Restaurants, Reviews | Posted on October 1st, 2025 | return to news

Love All Food

489 Ringwood Road, Ferndown

Review by Luke Graham. Meal provided courtesy of Love All Food. Photos © Dorset View

For the past five years, the family-run restaurant Love All Food in Ferndown has been serving excellent breakfast, brunch and lunch.

Earlier this year, it expanded its offering to become a fully functioning licensed bar and restaurant, open on Friday and Saturday evenings and offering roast dinners on Sunday afternoons.

In August, I was kindly invited to Love All Food to try out their brand-new tapas menu. After managing to arrange a babysitter to get a rare night away from the kids, my wife and I were very excited for a night out!

Love All Food’s bare brick walls and black-and-yellow colour scheme gives the venue a modern yet laid-back vibe. On Saturday nights, the restaurant has live music performed by talented local musicians, but we went on a Friday for a cosier, more intimate meal.

If you’ve never had tapas before, it’s a cornerstone of Spanish dining culture — small, flavour-packed dishes designed to be shared. Instead of ordering a traditional starter and main course, you order a range of dishes that will come out as soon as they’re prepared. It’s a way of eating that encourages conversation and variety and lets you sample lots of delicious flavours all in one sitting.

As a result, the Love All Food menu offers a wide range of plates, sorted into fish, meat, vegetables, and cheese, as well as tasty appetisers like olives and green chillies. Everything on the menu is made in-house with quality ingredients, and most of the dishes cost around £5 to £7. With so much choice, co-owners Suz and chef Sam were happy to give us recommendations.

We started off with olive tapenade and aioli and warm bread. The tapenade was salty and savoury, and tasted brilliant when mixed with the garlicky aioli and bread.

This was followed by large green salted padron peppers, which tasted fresh and crunchy, then a fantastic paella with prawns, chorizo and lemon. It was absolutely delicious.

We were spoilt for choice on the meat section of the menu, which features chorizo sausage, beef meatballs and boneless chicken thighs, but we opted for the pork bites with chimichurri (a tasty green sauce made from fresh herbs and garlic). The pork bites were perfectly cooked and tasted excellent: slightly charred on the outside and soft in the middle, for a smoky, meaty food sensation.

Suz insisted we try the chef’s patatas bravas. This is the signature dish of tapas: small potato cubes cooked like chips, served with a spicy tomato sauce. Get this wrong and it could ruin your meal. Fortunately, Sam’s patatas bravas was excellent, with lovely, crispy potatoes and a rich, flavourful sauce. My wife was delighted.

We also ordered a plate of Manchego, a tasty, nutty cheese made from sheep’s milk. This is served with a fruity quince jelly. Eaten together, this offered a lovely sweet and savoury experience.

For dessert, we split a slice of vanilla cheesecake. Served with sauce and fresh fruit, the cheesecake topping was delicious, soft and creamy, while the buttery biscuit base was sweet and tasty. An excellent end to an excellent meal out.

Contact Love All Food on 01202 110089 • info@loveallfood.co.uk • www.loveallfood.co.uk