The title is a shameless rehashing of Fatboy Slims’ “Eat, sleep, rave and repeat” track. Better than my usual cringeworthy efforts I thought (not hard you are thinking, I strongly suspect).

It links in to my sister, who lives in deepest darkest Somerset, always bemoaning that (on reading the blog) the price of food in Cardiff (particularly the offers available) make it a lot cheaper than where she lives.

So to rub it in just that little bit more (brotherly love and all) I thought I would put in print details of some of my favourite offers for each day of the week in Cardiff.

Monday

Monday can be a depressing day. You are back in work after the weekend and, even if you have a day off, options for eating out are limited as Monday’s tend to be “chef’s day off” in a lot of places (well deserved it is too – few people work harder in my view). There is, however, no reason not to make Monday a fun day on the food front.

Curado Bar

To start off the week and shake off those Monday blues, Curado Bar’s half price pintxos (£1.75 a pop) offering is hard to beat.

Options are wide and provide for a decent cross section of pintxos with good quality ingredient and specials often on offer.

If you are off work the added benefit of this place is a fantastic selection of Spanish booze.

A cheeky caña is often the order of the day drink wise, if not working (in these puritanical times), but don’t dismiss those pintxos wines par excellence in the form of sherry and (made the same way, but most certainly are not sherries) the wines of Montilla Morilles (known to those in the know as “the Other Place”).

Curado Bar’s offering now includes, rarely seen outside of Andalucia, Montilla – Moriles fino (on draught 😁) at the very reasonable (for the UK) price of £3/ £3.50 for 100ml/150 ml (a proper measure).

For more detail see my full review by clicking here.

Available all day – every Monday (Bank Holidays included).

Asador 44’s super lunch offer is also available Mondays (see Saturday below) as is the surprisingly not bad burger lunch offer at the Slug and Lettuce and, in the evening, the 2 for 1 on vegan food offer at Brewdogs.

Tuesday

If you are a tight arse like me you are also probably not looking to blow the budget after the weekend on a Tuesday.

Cheap and cheerful is thus the order of the day.

The Gallery Cafe

Not an offer per se, but cheap as chips and good value. When that is the case you don’t need an offer.

Many people think offal is awful, but I am a huge fan and love it in its many and varied forms (bar from rare kidneys which taste of p…, well you know).

A Welsh favourite, in terms of offal, is the faggot and it makes for a marvelously cheap sit down meal when had in the Gallery Cafe on the mezzanine level of Cardiff’s indoor market.

A mere £2.80. will get you a generous bowl of faggots, proper marrowfat peas and gravy.

You even get a slice of buttered (well margarined) white bread thrown in (could live without it if am honest, but it was OK for gravy mop up duties).

Add a quid and you get a bountiful portion of piping hot chips.

OK pretty it ain’t and it certainly isn’t going to win any culinary prizes, but it is tasty, hearty stuff and bloody cheap. In my book you can’t really go far wrong with that sort of combo.

Details of this offer and wider offers under the five quid mark can be found by clicking here which links to a blog post I did a while back on the subject.

Wednesday

Wednesday is Hump Day, the day that bridges the weekends. Anyway a good time for a bargain on the food front I think.

Brewdogs

Wednesday is ” Wing Wednesday” at Brewdogs.

You can, so the blurb states, gorge on unlimited wings (be they meaty or a vegan cauliflower substitute) for the princely sum of a tenner.

It isn’t quite as unbelievable an offer as it looks at first sight (very few things are), as it is limited in time (we had a two hour slot I think, but were full well within the hour) and you have to order at the bar. You then wait for them to bring out extra plates of wings (in batches of 5) once you have finished your first 12 (which you pre – order on booking).

Having said that they came out pretty quickly.

Good size meaty wings, with a nice crisp coating, a decent (possibly a touch sweet for me) sauce and a good blue cheese dip.

J and I got through 22 chicken wings and 3 cauliflower ones (the latter super hot both in temperature and spice level) each, having run out of steam at about the 45 minute mark.

