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
Back in the day, BC – Before COVID – Wootton Leisure Strip at Christmas was a sight to behold. Alongside the twinkling twin takeaways of Miga and Balti King, Terry’s fish and chip shop had a refulgent festive lighting display that warmed even the coldest of heart-cockles. As we... Read more
We’d been recommended a curry house in Shanklin as worth a try, so for our next round of COVID-19-safe meals, we wondered if Cinnamon would be willing to deliver all the way to Ryde. It turned out that they would. A polite chap arrived at our door and passed... Read more
Anyone at all who has been in a café or restaurant in the last couple of years will know that the trend has been for venues to eschew traditional soft furnishings such as carpets and curtains, instead streamlining interiors with hard surfaces and firm seating. The upshot of this... Read more
Ryde, like other Island towns, has tentatively peeped out from behind its hands, dusted itself down and regrouped in the wake of the post-COVID-19 lockdown. Some venues have repositioned themselves. Certainly elsewhere our friends in the business are considering a future not of eating in, but of delivery and... Read more
Guess we could write yet more doom-laden words about the state of dining under COVID-19. But let’s not, eh? Instead we will hold up our recently-sanitised palms to the virus and say, “Talk to the hand, cos we ain’t listening”. We were also not listening to our fellow diners... Read more
After months of lockdown, punctuated with the compassion behind #ClapForCarers and diligent social distancing, girls – and boys – just wanna have fun. And while for some people that might mean the pub, for us it is a cafe. So, on the first day bars and restaurants reopened their... Read more
Our last pre-lockdown meal in a restaurant was an impromptu dinner at Call It What You Want, in Cowes, way back in March. A quick lunchtime drink at Comicoffee, Newport the next day, and after that, it’s been home dining all the way. We have enjoyed some great takeaways... Read more
