I can sometimes be hypocritical in my musings, but I think that’s only human – as long as it doesn’t happen too often. I advocate  local business over chains, especially when it comes to eating out. The food at chains is usually daudry, plain and shipped in frozen – but on this blog I have still reviewed places like Ruby Tuesday. Don’t get me wrong, I like Ruby Tuesday – and I think it may even be an exception to [...]

Back in February I posted regarding the Food Standards Agency website where you can see scores from local food hygiene inspections, at the time the website had minimum publicity – very few people knew it existed. After I sent a flurry of tweets about the site and some astonishing results from the local area, and then the blog post, it seemed a lot more people were in the know. WalesOnline and yourCardiff both picked up on it, giving more exposure [...]

“The Cardiff Hackney Carriage Association, which says it represents about 700 of the city’s 950 drivers, said its members would strike as part of a dispute with the council over fares.” This is what the South Wales Echo (WalesOnline) reported this week. The report goes on to explain exactly when taxi drivers in Cardiff are proposing to strike; “Mathab Khan, the association’s chairman, said the industrial action – between midnight and 4am next Saturday and Sunday – would cause “total havoc” in [...]

I’m on a bit of a mission at the moment, and it seems to be something along the lines of “try as many new places for lunch as I can”. I headed back into Cardiff early one day last week, sometimes I just like to work from my living room with the boy playing on the floor in front of me – I’m just a big softie. Anyway, I needed to grab some lunch on my way home so after [...]

As long as two months ago the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) launched their well overdue “Scores on the Doors” online system, where local authorities can publish the hygiene checks done on premises licensed to serve or prepare food – quantified in a 0 to 5 rating system where 0 is very bad and 5 is remarkable. Despite there being extensive coverage in the Spring/Summer last year by WalesOnline – who were criticising the agency for not releasing their findings, [...]