Popular Isle of Wight cafe PO41 worth a try at Ryde Pier

The prices are reasonable and the standard of the food cannot be faulted.

The service is delightfully cheery and polite, and the brand new unit is clean — as you'd hope — with great views out across the sea, so long as you don't mind looking through the intermittent traffic just outside.

We selected a ready-made egg and cress sandwich, plus a sausage roll, from the chiller cabinet.

Egg and cress sandwich served up at PO41(Image: Matt and Cat)

Sausage roll(Image: Matt and Cat)

Disappointingly, it proved impossible to reheat the sausage roll. This was a shame, mitigated by the fact that this was a top quality version.

Tasty, rich sausage innards, with plenty of genuine meat, was packed into a flaky and light pastry case, making a decent snack worth the price.

The generously-filled egg and cress sandwich was similarly a distinctly superior product — no miserly pretence of all the filling to the front.

Although near the end of the day, our pre-packed sandwiches were perfectly fresh, with a light granary bread that avoided sogginess.

This would have been the perfect meal to pop into your bag and eat later on your journey — so much better than the high-mileage snacks you get from the onboard trolley.

Carrot cake at PO41(Image: Matt and Cat)

A pecan cookie(Image: Matt and Cat)

Alongside our savouries, we had tea. Delightfully, the hot beverage came in an actual china pot, with real leaves steeping in boiled water.

No tea bags, no cardboard cups, certainly none of that bag flung on a saucer next to a beaker of cooling hot water, favoured by 'continental' cafes — simply proper tea.

Many fancier restaurants fail this basic test — but not PO41.

This was excellent tea served in just the right way. They even topped up the pots on request.

To finish off it would have been foolish to disregard the cake selection.

We savoured carrot cake, with indulgent real cream cheese topping, plus a pecan and white chocolate cookie that was rich with both those ingredients.

PO41 makes the best of a basic and fairly industrial-looking building.

The menu is simple, but quality is the stand-out characteristic here.

With chatty service from helpful staff, it was a satisfying continuation of the PO41 experience we already enjoy in Yarmouth and Cowes.

(Image: Matt and Cat)

(Image: Matt and Cat)