Holiday Eating - Part 2

After our few days in London we headed down to the Isle of Wight for some glamping in a yurt. We hired our accommodation from The Really Green Holiday Company, they are set in an apple orchard near Freshwater, on the site is also a farm shop selling rare breed meat from the IOW, lots of ciders and serving lunch daily from 12-2. The people who owned the place were lovely - showing us how to use the wood burning stove and BBQ, as well as telling us to help ourselves to the vegetables and herbs being grown in the area. As we only stopped two nights we didn't have chance as we ate out all the time!

For our first night we went to a highly recommended local pub - The Red Lion was voted 'best pub' by the Isle of Wight Good Food Guide 2010. A really welcoming pub full of locals and tourists a-like, people brought there dogs in for a drink, the whole place was very traditional and we were surrounded by flagstone floors and worn wooden tables. They had a great selection of ales but we went for wine.

As we are on an island there was lots of seafood options on all the menus we saw so I went for the Moules Marinière and it was a mountain of mussels served with lots of crusrt bread to mop up the tasty sauce!

Mat went for the lamb shank, mashed potato and vegetables, the lamb just melted in the mouth. The portions were huge and were stuffed but we couldn't resist something sweet before the drunken walk back to our yurt.

So out came the chocolate sponge pudding with custard...

The following night we went to On The Rocks, a restaurant in the nearby port of Yarmouth.

It features the Black Rock Grill experience, all the meals are served on sizzling hot volcanic rocks and you cook the meat how you like. We both went for the surf and turf, a local beef fillet steak with my seafood favourite scallops, served with a greek style salad, fries and dips.

It was was quite an experience, you cut up the meat in to smaller portions to cook quicker and take it off when you feel it is ready. It was decorated with sweet pea flowers which took away the man-ly edge to the meal.

I cooked my steak perfect which was easy as the meat was so good, very plump and juicy! We washed it down with our new favourite red wine variety - a Argentinean Malbec by Trivento.

So after our meat fix the night before we went for yet more seafood at a quaint restaurant in Yarmouth before heading home for the ferry. The Blue Crab is really cute with fish and sailing ornaments dotted throughout and painted pale blue, it was very relaxing after the sizzling experience the night before! Homemade fish and chips for the boyfriend and sea bream fishcakes for me but we were jealous of another tables huge seafood platter!

After eating all that fish and seafood I realised I did not know much about which fish I should eat without damaging the environment, so since being back I have signed up to Hugh's Fish Fight and started my research into sustainable fish, the guardian has a great article here.