The Fighting Cocks is rumoured to be under new management so Matt and Cat decided to make a third visit to see if things had improved. They were pleased to see that they had. The previous reviews are below.

July 2008:
Invited by friends to revisit the Fighting Cocks, Matt and Cat decided to mix business with pleasure and see if things have improved since their previous - and disappointing - visits in 2006. It certainly seemed that this centrally-located pub is extremely popular. A table had been booked for M and C's party, and a good job too as the pub was turning people away at the door (or at least making them wait for a seat to become free).

It was the only hot Saturday night of the summer so far and the pub was steaming with the heat from the many bodies plus the sun's rays which poured through the double-glazed windows of the conservatory.

Review continues:

Gathered around a vast table, Matt, Cat and friends studied the menu. There was certainly a far better selection than before; at least two chicken dishes along with plenty of steak, pasta and burgers. The specials board had some very interesting options including sea bream and banana. There was something for everyone, including vegetarians, and so a variety of meals was ordered; gammon, spaghetti, lamb steak and jambalaya king prawns.

It looked like the Fighting Cocks still had pretensions of being a drinking establishment, rather than solely the food conveyor belt it could so easily become. This aspiration was probably not obvious to the dozens of hungry diners, but did lead to a bit of confusion at the bar as there are separate drinks and food ordering tills; most of the punters seemed to be milling about and the bar staff were constantly trying to corral people into the appropriate queue.

With a packed pub some delay was inevitable, but when the food did arrive it looked pretty good - this was certainly a great improvement over the former menu. Matt was delighted with his jambalaya prawns - a generous mound of shell-on king prawns cooked in spices, served with salad and a slice of bread which was optimistically described as 'a crusty bloomer'. If there's one thing you don't want on an evening out it's problems with your crusty bloomers, and Matt might have preferred a bit more bread to soak up the delicious spicy juices oozing from his piping-hot prawns.

Cat too was very pleased with her meal. Spaghetti bolognese can be a touchstone for a restaurant - it's a simple dish that everyone knows. Cat found the Fighting Cocks' bolognese to be first class, a flavoursome and rich sauce with few embellishments, served over good fresh pasta and garnished with fresh parmesan shavings.

At this point one of Matt and Cat's companions had made some progress with her lamb steak, but found it to be medium-rare as opposed to well-done as she'd requested. She went up to the bar to make representations, and the party were most impressed when the Fighting Cocks not only apologised without hesitation but rather than simply cook over the steak, very quickly produced an entire new meal, complete with vegetables. This was very good service.

The dinner passed with a pleasant round of chatting and eating, and the busy and cheerful venue lulled the diners into requesting the dessert menu. Matt and Cat gamely chose a pudding called Chocolate Waffle Overload. It didn't seem worth the bother of asking what this was - frankly, the clue's in the name here. It proved to be a curious round chocolate sponge pudding with squirty cream, and it was only after some excavation that the waffle element was revealed - chunks of waffle were baked into the chocolate sponge. Not a bad pudding.

Matt and Cat were more than pleased by the 'new' Fighting Cocks. The menu, the service, the food and the ambience all seem to have made significant improvements - albeit from a fairly low base - without any major impact on the prices. This pub can now hold its head up with some confidence in the big league of massive family eating-houses on the Island.

November 2006:
Those who regularly read Matt and Cat's Isle of Wight eating out diary will be familiar with their dislike of raw onion as a salad ingredient. Equally disliked is smoking in eating places; your reviewers eagerly look forward to the forthcoming smoking ban in restaurants.

Although its enthusiasm for raw onions is not known, the Fighting Cocks is one of that brave new breed: a non-smoking pub. It is a standard sprawling roadhouse with a chequered history - recently reopened after purchase by a chain and a major refurbishment, this was the first time Matt and Cat had been there.

