Good Old Days Hong Kong Ltd, 66 George Street, Caversham, Reading RG4 8DH (07840 180080). All dishes £5-£9.80. Unlicensed
Once everything we’d ordered for lunch had arrived, a Chinese man on the next table leaned over and pointed approvingly at the array of steaming bowls: the wok-scorched ho fun, the brashly orange prawn sweet-and-sour, the golden lozenges of deep-fried pork chop with chilli salt and the rest. “I am impressed by what you have chosen,” he said. “It’s the food we would order.” He was part of a quartet of Reading residents, all originally from Hong Kong. I asked him if this was the food of home. He nodded vigorously and grinned. They all nodded vigorously and grinned. “Very much so,” he said. “And look at the amount you have ordered. I couldn’t eat all that.” I tamped down the shame and mumbled something about just trying to get a sense of the menu. But he was right. We had heroically over-ordered. Some of this would be coming back with us in takeaway boxes. That’s never a bad thing.
