The Water Tower - Flaming Grill - Tilehurst

We WERE thinking of reviewing this flaming place ....


The sign said it was a Steak House. We weren't expecting anything more than a Steak House. Although flamin' 'eck, we just wish it had been a review-able Steak House.


The Bear and Dragon ... uh sorry .... the Water Tower / Flaming Grill (jeez we despise this gratuitous pub name changing fetish) is ideally situated for a quick "it's Saturday evening, lets take the kids out for a steak". It is at the junction of Park Lane, Langley Hill and Halls Road - the No.17 bus will stop outside if you're polite to the driver and sometimes even if you're not.

We found a table around the side from the noisy bar area .... you may wish to look away now.

The table was sticky and we had to ask for it to be cleaned.
Only two of our (identical) drinks had a straw.
The "Sizzling rib combo sharing" starter was only enough for one - two at a pinch.
There were only two corn cobettes (we were three).
After we'd used the cutlery for the starter and our plates were quickly replaced with our"mains" (god I hate that term) we had to ask for more cutlery.
Steaks arrived - single good news - it did look like it was an actual "rib-eye" steak. My partners prawns with the "surf  & Turf" looked a little like prawns and the other in our little group had a piece of bacon in the "Mini Mixed Grill" which "tasted really quite good" although the 2oz burger was so full of cereal we couldn't really taste the meat and the same with the sausage ... the fried egg was nicely cooked.
Strangely though the weird platters the steaks arrive on were so very hot, the steaks continued to cook from underneath whilst we were eating them and by the time we were half way through, they were no longer 'medium-rare' and getting on for 'well-done'.
My fresh strawberry gateau after my steak tasted 'chemically' and the strawberries were most certainly not fresh - although were probably from a freshly opened tin.

Well, we warned you. We're not going to tell you anything else about this place nor its food except to say, when we went out to our car it looked as though an elephant bird had taken a sack of "dulcolax" the night before and it had only just "done the trick" ... all over our bonnet - we had foolishly parked under one of the large oak trees..

The sign said it was a Steak House. We weren't expecting anything more than a Steak House. Although we just wish it had been a review-able Steak House.

Advice to the Water Tower?
Don't mess with pub names.
Pay attention to the details.
Keep tables clean and free from sticky yuk yuk.
Make the sharing starters a little more share-able.
Perhaps try local sourcing for your meats (local farms) - this would be a great 'crowd pleaser' and SO much more tasty.
Use fresh strawberries (unless of course you buy your puddings from Costco - in which case just don't bother).

A day later and we still felt uncomfortably bloated.

We'll visit again in a few weeks and hopefully we'll be able to review with a sparkle but until then we are still searching for a review-able Steak House around Reading ...



The Water Tower - 160 Park Lane Tilehurst
Contact: Michael Cekalla
Tel: 01183 217207