In a special guest review, Matt & Cat regular Wendy reviews food at the Isle of Wight Festival.

I wrote about IW Festival food for M&C last year and am pleased to bring you this update for 2009.

Sunday morning:
Keeping my eyes peeled for Isle of Wight food vendors in amongst the countless concessions, the only additional one I've spotted is Yarmouth-based Harbour Seafoods in the big food area near the main stage. After their low-key début at last year's Festival they're now geared up for catering big events, with a large kitchen, and bold signage promising seafood chowder, paella and kebabs. They were doing great trade. Might check it out today.

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In these times of economic hardship, people are thinking creatively about how to make money. Sunday supplements (a necessity if ever there was one) bulge with suggestions about how to get the cheapest cuts from Waitrose, whilst getting the Volvo to go a few extra miles. This, of course, is nothing new to our farmers, who have been diversifying their businesses for years.

The latest to do this on the Island has been the Griffin family, at the award-winning Briddlesford Lodge Farm; who have been adding strings to their collective bow with holiday accommodation and now a café.

Matt and Cat had heard that this new venture was very popular. The farm café market is really taking off on the Island, and M & C are always keen to be part of the zeitgeist. So, one lunchtime, they offered to take a little old lady to the new Briddlesford café as a special treat - only to discover that she had already been! She praised the place highly and didn't take much persuading to go again; so off they all went.

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

You're down the beach and, having worked up a bit of a lather engineering a complex sand city with nothing more sophisticated than a bendy plastic spade and a bucket decorated with a picture of a duck in a sailor suit, you want something to eat. Sandown has its famous beach on which to play and, interspersed along the golden mile are plenty of refreshment stops offering ice cream, tea and chips with which to fortify yourself - plus replacement buckets and spades, if required.

You could spend all day down the esplanade, amusing yourself swimming, making a hefty investment on the penny falls and eating. And plenty of people do. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are all catered for and, at the licensed Beach Shack, positioned right on the esplanade just south-west of the pier at Devonia slipway, there is a surprisingly wide choice of nibbles, snacks and meals.

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Visit the website: http://thebeachshack-isleofwight.co.uk/

Shops in Cowes - and indeed people - seem to be divided into two broad groupings. Either impossibly chic and inaccessible; or quaint to the point of impracticality. Both have their merits, but Matt and Cat undoubtedly tend to favour the fanciful when faced with the choice.

So with that in mind it is perhaps no surprise that when strolling through Cowes one afternoon, Matt and Cat stopped for a late lunch at the Watch House Barn in Bath Road. Quite a few other places to eat had already put up the shutters, but the Watch House still looked warm and welcoming. As M & C stood outside peering vaguely at the menu, any last traces of indecision were eliminated when they looked in to see a working model train chugging around the eatery. That definitely counts as quaint. So in they went, and took their seats underneath the whooshing wheels of the constantly circling locomotives.

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

Update May 2009. Matt and Cat revisited the Apple Tree café at the suggestion of a fellow Tweeter. Read M and C's comments below, with earlier efforts below that.

Having waxed lyrical about the café at Afton Nursery, Matt and Cat were surprised but pleased to get a request suggesting that they go again. There are plenty of as yet untried places on M and C's ever-expanding list of suggested venues but, as they were out that way, they decided to once again try the delights of this wholesome little place, which has changed hands since the first review was written.

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