Fuelled by spontaneity and optimism; we decided to go out for dinner. No table booked, we just winged it, driven by the desire to eat in again after five long months of takeaways followed by a couple of weeks of dining al fresco on rain-lashed patios. It was a... Read more
ARCHIVE REVIEW: The Grill has closed. By the time you read this, we may once again be allowed to eat in a restaurant; with certain safety provisos, naturally. Certainly for us it will be a welcome return to dining at someone else’s table, not that we haven’t enjoyed our... Read more
Archive review: ComiCoffee is now closed in East Cowes, but still has other branches open. One thing which the Isle of Wight does, and has always done well, is be an incubator for enterprise. Much has been said about the death and resurrection of the high street, but if... Read more
The Ryde-based comfort-food of Pudding and Pie is something new and different. Until recently a delivery service of this kind would not have existed, unless you subscribed to meals-on-wheels. Who would order in a meal of piping hot pie, complete with veg, mash and yes, a delicious tailor-made gravy?... Read more
It’s been exactly a year since we were urged to Stay at Home, Protect the NHS and Save Lives. A year of restaurants doing the are-we-open-no-we’re-closed-again hokey cokey (Hovid-Covid?) A year of intermittently eating out, but mostly relying on our latent cooking skills, with variable results – hello seafood... Read more
Dumpling Dumpling is one of those food wagons that we always make for. Over the last few years we’ve been running into them at various Island events, and even on the mainland. Every time, there’s no arguing with the delicious dumpling morsels. This really is cute, tasty and justly... Read more
Years ago we proclaimed that Ryde was the international cuisine capital of the Isle of Wight, with at that time Tex Mex, Italian, Caribbean, Thai, Indian, pub grub, American-style steak plus full English on the menu somewhere in the town’s leisure strip. Amazingly, the pandemic has not damped the... Read more
Confession time: Cat has never cooked a roast dinner. Nigh-on twenty years as a vegetarian – followed by an astonishing volte-face in 2003 leading her to eat (things with) faces – plus many years as a food critic experiencing other peoples’ cooking, means that she’s never bothered to learn... Read more
Have you noticed how every Indian takeaway menu in Britain is almost always the same as every other Indian takeaway menu? And probably not even Indian. For reasons too culturally nuanced for us to bother exploring, even Indian restaurant menu writers usually include an unornamented section called something like... Read more
Lordy! The landscape of the takeaway has changed enormously since the arrival of COVID-19. We were quite happy with our intermittent curry, the occasional Friday fish and chips and perhaps a cheeky chain burger. But, as the virus rumbles interminably on, so do our stomachs – for something more... Read more