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... Read more
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... Read more
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... Read more
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... Read more
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... Read more
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,... Read more
The Star Inn, Wroxall has had several iterations over recent years, including a short spell as the optimistically-named Four Seasons. Undoubtedly there will be some local trade for the only pub in Wroxall. However, you want to know if they are doing anything in the kitchen to make it... Read more
We recently spent a few days in Southsea. That stormy weekend which whipped Cat’s hair into even more of a nest, and caused Matt to peer at the wind and rain through the fur-trimmed hood of his snorkel parka. We stayed in the Queens Hotel, a landmark building in... Read more
On our morning commute we often go through Wootton High Street. Going through is the thing most people do with that road, and we’re no different. Since an unfortunate encounter with The Sloop a few years ago we’ve not had many reasons to change that. But recently, our interest... Read more
Like the rest of you, we drove around the Island at the tail end of May with our car windows wound down. Mostly because the air conditioning in Cat’s Citroën is broken, but also that we might breathe in the heady aroma of wild garlic. The Isle of Wight’s... Read more
