The Spread Eagle, 117 Norfolk Road, Reading, RG30 2EG

Before I first set foot in the place a few years ago, like a lot of pubs, I only really knew The Spread Eagle by name. It should be a strong, imposing moniker, shouldn’t it? One which evokes visions of powerful sky predators in full intimidating flight. 

It’s tradition to toast your first drink to this giant golden eagle over the door. It’s not at all, but it should be, shouldn’t it?

Instead, the only bird I imagine is a panting middle-aged blonde one in see-through négligée tied to a four-poster bed, breathlessly anticipating the throbbing, eager member of a chisel-jawed stablehand.

This is the only photo of your mother I have that she’d let me use here

Sorry. I’m not quite sure why my mind goes there. I’ve never even read anything by Jilly Cooper. 

Other than its mildly erotic name, all I really knew about ‘The Spread’ was that it used to be the local boozer for Reading Football Club fans. It’s still the regular drinking hole of many an old Biscuitman, but it’s not exactly the club’s local nowadays. For some 27 years now, it’s been 3.6 miles away from where The Royals attempt to play football every other Saturday. Pre-1998 it used to be just 3.6 seconds away. But Elm Park is, sadly, no more.

22 geezers, fuelled by nothing but meat pies, ale, woodbine and a bit of orange at half time. THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Non-locals and those of you with a pathological fear of West Reading may dismiss the geography of The Spread, given its proximity to the Oxford Road. The reality is that it is only a few minutes’ strut over to The Pond House and the general unpleasantness of the Occy Road. But when you’re far enough up one of the roads that juts off the OR, you’re in a different world. This pub is closer to the Tilehurst Road, enmeshed in a protective cocoon of Tarmac’d W’s: Wantage Road, Waverley Road, Wilson Road, Wilton Road and Westbourne Terrace. It’s West. And it’s wather wonderful. Well, it’s not wubbish, anyway.

The Spread’s a community pub. And it’s a decent one, at that. It’s a pub that has events, a weekly quiz and a full TV sports package. But that’s not the main, memorable thing about the place, though. What stands The Spread Eagle out from its rivals, certainly in Central and West Reading, is that just under half of its square footage is taken up by a very good, surprisingly quite classy Indian restaurant.

Okay, so this is some sort of CGI rendering. But it does basically look like this. PROMISE

When you amble in through the front door, the bar’s directly in front of you. Alright, that’s not exactly unusual, but it’s something which can be a Godsend at the tail end of a heavy pub crawl. After all, no one wants to be told the next day that they stumbled off home after failing to find the draughts and pumps in the last pub, muttering something about ‘not being fucking Copernicus’.

These aren’t the draughts they have in there now. This is an old picture. So that’s handy, isn’t it?

The restaurant (Bagheera) is to your left. And very tastefully decorated it is too. It looks all the fancier next to the entirely-fine-but-not-particularly-ornate decor of the pub. I’ve not eaten in the actual restaurant but I have in the pub (you get the option) and the starters and tandoor stuff is great.

For some reason part of the menu is ‘Indo-Chinese’, but whatever. I suppose that’s fusion cooking. Which seems a bit early-2000’s to me, but who knows. I’m no food expert, I’ll leave the unedited 30,000-word lunch-y literary landfill to other Reading blogberks.

I’ll just say this: ‘The bhajis are very nice.’

Fortunately, the waiting staff are fully human and not terrifying Island of Dr. Moreau-style half-panther-half-chef-hybrid-monster-creatures

A British pub that sells British beer and Indian food? Sounds like a Desi pub, doesn’t it? And maybe it is. The head chef’s definitely Indian, even if most of the staff in the restaurant and pub are Nepalese. I don’t know the official definition of a Desi pub. All I know is they started in the West Midlands in the sixties, ‘Desi’ is a Hindi word meaning ‘home’ and you largely find the places – unsurprisingly – in areas of the UK with sizeable Indian diaspora like Birmingham, the Black Country, the East Midlands and West London.

Specifics and tags aside, this is a pub where you can drink booze, watch football, talk bollocks, drink booze, play a fruit machine, chuck some darts, drink some more booze and then order a curry to your table. And there’s very little not to like about that. Apart from the fruit machine bit. We’ve got to draw the vice line somewhere, haven’t we? C’mon. You’re better than that.

It’s the bar!

Swerve the food, however, and what you have is a quite decent locals’ pub. Monday to Thursdays there’s a three-hour Happy Hour (15% off beers), from 2pm to 5pm. Which is good news if you’re a tradesman, but little use if you’re a 9-5 office drone.

The quiz night? Every Thursday. It’s one of those generic internet ones, so pro quizzers might not be too tested or interested. But casual folk keen to show off their knowledge of West African capital cities and Dad’s Army actors to their pub pals can’t complain.

Ladies’ man and friend of STiR, Mr. Ray ‘Ray-Ray’ Lee smiles for the camera after a quiz win/curry raid

The weekly trivia business is run by a friendly local called Emlyn. It’s free to play and the prize is a cheap bottle of plonk. 

An attractive young couple win the quiz. Unfortunately, a problem with the camera – coupled with a trick of the light – made the photo appear to show the handsome man as balding. But that’s definitely 100% not the case

Each week there’s also Find the Joker which often rolls over until one Thursday you get to watch on as someone you don’t know jubilantly wins a few hundred quid in cash. It’s something I’d be a lot more annoyed about had me and my missus not personally found the joker rather smugly at The Rose & Thistle’s quiz night on a number of occasions.

Fool’s Gold

The outside area’s split into two, one area’s raised and benched, without cover. The other part’s shielded from the elements, with a pleasingly chucked-together collection of weird pallet seating and mismatched chairs. It’s all built on concrete, so it’s no lush beer garden. But it does the job.

There’s nothing more beautifully British than seeing two blokes sat by themselves on different tables, each drinking a pint and completely ignoring the other

As ever, if this was a proper pub review written by someone with even a passing interest in beer, I’d give you a run-down of what drinks they serve. But it isn’t and so I won’t. Who cares, anyway? I mean, really? Do you care? Do you? You do? Alright, fine. Sorry.

I don’t care, though. On my last visit I was drinking Foster’s tops. SUE ME. It was hotter than Christ’s chimney outside, it’s a cheap pint and – fuck off – I like drinking it. I seem to recall one mate of mine was on Hoppit. So there you are, that’s two beers they sell. 

I dunno. Here’s a generic picture of their spirits from ages ago that probably doesn’t represent their stock now. Hope this helps…

Some booze

One ‘spirit’ I know they do have is something called 5 Walla, a rum-based chai tea cream liqueur. Which the bar staff were happy to let us try for free (and resulted in a round of them being bought). It’s basically an Indian version of Bailey’s. So, yeah. Foster’s tops and a clove-tinged Bailey’s. That’s what this 40 year-old man drinks of a Saturday.

And delicious it was too

Am I qualified to write these things? Is this review of any value?? Does anything really matter???

When does a lager tops become a shandy…?

As always, see you at the bar. Mine’s a large one (a large chai tea cream liqueur).