Cozze

It was high time for a catch-up with fellow IR correspondent Phil Creighton, who has become something of a globe-trotting expert on Auracast, the technology that uses Bluetooth to provide audio assistance services everywhere from airports to banks.

Since tinnitus is beginning to affect me badly, I am always keen to, ahem, hear of the latest developments.

Which brings me onto one of the worst things about restaurants - the auditory experience. Too loud, too quiet, bad music, good music. It is one of those crucial background elements that is key to a dining experience.

The big restaurant chains even hire experts who focus on this and often make the wrong choice for us oldies.

It was Phil's turn to stay local and regular readers will know how tempting an opportunity to visit the excellent Yaprak in Woodley is, but in the interest of our readers we decided on Cozze, where the acoustics were not set to be a problem since we were the first of few diners that lunchtime.

Italian restaurants are few and far between in Reading. They seem to come in pairs - Quattro and Papa Gees in Caversham, Carluccios and Vinto Vita, of course. Oh, and the other chains - Bella Pasta, Zizzi's and Presto. And no doubt Jamie's will make a reappearance once they have their beachhead in London sorted. But that is Americanised Italian food. Some pasta, some mains, some pizzas.

It is a million miles away from almost any experience you will find in Italy. Angelo's has just opened in Station Hill (see review) and I hope he will bring some of the magic that made Ruschetta our go-to venue in the area for any special occasion over the past decade and more.

When you travel to Italy, you quickly realise that the word "restaurant" is just a vague blanket term. Italy has a highly specific hierarchy of eating establishments. Choosing where to eat isn't just about what you want to eat, but how long you want to sit, how much you want to spend, and how formal you want the vibe to be.

Ristorante is what most foreigners picture when they think of a restaurant. A ristorante is a formal dining establishment, where it is traditional to take your time over a full, structured menu consisting of an antipasto (appetizer), primo (usually pasta or risotto), secondo (meat or fish with a side dish), and dolce (dessert). Which does make you wonder how all those elegant customers remain so skinny.

At a cafe, breakfast for many Italians consists of an espresso and a pastry. What you drink when during the day is crucial. I once ordered a cappuccino in the afternoon and the sound of tutting by the waiter could be heard all the way back to the bar on the other side of the street.

If you want authentic, local comfort food without the stiffness of formal dining, then look for a trattoria. Historically, these were family-run, casual neighbourhood spots serving regional specialties. The menu is often shorter, sometimes changing daily based on what’s fresh at the market. The service is warm and informal, and they're frequently family owned and run.

In the past, an osteria was primarily a wine bar that served short, simple plates of food to accompany the drinking. Today, the line between a trattoria and an osteria has blurred significantly. However, a true osteria still leans into a highly rustic, relaxed atmosphere, often featuring communal tables and a heavy emphasis on local wines and regional finger foods or stews. I guess Vini Vita falls into this category.

In Italy, a pizzeria is distinct because it usually centres entirely around a wood-fired oven. Often they only fire up their ovens for dinner, so don't be surprised if your favourite spot isn't open for lunch. Expect a short menu without the lavish choices that have become all dominofied in the UK and elsewhere and traditionally no pasta. Something like Knead Neapolitan in Wokingham.

If you need a quick, budget-friendly lunch on the go, look for a tavola calda (literally "hot table") or a rosticceria, where spit-cooked food is the speciality. These are cafeteria-style spots where pre-prepared dishes—like lasagna, roasted meats, rice arancini, and cooked vegetables—are displayed behind a glass counter. You simply point to what you want, and they will heat it up for you to eat at a small counter or take away. These were traditionally working people's 'canteens' where they would have a hearty lunch.

And then you can create a matrix, if you are so inclined, with regional dishes - Ligurian, Sicilian, Tuscan, Tyrolean. They are all very different, ranging from the heavy cheese and ham of mountainous regions to the fresh veggie specialities of poorer and warmer regions with some Moorish influences like Sicily.

I used to have offices in Rome and Milan and it was interesting how the way of eating in the two cities was very different. In Rome we would go out after work and have whatever was the specials at the local ristorante - no menu, just one great dish after the other, whilst in Milan it was quicker lunches and later dinners. Or perhaps that was just how my colleagues liked things.

But, back to Woodley and Cozze. 

