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There are a number of ways to reach the Isle of Wight from the mainland. But few can be as exhilarating as being collected from Lymington Pier by former Yarmouth Harbour commissioner Phil Keen and racing across the Solent on his rib. Keen is the co-owner of The Terrace, a restaurant overlooking Yarmouth Harbour where I’m heading for lunch. But first he is showing me the sights. Here are the Needles, the three chalk stacks pushing out of the water at the westernmost tip of the island. Here is the Lighthouse. And here, flanked by boats moored in Colwell Bay, is legendary hotspot The Hut, where the crowd is largely made up of yachties and day-trippers from the mainland, the menu is seafood-heavy and the rosé flows.
This beachside restaurant and bar that opened in 2013 is one of a number of venues – including Keen’s Terrace – that have shifted the island’s reputation from a bucket-and-spade escape to a culinary destination. The movement was kick-started by Robert Thompson’s 2008 Michelin star for the Hambrough in Ventnor (where he remained at the helm until 2013): “I remember a guy came in and told me he would build a house on the Isle of Wight when there were two things: a Michelin-starred restaurant and a Waitrose,” Thompson tells me. The Waitrose arrived in 2010. Today Thompson runs the more casual RT Café Grill at the Royal Maritime House in Ryde, where you find elevated brasserie staples such as burgers, mussels and lobster. In September he’s relaunching Thompson’s — his fine-dining restaurant that closed in Newport in 2021 — as a pop-up in the basement.
The Terrace — where the fish chowder starter sings with smoky, herby flavour and I enjoy a delicious bourride of chargrilled monkfish — is a perfect example of how the food scene is interconnected and evolving on the island. Its co-owner (and Phil’s son-in-law) Tom Fahey is a former restaurant guidebook inspector, who in 2022 opened a sister site called The Terrace Rooms & Wine in Ventnor with his wife. This new Terrace is a six-room guesthouse housed in a renovated Italianate building whose design inspired Queen Victoria’s Isle of Wight residence, Osborne House. Besides the sea views, the main attractions are food and wine, starting with a four-course breakfast that includes a homemade sausage roll, seeded soda bread with jam and its take on a Full English, featuring pan con tomate, mushroom toast and bubble and squeak.
The couple offer wine-paired dinners on Fridays (using only produce from the island) and daily wine tastings in the impressively stocked wine room. Bottles are available to purchase at very reasonable prices. As a wine supplier, he has big plans: “Over the past 10 years, the food scene on the island has gone nuts,” he says. “You have these unique products growing here like tomatoes and asparagus that inspire chefs, and a lot of chefs have come out of the Royal Hotel in Ventnor. My job is to bring wines to the Isle of Wight and equalise what’s available here with what’s on the mainline.”
Among other restaurants, Fahey partners with the Smoking Lobster on Ventnor seafront to provide a dinner and B&B package that includes a seven-course omakase meal. This pan-Asian restaurant was opened by former Royal chef Giancarlo Giancovich in 2017. A second site followed in Cowes in 2021, where Jake Storey is turning out beautifully honed plates including yellowfin tuna tataki, lo bak go with quail’s eggs and seared Australian fillet with thyme ponzu. Also in Ventnor is Stripped, a brasserie run by Stefan Dobre (former front of house manager at the Royal) and his chef wife Ramona, both originally from Romania. The Mediterranean menu includes mezze dishes such as zacusca (Romanian roasted vegetables) and cider-braised chorizo. I also ordered the special — a hearty Transylvanian stew — followed by a shot of sour cherry liqueur called Dracula’s Desire.
Braai on the Nunwell Estate near Brading is home to Nunwell Home Farm, run by Francesca Cooper and Hollie Fallick. Using regenerative agriculture, they raise native-bred Belted Galloway cattle, Saddleback- and Berkshire-cross pigs and laying hens. Braai, a South African-inspired BBQ pop-up restaurant in a former cattle barn, is a collaboration between them and the other enterprises on the estate: Heron (the Ryde-based restaurant led by chef Alex Kimber, which has a prep kitchen here), Isle of Wight mushroom farm, Wight Whisky and Wight Knuckle Brewery.
“Every table gets a spiel from me,” says Fallick, who runs front-of-house. “‘I raised the meat you’re going to eat. That was this cut. It was that age.’ People get big wooden platters to share with different meats, shell-on-prawns, salads, potatoes, plus beer and whisky cocktails.”
Like many driving this scene, Fallick grew up on the island and left. “A lot come back for the quality of life. It’s an amazing place to raise children,” she says. “We bring ideas, inspiration and a wish to put the Isle of Wight on the map for good-quality eating.”
“I remember looking out at the view when I got here in 2007,” says Thompson, “and thinking this island is ripe for becoming a destination like Padstow in Cornwall. Now, finally, we’ve started down that road.”
Ajesh Patalay travelled as a guest of The Terrace Rooms & Wine and the Wightlink ferry
