was from the other special menu. This was cooked more Chinese style than the a la carte version – less fruity, less sugar and vinegar. On this menu, you can get eels etc.

In total we ordered 3 dishes ((plus salt and pepper squid) and the usual dry fried ho fun. In total the bill came to nearly £65 – with only 2 tiger beers – for 2 people.

If you want to try these special dishes – very different from the usual crispy duck, chow mein etc, you will need to go soon. The menu is only on offer for a maximum of 4 weeks – depending on demand – in the evening.

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PS Reading is now a pain to park. Meters everywhere. Its 8am to 8pm, 7 days a weeks. They have also taken away the single yellow lines. It all meters or double yellow lines

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January 2012

I actually like to combine the inside of a haggis with black pudding and reheat it with a mash potato topping a la cottage pie.

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January 2011

Telephone: 01488 668325

Website: http://www.crownandgarter.co.uk/

Date of visit: 26 January 2012

Costs:  Set lunch: £19.95 for 2 courses, £13.95 for 3 courses. Most a la carte dishes between £10-£15  and you get free bread with both butter and an oil and vinegar dip.

Wines and beer: Amazing wine list. Most expensive wine is under £20. The house champagne is £21. West Berkshire Brewery and Doombar.  Guest beer from £3 a pint.

Likes and dislikes: Clean tables, cheap and decent food. Pity about the location – miles from anywhere unless you live locally.

Cuisine: Traditional pub food.

Summary:

I have been trying to eat here for a while. Unfortunately, it is firstly a longish drive and secondly, they are closed on a Monday and Tuesday lunch.

The Crown and Garter is listed in Sawdays’, The Good Pub Guide (Which) and AA’s pub guide. Although Inkpen is in the middle of a really rural location, the roads from A4 and Hungerford are good.

The inside of the pub is modern – more like a farmhouse  – with a pub side and a restaurant.

The a la menu is short – fish cakes, trio of game, grazing boards, fish and chips etc. There is a set luch with 4 courses to choose from – several designed for vegetarians.

I went for the set lunch. To start with I had the pheasant sausage in a mushroom sauce. This came as a skinless sausage with a very loose texture, like an over boiled frankfurter. The mushrooms were a medley in a brown sauce. It was nice but the texture was too loose for me.

Next I had the smoke haddock. This came in an au gratin dish with three whirls of mash potatoes on the side – cooked in the au gratin dish. The haddock was cooked just right and it came in a cheese sauce with wilted spinach.  The Old Boy (£3.50) from West Berkshire Brewery was a decent pint.

As I was leaving, three toffee nose young solicitors turned up. You can tell by their uniform: blue denim jeans and a tweed jacket with an open neck shirt. What tells them apart is that they have a handkerchief in their top pocket. I first came across one of Mr Dewhurst’s sons dressed like this. (Please note that although Top Gear presenters dress like this, they do not have handkerchief in their top pocket. As soon as they start speaking, you can hear it : the plummy accent, the constant use of words like Yeah and Fantastic – by the way, superb which was heavily in use in the 80s is no longer fashionable. Please don’t get me wrong. I am not against them but I just found the dress code amusing. Another interesting fact is that they mainly drink halves and will have a large glass of wine with their meal but not a bottle.

For a food point of view, this is an extremely decent place for plain old fashion cooking.

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January 2012

Web site: www.lion-lamb.co.uk (URL not in use)

Telephone number: 01223 860 202

Date of visit: 19/1/12

Approx. cost per head:

Comments on wine list/beer:

Media link:

Review:

It will never cease to amaze me why people who so clearly despise the human race go into the hospitality industry.
The lion & Lamb is locally infamous for having the rudest most hateful landlady in the county, if not the country.
My place of work have now vetoed this pub because any sane person does not work hard all week to spend their money somewhere in which you are made to feel you are nothing more than a terrible nuisance to miserable landlady.
If you visit the area  there are plenty more pubs close to this, even one opposite, and so I would suggest avoiding this one like the plague. What would you miss if you choose not to go here? Stodgy greasy food slapped down in front of you with a snarl & terrible wine – that’s all.
I have witnessed customers being spoken to & treated terribly on several occasions and have also had some of the same treatment myself. The customer in the Lion & Lamb is a fly to be swatted and nothing more.
Avoid this place!!!

R