We were the first to arrive and received an effusive welcome. It really was the nicest greeting I have experienced at a Reading restaurant and excellent service continued throughout even as the restaurant filled up a bit. By the time we left two hours later it was around a quarter full with a clientele who averaged around eighty years in age, I would guess. And the food, unfortunately, would be appropriate not to their auditory, but their dental abilities. Cozze is great if you have no teeth and are hard of hearing. Phil and I are both near our pension ages and we were the youngest customers by some distance I would gauge.

It is a large room with utilitarian furniture and nice colourful prints on the wall. I find it strange that there are few outside tables in this pedestrian precinct - although Bosco Lounge was happily spilling over the pavements at the other end of the shopping area. Cozze had no outside tables (the picture is an old one), but did have aircon, an increasingly important feature of restaurants in our climate warming era.

Inevitably they offer the usual lengthened menu with, wait for it: Starters, Something To Start (ie Nibbles), Enough To Share, Classic Pizzas, Classic Pastas, Filled Pastas, Toscana Pizzas, Risotto, Secondi, Calzone, Burgers, From The Oven, Salads, Sides and Desserts. That is four times more items than a menu in many local Italians I have eaten at and did not bode well.

But thankfully there's a brief and enticing two course lunch menu for just £14.95, so the choice was easy.

They had a greatest hits of Italian standard dishes, with Phil opting for the deep fried mozzarella for starters followed by the spaghetti carbonara whilst I selected the insalata caprese followed by polpette al forno.

And this is where things took a bad turn. My starter dish had a tasteless sliced tomato with rubbery and equally tasteless slices of mozzarella topped by good but salty pesto. It wasn't horrible, but it just tasted utilitarian - just about what you can get away with. The tomatoes could have been doused in brine if they were the utter tasteless hard red things that British supermarkets pass for one of the most delicious fruits. And you can't skimp on mozzarella. It didn't have to be burrata, but it had to be better than this industrial sponge.

I tasted a corner of the very generous four pieces of deep fried breaded mozzarella with a tomato dip and again found it tasteless and a bit pointless. It tasted industrial, not home-made.

The main courses were even more disappointing. The carbonara looked like it had been bought in Tesco - gloopy cream with no eggy flavour and small bites of what I think was bacon not guanciale (but I stand to be corrected) and the cheese tasted like it had come out of one of those nasty cheese paste tubes. It did not taste like the egg, pecorino, parmesan and pasta water that it should have been. If I had been Phil I would not have eaten it, but he seemed to find it perfectly acceptable, so, as a foolish waiter once told my French mother-in-law 'it must be the taste in your mouth'. But, for a dish you can easily throw together at home in under fifteen minutes this was just unacceptable.

But worst of all was my polpette al forno. The pasta was soggy, the sauce just about OK but I could not pick up on the leeks nor mushrooms and the meatballs tasted, looked and had the consistency of frozen meatballs from a supermarket that had been quickly thawed. The meat was soggy like the pasta and had no crunch or crust, which is what the oven is meant to add. Perhaps firing up the oven is just too expensive.

The meal was considerably worse than buying the equivalent dishes from Waitrose round the corner and bunging them in the micro or oven. Which is a crying shame. I just hope and pray that this was a locum chef in the kitchen and that this was a total aberration, or that we made a total mistake in being cheapskates and going for the bargain menu. Italian food is all about ingredients, and good ingredients in the UK these days cost a lot of money.

And did I do what my wife does and tell them to their happy, concerned, welcoming faces that their food was awful? No, I cowarded and mumbled nice things and now I'm writing bad things. The young waitress was very concerned that I was leaving more than half my main course and insisted that I take it home. She lovingly wrapped it up for me. I felt really bad. These are the people I want to serve me in restaurants, but they deserve a better kitchen than this, even on an off day.

I wish Cozze all the luck in the world and with two branches (the other in Pangbourne), they have been around and enjoyed by people who are not me for decades.

I thought long and hard before publishing this review because I hate trashing the food at local independent restaurants, especially ones run by such a lovely, friendly team. But bad food is just bad food and lazy food is even more regrettable. Twenty years ago I was one of Trip Advisors' top 'contributors' (to the point that I got freebies everywhere) but when I realised that my family business back in Wales was suffering from being trashed unfairly I deleted my account and now I never rate on those awful algorithmic, monopolistic money grabbing platforms. Now I feel complicit.

But, what did I expect for £14.95 in these difficult times I hear you scream? Less and better with more care is my answer. If the cooking matched the service, this would be one of the best restaurants in the region..