Restaurant Reviews by Matt & Cat
The Isle of Wight's a small place, but Islanders more than make up for this with their enthusiasm for gossip and entertainment.
Perhaps that's why Twitter has been a big success here, with even the veritable Isle of Wight County Press awarding a 'Tweet of the Week' accolade these days. Now, locals are capable of generating plenty of excitement on their own, but one of the rumours that has been keeping the Island's movers and shakers at a fever pitch recently has been the persistent but unconfirmed suggestion that a certain fast-food chain is coming across the water to share its franchised munificence amongst grateful, chicken-starved locals.
There are some big chains, like Starbucks, that Islanders feel they are missing out on. This could be a genuine loss or, more likely, a very lucky escape. For every fabulous Yo Sushi on the mainland, there’s an underwhelming Brewer’s Fayre carvery. With several national retailers withdrawing from the Island’s high streets, some holes have appeared leading inevitably to speculation as to who might plug them. Fans of budget clothes are solidly in the Primark camp but there are plenty of locals keen to try Joey Essex’s favourite restaurant - Nando's. The permatanned star of The Only Way is Essex advocates this chicken eatery at every opportunity, leading to rumours that he might be a holder of a coveted Nando's black card.
Joey, employing the best of his sparse vocabulary, prosaically tweeted of Nando's: "#chickchick #chicken #LOVECHICKEN #:)". Despite this masterclass in reviewing Matt and Cat presumptuously thought they could probably give a more enlightened assessment to potential customers and, one Saturday night, set about doing so.
Read more »As Matt and Cat never tire of pointing out, this website started as a hobby, is independent and takes no money from restaurants.
This gives them the freedom to air their honest opinions, and the liberty to please themselves without anyone pulling their strings.
Having written a fairly enthusiastic review of what was then the new Phileas Foggs back in 2009, they didn't see any need to write another one in any hurry. Not because they didn't want to go back to this very nice venue - on the contrary, they’d had some good food in a lively atmosphere. However, as each review involves a modicum of preparation, usually an evening spent in a restaurant and then several more hours crafting their opinions and processing photographs, M&C tend to target their revisits for mercurial places where the review might no longer be accurate, or which elicit polarised opinions from commenters to this website. The new owners of Phileas Foggs implored Matt and Cat to "visit us soon, we need an up-to-date review" - but, as the word was that all was still rosy in the house of Fogg, it took a bit of time for them to do so.
Eventually, of course, it happened. Matt and Cat made no mention of their impending meal to the new owners, who naturally enough got the anonymous review treatment. The big question is, has Phileas Foggs lost its way or does the earlier positive review still hold muster?
Read more »Matt and Cat are big lovers of sci-fi. Matt, who fancies himself as a writer and a scientist, combines those two interests in a bookshelf chock full o' the works of Asimov, Heinlein and Iain M Banks.
Cat prefers to have her sci-fi injected straight into her eyeballs. In the 1980s, when her hair was as vast as Arnie's biceps, she loved staring glassy-eyed at the Austrian Oak's portrayal of The Running Man, or his seamless depiction of both Douglas Quaid and Hauser in Total Recall, adapted from Philip K Dick's 'We Can Remember It For You Wholesale'.
The ultimate eighties Dick adaptation has to be the story set in a world where genetically-engineered organic robots, indistinguishable from humans, wither and die atop a decaying building. No, not a documentary about County Hall, but Ridley Scott's Bladerunner. Mindful of this dystopian vision of a rainy neon future, M&C went with a pal to Newport's Noodle Pot.
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Matt was once described by his university professor as having a Rolls Royce brain with Morris Minor engine. Cat, who used to be pretty punctual and organised, has adopted Matt's languorous attitude over the years they've been together. This lackadaisical leaning means that they have never quite managed to book a table for dinner at the award-winning Hillside Hotel, of which they've heard many good things. This is because a degree of premeditation is required to eat at the hotel's illustrious restaurant; admittedly just the minimum of a day's notice but, for slackers M&C, even that has so far proven to require too much foresight. So they were delighted to be able to swing by Hillside's newest venture - Ventnor's Hillside Bistro - without giving any notice whatsoever.
