Isle of Wight Healthy Eating Awards
25th January 2009 1
Not a restaurant review Matt and Cat are proud to support the Isle of Wight Healthy Eating Awards. The awards are to celebrate best policy and practice in healthy eating in a range of settings across the Island. Regular readers will know that they don’t limit themselves to the... Read more
The Union, Cowes
25th January 2009 4
Matt and Cat flipped a coin one evening and, at the whim of our good Queen Elizabeth, aimed for Cowes for something to eat. Having heard talk that there was yet another Indian restaurant in the yachting Mecca, they set out to find it. On their way through the... Read more
Mighty oaks from little acorns grow, or so the hackneyed saying goes. Matt and Cat’s Isle of Wight Eating Out Guide started in 2005 as an idea on the back of a napkin and, last month, the website welcomed its one millionth viewer. Hurrah! Likewise, Fox’s in Bembridge is... Read more
Busy Bee, Ryde
20th December 2008 2
Remember the days when garden centres used to sell just seeds and compost? No, neither do Matt and Cat. Like farms, garden centres have to diversify and as well as horticultural essentials, one can often find clay gnomes, coconut-shell bird houses with raffia roofs and singing reindeer like this... Read more
Love and marriage, they say, go together like a horse and carriage. Or maybe like Peters and Lee, the interchangeable Ant and Dec, Matt and Cat, and Indian tapas… Whoah there! Indian and tapas? Both spicy, perhaps, but a good combination? The new owners of Sandown’s latest restaurant, SWAD... Read more
Coffee Republic, Newport (Archive review)
Uncategorised 14th December 2008
Coffee republic has now closed, and reopened as Love Coffee. Despite the looming presence of the brutalist-style Somerfield and its multi-storey car park, Newport’s Pyle Street is extraordinarily historic. Many of the surrounding buildings date back centuries; the Wheatsheaf Hotel (allegedly 1693), God’s Providence House (at least 1701) and... Read more
Archive review: Volcanic Steakhouse, Newport
Uncategorised 4th December 2008
Update July 2011: the Volcanic Steakhouse has closed. The essence of eating out, it might seem, is to employ an expert to cook your food and present it to you. Indeed, it’s a well-established concept, exemplified in almost every other review Matt and Cat have undertaken – the sorry... Read more
Spice Express, Ryde
30th November 2008 12
Cat and Matt have been off the scene for a week or so; confined to barracks with, respectively, a cold and Man Flu. Without any sense of taste and likely to be felled by fits of coughing, M and C decided that they were not in any condition to... Read more
Black Cat Restaurant, Shanklin
8th November 2008 15
Unexpectedly finding themselves in Shanklin one evening, Matt and Cat scratched around for something to do. Tempting as My Fair Lady at Shanklin Theatre was M and C were too late for curtain up, the library was shut and Shanklin Chine was closed for the winter. So they defaulted... Read more
Lakeside Park Hotel, Wootton Bridge
Uncategorised 6th November 2008 54
The heroes swaggered through the huge glass doors and entered the gleaming, modernist palace. Spectacular lamps – several feet long – hung over the polished bar. Smartly dressed flunkies shimmered into view and escorted the reviewers to a table with views over the shallow lake, reflecting the twinkle from a... Read more