The Pot Kiln

We stopped in for lunch and it did not disappoint. Great service with a really friendly team that were very attentive. There was a great selection on the menu and it was delicious! We were advised to select 4-5 dishes for the two of us and it was a great shout, filling but not too much - nice selection of veggie food as well. The location as well, stunning! Beautiful views of the countryside. We will be back for sure!

I stayed here for one night and I loved it (June 2024). I travel solo a lot for work and I’m always keen to find unique spaces other than the Premier Inn who charge £65-250 for one night and offer no facilities. I was en route from London to Berkshire and then home to Yorkshire! The Pot Kiln is excellent value for money. I paid £120 for one night. Relatively easy to reach off the M4 (might be tricky in wet Winter) and plenty of parking immediately next to bedrooms and the pub/restaurant. Beautiful location. 🌲 The kitchen was closed, but the outdoor pizza oven was compensating for all visitors. It was delicious. The local (Renegade) brewery is on tap and is worth trying. The restaurant is spacious and lovely on the eye. I bet this place is buzzing when word gets out; I learned it has only been open for 3 weeks. I stayed in room 4. The bedroom was very clean and comfortable. Piping hot shower and bottled water. The room lacks a small chair to sit at the table to work (if you need to sit on your laptop). The toilet is really close to the sink; will be tricky for large/vulnerable people to reach. The biggest concern was no window or air conditioning in the room. At about 11pm the thermostat was showing 27C with no air flow. I had to open the bathroom window and door to cool the room down. I did wonder what it would be like during a rare heatwave. However, it was a joy and incredibly peaceful. Coffee machine and NO TV (maybe a conscious decision) in the room helps guests to relax. In the morning the cows 🐄 are literally next to the entrance to the pub. I’d love to see this business thrive, so I hope my feedback is helpful and not viewed as a criticism. I had a wonderful 12 hours! Thank you 🙏

Fantastic new menu and relaunch with open plan Kitchen and creative Spanish theme menu where a lot of thought and creativity has gone into things.Busy, buzzy, good vibe and team enthusiastic and good service Often new openings have a few weeks of bedding in and things can be a bit haphazard, not here a lot of thought and planning has obviously gone into things and it shows. Fabulous cocktails and in one of the best spots in West Berks Thoroughly recommend Mark

Recently refurbed, The Pot Kiln offers top quality Basque style cuisine cooked on a state of the art Parrilla wood and charcoal burning barbecue in full sight of the dining room, your pretty much in the kitchen. The quality of food is outstanding, fresh and bang full of flavour, service is un-fussy, polite and efficient, overall an outstanding place to spend a few hours grazing some delightful food.

Really enjoy the food here, we have had two meals here now, one lunch and one dinner. Seasonal veg alongside appropriate meat selection for the time of year. Everything is really well cooked and sides are excellent. Look forward to returning in the future.

Stayed for one night. Didn’t eat there for evening meal as pricey and not many options we liked, but we ate breakfast there which was lovely!

A great restaurant for locally sourced game and meat. Very cosy and authentic rural atmosphere. Helpful and friendly staff, we were very well looked after. The food is very good quality but not outstanding, which you might expect considering the price. Some of us had the lamb sharer. Gorgeous meat and high quality veg, potatoes and yorkshires. However at that price I don't think the portions were generous enough. Shouldn't have to ask for more roast potatoes when you've paid £75 for a dish for two people. So do go! Enjoy this lovely restaurant, but it is slightly over priced for what it is.

Had an absolutely faultless lunch here last week. Setting is beautiful and we were made to feel completely at home by the team. The venison sharer is phenomenal (and huge!) so make sure you come hungry.

Ok, so maybe it was the weather (gorgeous July sunshine) or the lovely barmen, or perhaps even the surrounding fields and meadows, full of cows and flowers. This was rural Berkshire at it's bloody best. The bar is small. The food all local with a distinct leaning towards game. We ate off the bar menu and sat on one of the benches in the garden to the side. This pub is small and the gardens just big enough, but with rolling hills and fields surrounding you, you really feel like you're in the middle of the countryside. Noice. I had a divine warm goats cheese salad, with walnuts and caramelised pears. It was fit. Nuff said. Fellow dining companions had baguettes which looked delicious, especially the game sausage, and handmade wholemeal baguettes. There weren't many people there for a Saturday afternoon, could've been the World Cup or Wimbledon, whatever kept the hordes away it made our experience all the better for it. I would highly recommend for a Saturday drive in the country. A real winner. And don't look at the map here, it's completely wrong. Check out their website instead for detailed instructions. www.potkiln.org

