Old Orleans in Cardiff Bay has never been a place I would have said to go to if someone asked me for restaurant suggestions. The last time I went there I still had long hair and my parents paid for my meal. From what I remember, the food was not up to much and I hadn’t felt an urge to go back since. This was 7 years ago. The company that own the Old Orleans brand, Punch Taverns, selected 6 [...]

How do you choose a political party? I was having a discussion with some friends over a pint the other day, concerning a friend of ours who is extremely liberal – but who votes Conservative because her parents do, and she wouldn’t ever consider changing her vote. To me this makes no sense, and I wonder how many other people act in a similar way and if they were to change their vote would it cause a swing? I have [...]

Going to a restaurant on its opening night is always perilous, anything can happen – the staff have never worked in this store before, probably half of them have never worked together before – all brought in from other locations or trained at other restaurants in the franchise before all being lumped together and told to get on with it. Going to the opening night of Ruby Tuesday could have been even more perilous, being that it is the first [...]

The Welsh Assembly Government have made plans to enact law from March 2011 whereby any outlet within the confines of the Welsh border that supplies plastic carrier bags to consumers charge a mandatory minimum of 7p per bag – instead of the usual practice of giving them away for free that has stood firmly for as long as I have been alive. Some retailers already impose a charge, in the case of the small retailers to recoup the cost of [...]