Read more »Some of the Island’s iconic buildings are intrinsically associated with their previous celebrated occupiers.
What would Dimbola be without pioneering photographer Julia-Margaret Cameron? Can you image Osborne minus the pervasive presence of Queen Victoria? And surely Farringford can only be known as the home of poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson?
But perhaps Tennyson’s old hat now: despite Farringford being his signature venue for over 150 years, someone else is staking a claim. And that someone is confident young chef Justin Brown, who has well-publicised aspirations for his ‘Justin Brown at Farringford’ restaurant. Is this starry-eyed chef a mere a flash in the pan or has he got what it takes to usurp over a hundred years of Tennyson's association with this landmark property?
Read more »With over four hundred reviews on this website it's inevitable that they won't all be up to date.
If Matt and Cat were to refresh reviews of places they'd already written about, it would take them over seven years if they ate out once a week - and that wouldn't include any new eateries! However sometimes they do feel compelled to provide an update and, with a pub as popular as Shalfleet's the New Inn, a few (albeit favourable) paragraphs, and no pictures, written way back in 2006 clearly needed updating. Didn't it?
Matt and Cat popped into the pub one April evening and, having taken the necessary step of booking a table, they wandered to the church and then along the pretty creek to work up a suitable appetite by looking at local sarcophagi and sarcophagidae. There were plenty of historical artefacts in the church, including a memorial carved by a protegé of typographer Eric Gill. At the creek Cat saw her first lesser-spotted woodpecker and, in the gloaming, she and Matt squinted into a field trying to spy elusive spring hares. Having got a hour's worth of fun out of Shalfleet, they turned back to the pub for their dinners.
Read more »Matt and Cat both have their birthdays in the first quarter of the year. Cat’s celebrations in January usually involve inviting a group of friends to a conducive location - in 2012 her party was at the spectacular The Mission.
For his birthday, Cat offered Matt the choice of Island-based activities. Rejecting the opportunity to pet a primate at the Owl and Monkey Haven, and poo-pooing Isle of Wight Pearl, he plumped for an all-day breakfast. But where to go? There are plenty of fabulous Isle of Wight breakfasts to be had, with top contenders at Richie’s Diner, Bluebells Café and Besty and Spinky’s but Matt wanted to go somewhere new. So using Twitter’s hive mind, Cat tickled some recommendations out of their followers and Tumblers was picked as the destination for the birthday boy’s big breakfast.
Occupying a corner plot at the top of Shanklin, Tumblers is well-placed to scoop up tourist traffic as it’s by the station and on the traffic main route through the town. Surprisingly, despite its prominence, it’s never appeared on Matt and Cat’s radar. And that’s a woeful omission.
Read more »Have you noticed how Ryde's Union Street is a street of two halves?
Slice it lengthwise and you will find that on the western side the eateries are mostly chain-style fast food franchises: Wimpy, Subway, KFC and the like. On the eastern side of this vertiginous thoroughfare are some more salubrious establishments. Olivo, Joe's and before its much-mourned demise, Liberty's. Obviously there are exceptions: Yelf's Hotel and Black Sheep Bar are on the shadier side and, Domino's has set its stall opposite Wetherspoon's but the pattern is still apparent.
And the trend is continuing. As part of an audacious expansion into Liberty's beautiful old building, House of Zabre fashion department store has opened a bijou coffee shop in what was the restaurant's kitchen. Matt and Cat broke the news about this venture way back in 2011 when Liberty's was hardly cold - and must admit to a certain scepticism about how well yet another café could do in Union Street. So when they popped into Zabre one day to have a nose about the handbags and gladrags, they were inevitably drawn through the shop by the aroma of coffee and a powerful sense of nosiness.
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