Roland "RolyMo" H.'s Profile

This Barber is great for me.
Based in the business district of Whiteley it is a no frills service.

A mens cut is approx £10.

They are attentive and will offer advice should you want it.

Phone before you want to get there, to check what the queue is like, as it is a first come first served basis.

Try and avoid 12-1pm as this tends to be when the local business guys have their lunch break and this can add time to the wait.

I have not been here for a while.

But I used to go quite regularly.

What I liked about the menu was that it was different, from all other town based oriental restaurants. The ingredients were a little more exotic, yet the price was not overly too expensive. Stuff like Lobster, crab and scallops would not be uncommon, and would taste fantastic oriental style.

I had times where we could talk to the waiter and suggest the type of food likes and he would get chef to create some dishes based on that.

In which case you could rate the staff as going that extra mile for customer service.

This is one of 2 restaurants I would go to on West Street without hesitation.

I use the Fareham Leisure Centre occasionally for going to the Sauna and having a swim.

I used to use it often 20 years ago. It is now a pleasant, professional place which seems to pride itself with getting the gen pop fit.

Good prices on membership. Well worth a look at, especially if you are getting dis-enfranchised by expensive private gym's which are not so private.

I visited Vatika a good while back for my mothers birthday treat. I personally had not head of the celebrity chef, but had heard that a new and trendy restaurant was opening up in Wickham.

Located on the the Wickham Vineyard the restaurant has a clean and uncluttered feel to it. However not too clinical.

Service was good not too eager but not too laid back.

The menu was out of this world, witht he focus on fine dining with soem excitement. Some of the menu choices will not sound up peoples street and the portions may look a little on the small side. But let me assure you it all works out fabulously.

If I was in the mood for another fine dining experience that is local to me I would certainly entertain this as a serious choice.

So Saturday just gone (28th March) I found myself with my wife in Winchester without kids and staying with friends and a table booked at 8pm at The Black Rat in Winchester.

So this looks like it was a pub but now is a rustic/minimalist restaurant serving posh nosh.

The restaurant was full, lively and I guess cool. We ordered booze of the bubbly kind so my mind was not on top form from the outset. But...... the whole experience was pretty good. Just as well we were a little tipsy as the bill was quite high (probably the aperitifs).

So the menu. Cool. a choice of approx 8 starters including oysters. Mains approx 8-10 to choose from and deserts 6-8 to choose from. I had some sort of posh duck pate with slices of smoked duck, and a main of lamb. Dessert was the killer for me and I by far chose the best one which was little sponge blobs which you dip in warmed honey. There is a posh name but due to jet lag I cannot remember. Suffice to say I was having to share mine with everyone else.

Wine menu was very cool. Not cheap but not toooooo pretentious and had some good choices and not going silly.

So my birthday treat was to join some friends at Prezzo last weekend for some nosh on a Friday evening. Thankfully we had booked, and had already sensed it was going to be busy by the way the matre D on the phone was negotiating with us one timings due to chef being overloaded.

Arrived at the restaurant which is located on the upper deck of Port Solent and already found the restaurant packed at 8:30pm. But give them credit there was a table ready and waiting, jump queue and sit down!!

So you might know Prezzo is a chain of restaurants it positions itself in my mind as a classy Pizza Express. The restaurant is clean, modern and certainly has life in it, but not in the traditional Italian sense. The kitchen is on full display and the hussle and bustle of the chefs cooking and waitresses delivering food adds to the ambiance. Shame there is no stone oven to cook the pizzas, rather some stainless steel equivalent.

Then menu has a reasonable selection of starters, main's, pizzas etc. Wine list is small and simple with nothing that is really stunning. Its cheap plonk marked up in my view. Bottle of Lanson Champagne was approx £30. Chardonnay was approx £15-£18.

So I went for the calamari for starters and lasagne for main. So the calamari was not great, very scrappy pieces deep fried. The lasagne again was nothing to write home about. Wife had a chicken, cream pasta dish which she loved.

So the restaurant is a clean simple affair. Staff are pretty attentive. We arrived and there was a small private party in the corner swilling shampoo, and a family on the table next to us with a small boy in a high chair.

So the wine list was 2-3 pages long with a good spread of simple but not stupidly expensive wine. The food menu was all fish, again not complicated, some great flavour's with your firm favourites like oysters, squid, crab, lobster etc. No scampi and Chips. Sorry!!!

So to me here were a couple of price point comparisons to look at other restaurants and see what you are getting (bit simple I know)
Verve Cliquot NV £46 (thats a nice price for London in my books)
Lobster Spaghetti £23 !!!!!!!! I mean thats bloody good value in my books.

So good times and about halfway through the meal we realised that the family sitting next to us was Aldo with his wife Nikki and their son having tea. Aldo was very kind and signed some of his books and had a chat. Now of course that adds to the experience but before that everyone had remarked that the food was amazing. Some of my fellow dinners have apparently dinned at some nice places and still said they were blown away by the taste and quality of food.

Normal country pub, it has a beer garden that has a stream running through it. All very quiet and peaceful.

So the food. Wow. So take into account this is a pub the presentation was pretty good. It looked freshly cooked too. The menu had pork (£10), lamb , fish and steak (£15).

Wine - A small to reasonable, pub selection of wine. Some nice ales and few of the standard lagers on tap, plus the usual unexciting bottle lagers.

Based on my "what can I get for the price of a TGI Fridays meal?", this place delivers so much more and yet its a pub.

Walked in and was very warmly welcomed. An Italian gent guided us to our seat and was very attentive to our 2 kids (Italians love kids I seem to remember). I was very pleasantly surprised by this.

The positive experience did not stop.
Getting a special seat for the 1yr old was not a chore for the staff in any way, with them constantly making a fuss of her and the 3yr old.

Menus were presented both adult and childrens. The kids menu was a dream, incredible. Why? Well it seems that Tootsies have employed the help of Annabel Karmel who I understand has written some popular books on cooking fresh food for kids, to help with the menu. The selection was great, not a turkey twizzler in sight. The 3yr old had a burger (proper freshly made and cooked with lovely lettice and tomato) the 1yr old had a pasta bake dish (the cheesy one with the tubes which the name escapes me). I did my burger test, the wife had a steak.

It all came as we specified (kids came out with starters etc). My burger a delight, big, cooked medium rare as requested, with Monterey cheese and bacon.
Staff still being attentive, polite and greatly interested in the kids, even though food was flying from the 1yr old.
A refreshing experience, it exceeded expectations.

Hmmmmm Lovely. I love Thai.
I hit this one on a weekday lunchtime. It was pretty empty bar 6 people which is fine. Its in between Knowle Village and Wickham on the righthand side on your way to Wickham
The restaurant is finished to a good standard.
Menu is not overkill on choice.
Waitress draped the napkin over you lap. ooooh posh!!! ;-)

We decided to make sure we put in the one piece of food to judge it by which in this case was not a burger but rather Phad Thai, also we had a jungle curry and some pineapple rice with some mixed starters.

Starters turned up looking elegant and served with the appropriate sauces (peanut, sweet chilli and a fragrant sugar water.

The Phad Thai turned up encased in a type of egg pancake which the waitress then split open and served. The pineapple rice was served in the pineapple which looked very spectacular and tasted amazing.

At the end of the lunch I was just so thrilled to find a decent Thai down on the South coast.