Matt and Cat visited on a dark autumn evening, hoping to try out the pub's regular Monday night attraction, the Chinese buffet. This had proven so attractive, in fact, that by the time your reviewers arrived the buffet had been devoured as if by locusts. Nonetheless, the Fighting Cocks did have other food to choose from and undeterred, Matt and Cat settled in for more traditional choices from the in-house menu. Disappointingly for Cat, there was only one chicken item (chicken burger) on offer; although the specials board did offer chicken in celery, apple and Stilton sauce. Matt decided to give this enticing-sounding meal a try. Cat selected cauliflower and broccoli mornay, served with chips and peas.

Whilst waiting for their food, your reviewers studied the pictures which adorn the walls of this rather generic-looking pub - and were surprised to detect local scenes amongst the works of art. At least the refurbishment drones had managed to resist the temptation to decorate the place with old pitchforks. So 1990s, darling.

The meals arrived in good time and were piping hot. Matt's chicken came with nice chunky chips and a good selection of seasonal vegetables. The chicken itself was presented in a bowl; the sauce was plentiful, but worryingly thin with the chicken breast plopped arbitarily into it. There was little sign of any celery and apple, and indeed it was more like a roast chicken breast served in minestrone. A decent enough feed but somehow slightly falling short of what was expected.

By contrast, Cat was delighted with her cauliflower and broccoli mornay. The vegetables were cooked al dente unlike some of the mushier offerings of other restaurants. The chips were very nice and even the tiny peas were flavoursome.

Perhaps not the most characterful of pubs, but with a huge garden, plenty of alcoves, good, cheery service, decent beer, and a smoke-free environment in its favour, the Fighting Cocks seems pitched at the Sunday family lunch end of the pub market.

UPDATE: Matt and Cat finally managed to get to the Chinese buffet one Monday night. They arrived quite early and decided to relax with a drink. In so doing they discovered another unusual and welcome feature of the Fighting Cocks - some comfortable armchairs set aside for drinking patrons only. This clever facility went some way towards keeping the pub atmosphere and preventing the 'family dining experience' from becoming utterly overwhelming, as has occurred in other venues. Matt was particularly pleased with his excellent pint of well-kept bitter, and was soon ready for the Chinese experience. This time for Matt and Cat it seemed as though there was no shortage of Chinese food, despite the strict signs scattered about insisting on "Only two trips to the buffet". Matt and Cat overheard a server telling another diner by way of explaining the sparse crowd and huge piles of food that "Everyone thinks the buffet is off now that the Beijing Palace has burnt down...". Cat, daunted by the prospect, selected Chicken Chasseur from the specials board whilst Matt at last splashed out on the buffet.

Sadly, neither meal was as satisfying as expected. Cat's chicken shared characteristics with Matt's meal on his last visit - although the chasseur sauce was not bad, it was bland, and the chicken was cooked separately and put in afterwards, which left it relatively dry and not benefiting from the flavours of the sauce. The vegetables too were dry and not freshly cooked. The Chinese, by contrast, probably would have been thought a fair offering had Matt and Cat not been painfully aware that this was exactly the same food offered by the Hong Kong Express, with the added burden of being kept warmed up under steamy serveries, for easily twice the price. This meant that all the dishes were soft and mushy in both flavour and texture, instead of crisp and tangy. The sweet and sour pork especially suffered from this treatment - instead of neat, crispy parcels of meat the batter had swollen into fluffy snowballs which were not enjoyable. The pleasure of more-or-less unlimited quantities of food did not compensate. At the Hong Kong Express, the delight is the sizzling hot, fresh food being brought to your table in a few minutes. Any diner who wishes to experience this is advised to do so at source, rather than pay over the odds for a weaker version at the Fighting Cocks.

Despite friendly service, very good facilities and an above-average dining environment, the Fighting Cocks seems to be consistently let down by the quality of the food, which is not mitigated by cheap prices either. It's significantly better then that behemoth of family dining pubs, the Wight Mouse. But it has a little way to go to equal the other pub in the same class, The Bugle.

Visit the website: http://www.fightingcocks.co.uk/