One of Newbury’s most popular Market Place restaurants has recently reopened after a major refurbishment.
Bill’s closed for a month to complete renovation work to transform its interior, with the eatery now being marketed as a café bar that has new food options to go along with it.
The front of the space is more laidback and relaxed with several comfy sofas and stacks of board games, emulating that café feel.
Along with a new cake and pastry menu, Bill’s is hoping to capitalise on Newbury’s ever-growing coffee shop craze.
The bar has also been given a spruce up. Decorated with bottle green tiles and big arched mirrors, it feels like you’ve been taken back to a 1920s extravagant drinking hole. It’s great!
A major introduction has been the change to ordering, which does away with classic table service and forces diners to either order at the bar, or on their phones via a QR code at their table.
It is a change that some people will welcome, while others will not.
When I visited Bill’s with a friend, we sat at the back which in the restaurant area.
The walls are still adorned with quirky pieces of art and plants surround the doorways and windows.
To begin my companion and I shared one of the new menu’s sharer platters.
Bill’s classic sharer (£14.95) contains chorizo drizzled with hot honey, chicken and sesame dumplings, roast squash hummus, flatbread slices, house pickles and olives.
The Mediterranean-style feast is perfect to share among friends and fellow diners.
The long plate punctuated with the different dishes forces a mix-and-match style of eating, and combining the various flavours is to be encouraged.
The big, meaty chunks of chorizo are smothered with the hot, sweet honey glaze, and these are great to have with the smooth and mellow roast squash hummus.
Lather these two on a piece of flatbread with some pickles and other bits of salad. You won’t regret it.
The Asian-style dumplings are crunchy and crispy with a fragrant chicken filling.
They’re lovely to dunk into Bill’s spicy chutney, a fruity dip that is more of a smooth sauce than a chunky chutney.
For the main course, we both chose a different burger.
I had Bill’s smash burger (£14.50) which is made up of two 3oz beef patties, cheese, burger sauce, lettuce and pickles, while my friend had the buttermilk chicken burger (£14.95) which contains crumbed chicken breast, creamy coleslaw, tomato and lettuce.
For those who don’t know, smash burgers are the latest craze in the burger world. The patties are smashed by on to the grill with a spatula, resulting in a thin meat disk packed with juices and flavour.
Bill’s iteration is a resounding success, with the beef patties paired with a nice amount of salad and a tasty sauce that adds that extra bit of zest to the burger.
I also added a couple of rashers of smoked streaky bacon (£2.25 extra) to add to the meatiness.
The chicken burger centred around a big piece of fried chicken that was topped generously with the tasty coleslaw, which really mellowed out the tasty burger.
For those who want to kick it back up a notch, this dish comes with a pot of chipotle mayonnaise for dipping and dunking.
Both burgers came in a sesame seed bun that was nice and soft, but firm enough to hold it all together.
All of the restaurant’s burger meals come with Bill’s signature rosemary salted fries, but we decided to upgrade one of these to the truffle buffalo loaded fries (£2 extra or £6.25 on their own).
The healthy portion of fries is topped with the bright red signature Buffalo spicy sauce, as well as a dollop of crème fraiche and some pickled chillies.
This was really tasty, and unlike most loaded fries that are often almighty piles of cheesy gloop and stodgy chips, these were surprisingly light yet still packed with flavour.
For dessert, we shared a big portion of the mini cinnamon doughnuts (£7.50) which were served warm, absolutely smothered in cinnamon sugar and paired with delicious chocolate and caramel-like dulce de leche sauces. These were a real sweet tooth’s treat.
We also had the hot chocolate and ice cream profiterole (£7.50) which to our surprise was one big profiterole, not several small ones as is the norm.
It was more like an ice cream sandwich than a profiterole, and it was nicely paired with a hot chocolate sauce that was great for dunking.
I have actually visited Bill’s on a few occasions since it has re-opened.
I have still not been let down and I don’t intend I ever will be.
The staff are friendly, helpful and always happy and smiley, which really takes the dining experience up a notch.
As for the food, I always find that Bill’s ingredients are good quality and well made into great dishes from a variety of different cultures, but most of all, the food just always feels and tastes healthy and fresh.
I’m sure that all of Newbury will share my happiness that Bill’s is back open for business.
