What if a few food wagons got together and made a food court, where you could just go along and choose from a range of takeaway food? This is an idea that is popular on the mainland – even as close as Southsea – but despite a few valiant... Read more
Gorblimey! Now we know how Mary and Joseph felt a week or so before Christmas. (Christmas? Perhaps it was simply known as ‘Mas’ back then.) Trying to get dinner without a reservation at the height of the Island’s staycationing summer might be considered to be misfortune, to aspire to... Read more
You’ve got to have some sympathy for The Hambrough. Everything the venue subsequently does is compared to its early triumph with Robert Thompson at the helm. The talented chef won the Isle of Wight’s only Michelin star this millennium at The Hambrough in 2006, aged just 23, before going... Read more
Over the long, long months, even years of the COVID-19 crisis we’ve been consistently amazed and delighted by the spirit and optimism of the Island’s food and hospitality venues. Not just keeping open in difficult circumstances, some restaurateurs have even gone so far as to set up entirely new... Read more
One of our favourite games is ‘Either/Or’, which is inspired by the famous conundrum of whether you would rather fight a horse-sized duck or one hundred duck-sized horses. Our version is, naturally, more food based. For example, if you could only have one thing to accompany your desserts for... Read more
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 you were hoping for a return to the butcher, baker and candlestick-maker, the old model... 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
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
