Once upon a time Italian restaurants were ubiquitous on every high street. You know the sort of thing: generic pasta and pizza, checked tablecloths, raffia-wrapped wine bottles and textured artex walls. Desperate to set themselves apart from the competition in a sea of look-alike venues, some took to oversized...
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Recently, we were asked by the lovely people at the Seaview Hotel to help curate a series of bike rides which would take in some of our favourite eateries in the north-east Wight. And so the Cycling Gourmand was created. However, these are not just any bike rides. The...
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Did you know Dan’s Kitchen in St Helens had closed? No? You’d been trying to get a table at that popular restaurant for ages, hadn’t you? And you didn’t, did you? Well, now you can’t. And nor can we, which is a shame, because it was good. But hold...
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It has to be one of the most idyllic inland locations for a restaurant on the Island. Nestled in a valley just outside Newport, the ancient stones of Staplehurst Grange warm in the evening sun. A long drive down a gravel track past fields of sheep, flowery hedgerows, beehives...
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Hopefully, you’ll have been enjoying locally-grown Godshill cherries this time of year – we certainly have. And it was a tweet we posted from the Southsea Food Festival that led us to an invitation to have a look around the orchard’s other enterprise – apricots. The apricot orchard is...
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There’s nothing we like better than a nice surprise. It’s a treat that never gets old when we wander into some venue anticipating an indifferent meal, and our unambitious expectations are blown away. Perhaps the best example of this in recent years was the tragically short-lived fried-fish wagon of...
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In what is now a regular and extremely popular event in Hampshire’s calendar, the Southsea Food Festival returned last weekend – and, once again, we popped across the Solent to join in the foodie fun. Thanks to Wightlink for the free ride! The weather gods were smiling down on...
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With a gaggle of excited chums we hit the pub after work, followed by dinner at the big Italian chain of Prezzo in Newport High Street – where the post office used to be. Matt’s calamari starter was curious, as if some misguided chef had found a way to...
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Sometime soon, if the futurologists are to be believed, we’ll be shuttled around in driverless electric cars – our every move monitored and tagged by our robot overlords. But until that particular utopia arrives, we’ll have to make do with more prosaic ways of getting about. And, in Ryde,...
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Matt and Cat held another sell-out event at Ventnor’s Stripped restaurant on 22 June 2019, with an even bigger challenge for the kitchen team – twelve courses of vegan food! With nearly 500 individual dishes served up this was a logistical tour de force and a magnificent meal all...
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Matt and Cat's Isle of Wight Eating Out Guide is published by Pinkeye Graphics Ltd
