Matt and Cat are big lovers of sci-fi. Matt, who fancies himself as a writer and a scientist, combines those two interests in a bookshelf chock full o' the works of Asimov, Heinlein and Iain M Banks.

Cat prefers to have her sci-fi injected straight into her eyeballs. In the 1980s, when her hair was as vast as Arnie's biceps, she loved staring glassy-eyed at the Austrian Oak's portrayal of The Running Man, or his seamless depiction of both Douglas Quaid and Hauser in Total Recall, adapted from Philip K Dick's 'We Can Remember It For You Wholesale'.

The ultimate eighties Dick adaptation has to be the story set in a world where genetically-engineered organic robots, indistinguishable from humans, wither and die atop a decaying building. No, not a documentary about County Hall, but Ridley Scott's Bladerunner. Mindful of this dystopian vision of a rainy neon future, M&C went with a pal to Newport's Noodle Pot.

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Matt was once described by his university professor as having a Rolls Royce brain with Morris Minor engine. Cat, who used to be pretty punctual and organised, has adopted Matt's languorous attitude over the years they've been together. This lackadaisical leaning means that they have never quite managed to book a table for dinner at the award-winning Hillside Hotel, of which they've heard many good things. This is because a degree of premeditation is required to eat at the hotel's illustrious restaurant; admittedly just the minimum of a day's notice but, for slackers M&C, even that has so far proven to require too much foresight. So they were delighted to be able to swing by Hillside's newest venture - Ventnor's Hillside Bistro - without giving any notice whatsoever.

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Some of the Island’s iconic buildings are intrinsically associated with their previous celebrated occupiers.

What would Dimbola be without pioneering photographer Julia-Margaret Cameron? Can you image Osborne minus the pervasive presence of Queen Victoria? And surely Farringford can only be known as the home of poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson?

But perhaps Tennyson’s old hat now: despite Farringford being his signature venue for over 150 years, someone else is staking a claim. And that someone is confident young chef Justin Brown, who has well-publicised aspirations for his ‘Justin Brown at Farringford’ restaurant. Is this starry-eyed chef a mere a flash in the pan or has he got what it takes to usurp over a hundred years of Tennyson's association with this landmark property?

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With over four hundred reviews on this website it's inevitable that they won't all be up to date.

If Matt and Cat were to refresh reviews of places they'd already written about, it would take them over seven years if they ate out once a week - and that wouldn't include any new eateries! However sometimes they do feel compelled to provide an update and, with a pub as popular as Shalfleet's the New Inn, a few (albeit favourable) paragraphs, and no pictures, written way back in 2006 clearly needed updating. Didn't it?

Matt and Cat popped into the pub one April evening and, having taken the necessary step of booking a table, they wandered to the church and then along the pretty creek to work up a suitable appetite by looking at local sarcophagi and sarcophagidae. There were plenty of historical artefacts in the church, including a memorial carved by a protegé of typographer Eric Gill. At the creek Cat saw her first lesser-spotted woodpecker and, in the gloaming, she and Matt squinted into a field trying to spy elusive spring hares. Having got a hour's worth of fun out of Shalfleet, they turned back to the pub for their dinners.

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Have you noticed how Ryde's Union Street is a street of two halves?

Slice it lengthwise and you will find that on the western side the eateries are mostly chain-style fast food franchises: Wimpy, Subway, KFC and the like. On the eastern side of this vertiginous thoroughfare are some more salubrious establishments. Olivo, Joe's and before its much-mourned demise, Liberty's. Obviously there are exceptions: Yelf's Hotel and Black Sheep Bar are on the shadier side and, Domino's has set its stall opposite Wetherspoon's but the pattern is still apparent.

And the trend is continuing. As part of an audacious expansion into Liberty's beautiful old building, House of Zabre fashion department store has opened a bijou coffee shop in what was the restaurant's kitchen. Matt and Cat broke the news about this venture way back in 2011 when Liberty's was hardly cold - and must admit to a certain scepticism about how well yet another café could do in Union Street. So when they popped into Zabre one day to have a nose about the handbags and gladrags, they were inevitably drawn through the shop by the aroma of coffee and a powerful sense of nosiness.

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