Isle of Wight is a brilliant place to eat like a local, and enjoy fresh flavours from a wide range of local food producers. This island has a strong reputation for great quality produce.
Beef & Ale Pie
The island has some serious contenders for best pie, many made with locally reared beef. Made with flaky suet pastry, tender local shin of beef braised in house beer.
Rock Samphire
Slightly hot and spicy – it’s now making a comeback as an ideal partner for seafood.
Cream Tea
The IOW cream tea is a close relation to the cream teas of southwest of England. Sweet strawberries are grown here, so fine local jam is easy to find. The best scones are freshly made and are available over most of the island.
Crab Pasties
Made with flaky puff pastry and fresh crab meat, locally caught by Isle of Wight fishermen. These make ideal snacks or as part of a meal. It goes without saying that the Island’s beaches and seaside towns provide some of the best seafood around.
Black Garlic
The Isle of Wight’s unique micro-climate makes it the perfect location for growing garlic. Black garlic is a highly distinctive flavour, created by cooking garlic bulbs for a long time at a low temperature. The blackened cloves are intense, rich, syrupy and sweet, with a tamarind and balsamic vinegar background taste. Black garlic ice cream layered with chocolate brownie and chocolate sauce.
Gallybagger Cheese
Gallybagger is cheddar-like and ages for four to five months on locally sourced Lawson Cypress wooden shelves, which contribute to both the moulds that you find on the rind of the cheese and the flavours inside. Gallybagger is the Isle of Wight dialect word for scarecrow!
Honeycomb Doughnuts
Honey has been produce on the island for many years, with beekeeping a tradition that dates back to the early monasteries. Doughnuts are yet another local delicacy, light in texture but with a crunch and then a salty honeycomb flavoured cream filling. Combining the two may seem a little odd but it works.
Best Tomatoes
The Island is the sunniest place in the UK which makes the ideal climate for these beauties and the taste just says it all. The Little Gloster in Gurnard have created a fantastic yellow tomato gazpacho, served in season with rouille and coriander oil, and a panoramic view across the Solent behind its lovely garden.
Asparagus
Get the day off to a great start with simply cooked asparagus served between a soft poached egg and a slice of toasted local bread. Asparagus is also low in calories and packed with essential vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, and reputed to be an aphrodisiac.
New Potatoes
The best way to serve them is the simplest: with mint and butter.