Caffe Marcellino

Caffe Marcellino is a small Italian cafe on Sidmouth's High Street, run by Bledar Bardhoku and his wife Mirela Lleshaj, who moved to Sidmouth from Italy and opened the cafe themselves. It won Sidmouth Herald's Cafe of the Year, an award the owners have spoken about being genuinely thankful for given how new the business was at the time.

The menu runs to proper Italian coffee, homemade pastries, sandwiches, soup and pasta specials, with the cannoli and the espresso both picked out repeatedly in reviews as reasons to go back. Everything has the feel of a family kitchen rather than a chain cafe - pastries made in-house, pasta dishes that change with what's fresh, and the kind of warm, personal service that comes from an owner who's behind the counter themselves rather than a rotating staff. It's a compact space, more suited to a coffee and a pastry than a long lunch, but it's built a loyal following in a town with no shortage of cafes to compete with.