The Pot Kiln is a lovely gastro pub with separate restaurant in a very rural location. The bar area is small, but the restaurant area is large and there is plenty of outdoor seating on a nice day. The menu proclaims a healthy set of values: everything made from scratch, locally sourced produce and locally shot game and much of it seasonal. They even run a Game and Wild Food Cookery School nearby if you want to learn how it is done Bar £6-10: Spanish omelette; 10oz local beef & Roe deer burger; medium rare venison steak on a Ciabatta roll; Ploughman's selected from mature cheddar, local ham, salt beef, pate; a rather nice sounding ham, cheese and bacon salad; and sandwiches. Set menu; weekday lunchtimes 2 courses for £12, £15 with desert. Restaurant starters £6-8: Warm salad of wood pigeon; wild Kennet crayfish bisque; dry aged Serrano ham; watercress & potato soup; Presse rabbit; pork & Foie Gras terrine; home cured Orkney Gravadlax; honey roasted beetroot salad with walnuts and English goat's cheese dressing. Restaurant mains £12-19: pavé of Kirby Roe deer with pommé puree and pepper corn sauce; roasted local wood pigeon with petit pois, sage & mustard; cassoulet with Gressingham duck, Guinea fowl & leek sausages, Barlotti beans & rosemary; Whole roast Poussin marinzated with oregano, garlic, thyme, rosemary and served with sauté potatoes; Slow braised wild rabbit with lemon, rosemary, olive oil. & garlic served with sautéed potatoes & roast courgette; Whole roaste Bilbury trout with sautéed potatoes, marsh samphire & home made aioli; for the veggies: Broad bean, fresh pea & garden herb risotto with aged parmnesan Uncharacteristically I went for the burger after the friendly barman's description of the best burger he'd ever had, it was the best one I've ever had too! Served on a plate with a small dressed oak-leaf lettuce and potato salad, the moist delicious burger was sat on a Ciabatta roll with some salad and mature Cheddar. Everything was home made, including the roll, and tasted great. If I was going to be picky the mustard based dressing on the salad in the roll was too acidic, but still Highly recommended, next time I'll try the restaurant. UPDATE: Well I made it back to the restaurant and took my boss as a thank you. We started with seafood bisque and Roe deer liver on potato, excellent. Next we shared a Roe deer haunch with garden vegetables, red cabbage, new potatoes beautiful. To finish we shared cheese and biscuits, some Taylor's port. This was all washed down with a couple of beers and a bottle of excellent Portuguese wine. Altogether the bill was £120 which is a little expensive, but it was very, very nice and more importantly my boss had a great meal and was impressed: so well worth it. The restaurant is highly recommended for a special occasion.

A gastro pub in the sticks with an emphasis on game, The Pot Kiln sounded like it had potential. Admittedly I was suffering the wrath of a new year hangover at the time so perhaps not at my most objective but the food didn't really live up to my expectation. There was nothing wrong with it per se, it was just that in my mind I imagined they may have been about to blow my socks off, yet having eaten my socks were still firmly in situ. The real bugbear of my visit was the difficulty we had in obtaining drinks. On several occasions it seems as though the waitress was purposefully averting her gaze when we tried to get her attention and this theme continued throughout our visit. In the end we resorted to walking around to the bar area ourselves and doubling up so we had a stock pile. Perhaps our waitress was having an off day, or sharing my new year hangover. Who knows, but it didn't inspire me to add The Pot Kiln to my list of "must return soon" venues.

We are so lucky to live near to the Pot Kiln. What was once a very small and traditional pub was taken on by Mike Robinson (a sort of celebrity TV chef - but please don't let that put you off). He has managed to transform it into a great small restaurant while simultaneously maintaining the feel and traditions that had made the Pot Kiln a great pub. The key to this is the locally sourced produce - often picked or caught that morning. Vegetarians may shudder at the descriptions of just how fresh some of the produce is! As one can imagine local game is a specialty and there is also a cookery school attached which focuses on this. However other tastes are also well catered for. Wines are also well-sourced and the service and atmosphere is always warm and friendly. You will need to book well in advance - particularly for the great Sunday lunches. And as Pot Kiln is situated in the middle of beautiful open countryside, you can justify over indulgence with a good walk!

