Matt and Cat\'s Isle of Wight Eating Out Guide
Southsea Food Festival 2019
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... Read more
High tea at the Spinnaker Tower
As residents of Ryde, the Spinnaker Tower is a familiar landmark on the other side of the Solent. If we can see it from the Isle of Wight, imagine the view of the Island from the tower’s top! We popped over to Pompey, courtesy of Wightlink, and took a... Read more
Ship Shape and Bristol Fashion
Pompey girl Cat has always had a place in her heart for Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. This relentless innovator, with his over-compensating stovepipe hat and ginormous cigars, cut a formidable dash in that famous pin-up photo of him in front of the chains of the SS Great Western.... Read more
Plant-based Dining at Ventnor Botanic Garden
Veganism is the new black. Or something. Certainly there has been an upswell of interest in cutting meat out of one’s diet – but dairy too? Is that a step too far? Although fish is usually on the menu at the Edulis restaurant in VBG, Chef Brad Roe used... Read more
Matt and Cat on Tour: Bristol
We’re big fans of taking short breaks in England; after all, if we expect people to come to the Isle of Wight it’s only fair that we spend our holiday money on the mainland every once in a while. Being relative ruralites, we’ll generally opt for a city break:... Read more
Deep Blue, Southsea
Southsea’s South Parade Pier, magnificently wrecked by fire during the filming of Tommy, was a regular haunt of Cat’s. Every Monday night in the mid-1980s, the Battle of the Bands would take place; Cat had many friends who performed on the stage at the pier’s Gaiety Show Bar. She... Read more
Brighton’s Food Scene 2016
Since we last wrote about Brighton’s food scene, we have ventured even further afield, sampling London’s dynamic street food, Birmingham’s restaurants and even New York’s pavement hucksters. Cat was particularly enamoured of the Big Apple, having enjoyed a week there – part of which was spent in the achingly... Read more
Southsea Food Festival
On the Isle of Wight there are weekly markets and several seasonal festivals. The farmers’ market in Newport and Ryde sells, as its name suggests, local food produce. Some festies, like the County Show, have food as a major theme. Others, including the IW Festival, have food as an... Read more
Eating Out in Birmingham
It takes quite a bit to winkle us away from the Isle of Wight but that doesn’t meant that we’re head-in-the-sand straw-chewers from hicksville. Being the ruralites we are, when we go away we generally eschew countryside and beaches (coals to Newcastle and all that) instead preferring a city... Read more
The Wilderness, Birmingham
Some dinners are like a pop single: wham, then bam. A brief moment of gratifying yet empty pleasure, eaten then forgotten – move on people, it’s all over.  Other meals are more like the concept album; a carefully curated story, told – not via twenty minutes of synthesiser noodling... Read more