Any article confidently headed "All the best things to do in Pontcanna" is going to provoke debate and disagreement, and this piece by the Independent's Alice Reynolds doesn't disappoint.
Fair enough, her selection of the best places to go for a fancy meal/night out - Milkwood, Uisce (with a passing reference to its sister establishment Heaneys), the newly Michelin Starred Gorse - can't really be faulted.
But then there's no mention of the area's two finest bakeries, Ground and Brod (the latter recently afforded the honour of featuring in the Waitrose magazine), and the Wardrobe Cafe gets the nod for coffee despite (in my experience) offering glacial service and an inferior brew to former inhabitants Lufkin. (King's Road Yard is also generally poorer without superb dirty vegan shack Lazy Leek, and because Pipes no longer bottle their beer for consumption at home.)
While Crafty Devil's Cellar only qualifies as being in Pontcanna by the finest of margins, Reynolds' inclusion of Chapter too is a cheeky liberty. That said, it's not as much of a head-scratcher as devoting column inches directing people to the Pontcanna Inn - a honeypot for Turkey-teethed Madri tossers. The area's boozing options aren't great, admittedly, but surely Slizza (or Pipes, for that matter) would have been more worthy of a plug.
Overall, "Cardiff's most stylish neighbourhood"? Quite probably - but I prefer being a visitor, feeling more at home amid the grit, grime, character and vibrancy of Canton.
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