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.

The Schiavo family are offering home made Sicilian food at great prices. Inside, there are a handful of solid wooden tables, a bar along the window for Sunday’s peoplewatchers and Italian music playing.

A CARDIFF cafe to help deprived young people get back into employment is to reopen.

The Cardiff Council-owned Buzz Cafe in Penarth Road, Grangetown was once a colourful meeting place for young people, who could use the next-door information centre to learn new skills and get careers advice.

Now the managers have been given £9,000 in funding to revamp the venue after a leaky roof destroyed another room in the building.

American football’s showpiece event, the Superbowl, is always an ostentatious spectacle; and proof, if it was needed, American sport is almost peripheral to the commercial interests of everyone else involved — other than the two teams.
But even though it is a bloated and hyperbolic event, all the peripheral grandstanding does give the event an aura which makes it one of the highlights of the sporting year. Although the timing of games is prohibitive to British audiences, the NFL is growing in this country.
On Sunday, Cardiff’s Hard Rock Café stayed open …