The market café at Monmouthshire’s new livestock centre at Bryngwyn is the best in Britain - and that’s official!

The café, which opened on the site in November 2013, was one of six from across the UK nominated for a Mart’s the Heart award sponsored by the Farmers Guardian.

And last week Maria Bayliss and her team found they’d topped the public vote.

Maria said she was ‘surprised and delighted’ by the news.

The café, open from 6am on Mondays and Wednesdays, offers home-cooked food using local suppliers - with roast beef dinners and chicken curries the farmers’ favourites.

It’s very much a family affair with Maria’s son Joe turning up for work at the crack of dawn and her daughter Chloe, a pupil at Monmouth Comprehensive School, often making cakes and puddings for the counter.

Maria even offers healthy menu options for farmers with special dietary requirements.

“Wednesdays are especially busy here, with hundreds of customers passing through,” she said. “Everything is made on site, starting at 5.30am.

“I employ about eight staff, most of them farmers’ wives. I’m lucky to have such a hard-working and fun team of ladies. They make the café an extremely friendly place to enjoy a cuppa or a meal.”

The café’s fine reputation for food is matched by its squeaky clean credentials. It was recently granted a five-star hygiene rating by Monmouthshire County Council.

The best cafe award was one of three new awards launched this summer under the Mart’s the Heart banner. The other nominees in the best cafe category were in Shrewsbury, Carmarthen, Ludlow, Wigton in Cumbria and Gisburn in Lancashire.

The awards were presented at the Livestock Auctioneers lunch in Yorkshire this week.