If you have only ever thought of Lebanese food in the context of strip-lit, sticky-floored kebab shops, the warm and welcoming Mina Restaurant and Cafe Bar will make you think again. Houmous and falafel are familiar names, but Mina, which has been running in the heart of Cathays since 1990, goes far beyond those to produce a huge range of dishes from this often-overlooked region.
For a Tuesday night, it was comfortably busy, with a broader range of customers than its student-ville location might suggest. Red-painted walls and glowing candles helped …

Inside the 17th century smithy, a blacksmith hammered away at a strip of metal glowing from the heat of the forge. Sparks flew off the hot iron as a hinge slowly took shape beneath the soot-darkened beams – and Cheryl Cole stared out from a copy of the day’s Metro nestled in the corner.
The mix of eras is typical of the modern, hands-on approach of St Fagans National History Museum, Wales’s most popular tourist destination.
Founded in 1948, the open air museum is set in the grounds of St Fagans castle …

Madame Fromage is the kind of restaurant a small, malicious part of you doesn’t want to live up to the hype. Homemade pies, locally-sourced food, a deli you can drool over as you wait for your lunch to be prepared – it ticks too many boxes.

A cat lover from Llandaff today urged the owners of a stray half-Persian cat to come forward before she is forced to give him away to a cats’ home.
Ann*, who regularly takes in stray cats, has been looking after the pedigree animal for a fortnight, after he first appeared outside her home around six weeks ago.
She already has five rescue cats of her own, so she cannot afford to keep him much longer. She has contacted all her neighbours, placed adverts in the press and intends to ring round local …

Wind-lashed and stormy, Flat Holm island, just five miles from Cardiff,  is a popular destination for day trippers who clamber aboard the Lewis Alexander boat for the sometimes choppy 45 minute trip from the Bay.
However for Matt Lipton, the warden of Flat Holm, it’s much more than a day trip destination; it’s home. Since March last year, Matt, 25, has spent three weeks out of every four on the island, living in a beautiful 16th century farmhouse and disturbed only by the gulls and sheep with whom he shares the …

Beer festivals still seem the last preserve of the alpha male, the heady scent of hops in the air, burly arms pressed together, men eager to get a taste of the latest ale with its suitably odd name. Women enter at their peril, or gather shivering outside the tent waiting to pick their errant beer-expert up off the floor at closing time.
Of course it’s an exaggerated picture, but walking into one of these bastions of masculinity as a woman can still turn heads. Not so at the NosDa beer festival …

Cardiff University’s Act One went for laughs over substance at their performance of Much Ado About Nothing at the YMCA theatre in The Walk, Roath.
It was a risky choice, and one made even more questionable by the programme blurb, which told us: “There isn’t really anything we cut out… Okay, so maybe two characters and two scenes, but trust us… they were rubbish.”
After such a casual dismissal of none other than Shakespeare,  I watched the curtain rise with more than a little scepticism. But the gamble payed off – mostly. Their …

More than 40 people attended the 2010 Cardiff Civic Society quiz at Insole Court in Llandaff.
The annual social event began with an informative and entertaining talk about the history of the grade two listed building by guest speaker John Isaacs, former headmaster of Cantonian High School, who played a key role in Insole Court’s restoration.

A high-speed car chase shattered the calm of Llandaff High Street this afternoon as a stolen quad bike ploughed into a parked car.

A police helicopter and six police cars raced after the quad bike when they were alerted to a vehicle behaving suspiciously. They chased the bike to the junction between Bridge Street and Fairwater Road where the thief crashed into the parked Audi.