Inside Hayling Island's newest bistro Vaughan's which is offering "relaxed" fine dining with a twist

Vaughan’s Bistro, in Mengham Road, opened its doors on December 6, 2025 - and it has already gone down a treat.

The new eatery, which is owned by Dom Vaughan, dishes up a warm and relaxing atmosphere with high quality breakfast and brunch options - and an evening menu in the pipeline.

With ten years of experience, chef, Harry Raynor, is at the helm of the kitchen and is excited to create strong foundations for the bistro by using high quality and locally sourced produce.

He said: “I joined at the start of December - Dom already had the place going up and started building it beforehand so I joined on the 6th which was the opening day.

“I’ve got a bit of a background in fine dining and pubs - it’s been going really well. We’ve had a lot of local interest so we’ve had a lot of locals coming in once a day, some coming in once a week and we’ve had a lot of interest in our evenings and what we are going to be doing.

“It’s a tough time to open in the winter, especially in December because you’ve got January, February and March where the weather is always unpredictable but we are definitely smashing our minimum of what we need to do and we have got really, really nice customers.”

Vaughan’s is currently preparing for the launch of its supper club on January 30 which will showcase the best of Hampshire by utilising local proudcts from across the area.

The concept behind the club is to introduced “relaxed fine dining” to the area whilst perfecting the bistro’s offerings based on what customers want.

Harry added: “The idea is to get this one up, set solid, and then we would like to open a second one but we don’t want to open the same thing over and over again. Each one has its own idea - Dom loves a barbecue and is heavily into the Southern smoking - he’s a fanatic about it, he loves it so it would be really nice to get that going.

“But this is our baby, this is most important and there are a lot of ideas but nothing will go forward until this is solid.”

For more information about Vaughan’s, click here.