Did they whoop up the spice level to slow us down or are J and I both chilli woozes. Pretty sure the latter for me, but certainly not the case for J who had all along been adding liberal amounts of hot sauce to her wings (the nutter).

We could easy have fitted in a load more in the time given, but were happily sated with what we had.

For a tenner each I thought this great value.

Add to the bargain food the rather booze selection (they do wine as well as beer)

and you have the makings of a Happy Hump Day.

Details of the offer can be found on Brewdog’s website.

Thursday

The weekend hoves into view and that has to be a cause for celebration on a Thursday.

Bar 44

Bar 44’s Express Lunch menu offers two of their tapas dishes for £8.

The choice is 2 from the Breads/Toast and/or from the Classic section of the main menu.

Portion sizes are good and quality very high.

You can save a fair bit on the standard menu price if you choose wisely. In theory, if you order the chorizo and meluza dishes from the classics section you will save £5 over the standard price.

I went for the meluza (usually £6.5) and the pan con tomato y jamon (usually £5).

The meluza (that Spanish favourite, hake) had a lovely crisp batter coating that enveloped perfect cooked fish and came with a punchy aioli and a rather good herb and caper salsa. Lovely stuff.

The pan con tomate y jamon came on quality Alex Gooch bread, with excellent jamon and a good (garlic and herb infused) tómate underneath the jamon.

Under the lunchtime offer, I saved myself £3.50 off the standard price.

Just the way to celebrate more than half the working week done.

Portion sizes allow for sharing, so it is nice to order a few different dishes if there are a couple of you.

Details can be found on the Bar 44 website.

Friday

Last day of the working week for me and what better way to bring on the weekend than a, high on quality, bargain lunch.

Heaney’s

On top of top quality small plate dining, Heaney’s has a rather fine week day fixed price menu.

Quality is maintain at a very fair price,

which makes this a very tantalising offering to welcome in the weekend.

Priced at £16/2 course and £21/3 course it is available Tuesday to Friday from 12.00 – 15.00.

You can access my full review by clicking here.

Milkwood, the Heathcock, Bully’s, the Classroom and the Potted Pig all do similar well priced lunch deals in the week.

Saturday

On the weekend deals are few and far between, with most fix price offers withdrawn. There are still bargains to be had though.

Asador 44

Available all week (bar from Sunday when they are closed) the Asador 44 fixed price menu offers brilliant food at a great price (£10/1 course, £15/2 course and £20/3 course).

The bonus on Saturdays (and Fridays) is the hours it is available are extended to all afternoon (12.00 until 17.00), so a late/leisurely lunch is a nice option.The steak and sides are great

but it offers so much more with inventive starter and fish dishes

as well as classic Spanish comfort food , such a fabada (in the Autumn and Winter).

Absolute steal for the price and for an extra £5 you can get a very decent glass of wine based on the “sommelier’s choice” (always a good and interested choice I have found).

More details are on my blog post which can be accessed by clicking here.

Sunday

Sunday is usually meat and two veg day and Cardiff offers some rather good Sunday lunch offerings at the likes of Bar 44, Milkwood, Heaney’s, the Heathcock and Bully’s to name but a few.

It is nice to, sometimes, do something different on a Sunday.

Wrights wine

I love Wright’s wines any day of the week, with it’s fantastic mix of top quality charcuterie, cheeses and other nibbles and wines

On Sunday’s it really, however, comes into its own with free corkage (on wines bought in store) all day.

Lots of fantastic wines, with prices ranging from under a tenner upwards, so you can enjoy the fab food with a very reasonably priced bottle to excellent wine. Winner, winner I say.

Details can be found on Wright’s website.

You might want to also pop into Curado Bar on a Sunday as they do, that Spanish Sunday favourite, vermút. The bonus on Sundays is it comes with a free pintxo.

Makes for a rather nice pre or post Wrights drink I think.

The verdict

Plenty of bargains in Cardiff on the food and booze front for every day of the week (there are loads more but even I am not going to list them all) and that is without even looking at what Wriggle has to offer on a daily basis (always worth a gander).