The story of Clay’s, an independent Indian restaurant in Caversham, Berkshire, is testament to the level of wild-eyed determination needed to follow your dreams and open your own place. The current hospitality climate suggests that, by 2024, my closest “restaurant” on the east London/Essex border could well be the Cinnabon concession at my local Asda, a profitable meeting of big brands selling 1,090 calorie-a-whirl, factory-made caramel PecanBons, so my hope is that, by the time the current madness eventually ends, at least some family-run, bespoke, flights of the imagination such as Clay’s will have survived.
Serving authentic Hyderbadi food that will puzzle anyone looking for a garish orange chicken tikka masala with half-rice, half-chips, Clay’s is now in its second incarnation, this time in a suburb of Reading north of the town centre. If you take the train to Reading, you can walk to Clay’s in 10-15 minutes, through the park and over Caversham bridge, which at the moment has a Hitchcockian number of ducks, geese and swans milling about, which is wonderful, although ornithophobics may prefer to take a cab. Either way, you cannot miss Clay’s: it was once a Wetherspoon’s, ergo it is enormous, and the front is now painted TeleTubbies Laa-Laa-yellow with Royal Mail-red lettering. Everything about Clay’s says: “This time, we are going big.”
Nandana Syamala and her husband, Sharat, first opened their doors on London Street in the heart of Reading back in 2018, and quickly made a name for themselves with their clay-pot biryanis, squid pakoras and bhuna venison. Then, in lockdown, they started sending out mail-order, vacuum-packed curries and sides, delivering first around Reading and then, hyper-ambitiously, nationwide. Many “professional eaters” raved about them, lapping up Clay’s kheema biryani, spiced fried chicken livers and beetroot potato tikki. Pivoting to home delivery during lockdown to save your restaurant’s skin was not, I’ll wager, the tremendous fun that many chefs tried to make it look on Instagram. Rather, it was a logistical headache.
Clay’s not only made it work, but they then made plans to move to a larger venue, which, due to building issues, was delayed and left them unable to trade through December 2022 and almost took them under. Nandana’s blog about opening the new, improved Clay’s is candid: “I have put everything into this, including my health, wealth and soul. I am not the same person I was a few years ago. I have lost a bit of myself to Clay’s … All I have is this obsession with creating something special.”
Well, Clay’s is indeed special. It’s impossible to sit down with a generous plate of its cabbage pakora with green coriander chutney or crab minapa garelu (savoury crab doughnuts), and not think that this is thoughtfully made and determinedly different from what many of us are used to with high-street Indian dining. Those “donuts” are a rather gothic-looking dish of crab meat formed into small, chubby rings, dipped in peppery black gram flour, then deep-fried and submerged in a bowl of rather brown tomato and curry leaf rasam. Chepala pulusu, an Andhra-style fish curry cooked, the menu says, “the way my mom makes it”, is also gloriously, defiantly brown, and features a large chunk of cod in a rich, punchily spiced tamarind sauce that’s ideal for scooping up with blush-coloured beetroot roti and methi roti all fragrant with fenugreek leaves.
This is a vast, echoey room that needs some work on the acoustics, as well as possibly more staff on the floor, because the ones they’ve got seem to be working flat out already. But the food more than makes up for the occasional chaos: those chicken livers, or bhooni khaleji, for instance, were fried in heaps of cumin and coriander and had a lovely rush of dried mango powder. Clay’s rightly renowned Hyderabadi-style dum biryani is fluffy and fragrant, can be made with mutton, paneer, shrimp, lamb or chicken, and comes with a cooling raita and, rather than the usual high-street, soupy sauce, a balm-like, toffee-coloured, creamy salan. In fact, Clay’s made me go home, get out some books and try to work out exactly what I’d eaten, such as the mahekhalya sauce with the beef osso bucco that’s made from onions and crushed coconut, or the Portuguese-influenced shrimp moilee with coconut milk and curry leaves.
Having gone big on the vankaya fry of long aubergines in peanut and sesame seed and the tomato pappu – a dal with tomato and black mustard seeds – there was no room left for dessert, so I have no idea what the anokhi kheer, or Hyderabadi onion pudding garnished with pistachio, even looks like. But Clay’s has one of those menus that I feel I’ll keep going back to. Food doesn’t get much more personal than this and there is a pure Field of Dreams vibe to the fact that it even exists: “If you build it, they will come,” Shoeless Joe said in that film. In Clay’s case, I think they will.
Clay’s Kitchen & Bar 22-24 Prospect Street, Caversham, Reading, Berkshire, 0118-947 6060, hello@clayskitchen.co.uk for bookings. Open lunch Thurs-Sat, noon-3pm (small plates menu only); dinner Tues-Sat, 5-11pm; Sun brunch noon-5pm. Small plates £6.50-£11, à la carte from about £40 a head, all plus drinks and service