The first time we visited this pub a few years ago it was written up in our guide as a simple country pub. When we arrived we found out that it had been recently bought by TV celebrity chef Mike Robinson and turned into a brilliant gastropub. The pub's down a lane all on its own, with nothing but fields and cows nearby. Very quiet. It has its own parking. Exterior is typical country pub. There are some nice walks around, through fields and woods. There's a small pub room, lots of outside picnic benches, and a nice dining room. I don't remember what we ate the first time, but it was brilliant, really tasty. The second time I made notes: my friend (who was celebrating a birthday) and I both had the wood pigeon salad with bacon and black pudding for a starter, and the slow-roasted Berkshire pork belly with roast garden veg. The others' food was all excellent as well. We had a couple of bottles of the Domaine de la Janasse Côtes-du-Rhônes that I discovered at this same pub last year (and that I've since bought two cases of). Desserts were phenomenal, too; they made a special one for the birthday-boy comprised of bits of all the best desserts on offer. Afterwards, Mike Robinson came over to chat with us. The lunch service was done, and he felt chatty, I guess. He wished our friend a happy birthday, then broke the remainder of his '85 port and then the Taylor's 20-year port, and he sat and drank it with us. As the driver, I could only sit in envy. We had a good laugh with him, though. He described the new cookery school show he's did (raising his own game deer), talked about how he raises and slaughters his deer and pigs, and he gave us a detailed tour of the pub garden. I can't promise that sort of individual attention for every group, but it really made us fond of the place.

This place is out in the country and in the winter, you may want a four wheel drive vehicle to get there as the roads can get a bit slippery. I've been here twice in the last decade. The bar is a small little room with lively locals enjoying a pint. The dining area is through a door and is much quieter. I believe the house dog (Sally I think?) is responsible for tracking some of the food since the Chef hunts the venison in the forest just a ways away from the building. The first time I went there, as we left, the dog was very happy sitting in the sun chewing on an entire half of a deer's ribcage. Gotta love a working dog getting paid off with the meat they worked for. The food was amazing the first time. It's been too long to remember what I had other than hare but I remember the second time being slightly disappointed. Sometimes you build things up too much in your head though. I thought the hare the second time was a little dry but that maybe the nature of the meat and I also was suffering from altitude sickness from flying from the US so my appetite was all over the place. I give this a solid go go go. No matter what the reviews, it's the loveliest place to go eat and walk around. You feel like you found something few people know about and it just feels special. I took a picture of a woman I used to date with the snowy hills behind and it's one of my favorite pictures. It's a special place.

Pot Kiln gets the pizza oven going on a Sunday evening, which seems a perfect way to end Fathers Day. The weather was great and the pizza excellent, if a little mean on portion control. For a tenner I'd expect more than four bites of venison, but that's really splitting hairs. The service can be a bit slower than you'd be accustomed to in a town pub, but it's all part of the charm. Anything to improve on? The owner's a bit in everyone's face. All in all 3/5

Very nice indeed, went here for a small work dinner with a few people. The food, wine & service was excellent. Would highly recommend.

If you like your food fresh, caught that morning and enjoy updated food in a traditional setting then this is a place for you. Well-designed dishes, well-presented and very tasty. The chef is hands on and takes great pride in his establishment. The atmosphere is friendly, staff are happy to advise on what to eat and know their food as well. Greta for lunch or evening occasion, but do book in advance.

This is a great place, specialising in game, and the menu varies day to day depending on what's been shot that morning. It's friendly and cosy and the food is good (and certainly fresh!). Something a little different - definitely worth a visit.

The wife and I have taken to doing longish walks with good pubs midway, Faversham-Sportsman-Whitstable being probably the best (improbably perfect) instance. This time we did Theale-Pot Kiln-Thatcham. I wanted to like the Pot Kiln, really I did. But it just didn't click. Probably our big mistake was eating in the dining room, which is much like the dining room of a retirement home designed by William Faulkner during an especially depressed and sepulchral mood. The raucous bar would have been a far better choice. I had the grouse and it was spectacular. Just gamey enough, served with a good bread sauce and house-cured ham. But the wild hare pasta was a disaster - overcooked pasta, tough meat, and little flavour. Partridge was fine but not memorable. Terrine (venison I think) tasted of fat, which I always like, but little else. I would certainly go back, but only for the bar menu and probably only on a weekday, when it wouldn't be so mobbed. Note that the location showed on the Yelp website is totally wrong - it's closer to Frilsham.

We went to The Pot Kiln to celebrate my husband's 70th birthday. It was fantastic. All four of us enjoyed our food, the service was great and we had a wonderful time.

The Pot Kiln is great place to experience game food at its best. Simple, full of flavour and a great atmosphere. I always take my family here when then come from Australia because this type of cooking really is quentisentially british. Its rare to find a place where the food is excellent, and its perfectly acceptable to have a pint (from West Berks Brewery) with your meal. Try the pave of deer, pork belly, rabbit... actually its all good.