Who: Tony Marks, former radio presenter turned cafe owner.
What: Starfish & Coffee: award-winning neighbourhood brunch cafe.
Where: Queens Park / Hanover border, up the hill from Kemptown.
Why: For specialty coffee, a menu that prioritises quality over quantity, staff that puts hospitality first, and the feeling that you have walked into a local favourite instead of a tourist trap.
By the entrance to Queen’s Park, all the way up on the hill, sits Starfish & Coffee; a cafe that has since its opening in 2017 become one of Brighton’s most-loved brunch spots. With six BRAVO awards, one of the strongest Google ratings in the city (4.8 stars with 1.3K reviews), and a very devoted local following, it is the kind of place people will happily cross town for. And if you haven’t yet, you should absolutely consider it.
Read more: Best Brunch In Brighton – Starfish & Coffee Review
Once described by The Argus as an “entrepreneurial broadcaster”, Tony Marks took the leap of faith and swapped late-night alternative radio shows for poached eggs, specialty coffee and a neighbourhood cafe that for many locals feels like home.
“If I was going to stop being a radio presenter, I was going to have the best cafe in Brighton,” he tells me. “That was always the goal.”
From late-night radio to brunch on the hill
Tony did not start his career behind a coffee machine, he started it behind a microphone. After studying in Birmingham, he landed his dream job in radio, working at the heritage station BRMB, then at Kerrang! Radio. After a time in Oxford, then at Mercury FM in Crawley, he finally made it to Brighton’s Juice FM.
“I always wanted to live in Brighton,” he says. “When I got offered the job in Crawley I checked the map, saw it was 25 miles away and moved to Brighton instead.”
He spent around ten years at Juice FM, hosting an evening alternative music show, until new owners took over. He tried to get other jobs outside radio but had no luck.
“My CV just said ‘radio’ and people did not know what to do with that. Nobody would even give me an interview. That was the moment I thought, I am in trouble.”
Backed into a corner, he opened a cafe. The turning point came when his best friend decided to sell Joe’s Cafe, the much-loved Prestonville institution Tony had watched transform into a popular brunch place.
“I asked if I could buy it. I knew the business and I had been there through the whole journey, but it was far too much money.”
What it did though was give him clarity. “I realised nobody was going to give me a job, I had to start my own thing. I had always said his cafe would be amazing in Hanover.”
By then Tony had lived in Brighton for almost 20 years and in Hanover for more than a decade.
“I really love this neighbourhood, ” he adds. “I knew if I did something, it had to be here.”
He found the site by Queen’s Park and opened Starfish & Coffee in 2017. I ask him about his vision for the place, and whether it all worked out exactly as intended, but his answer very clearly reflects his situation at the time: “I was not thinking, ‘this is my big vision’. I was thinking ‘survival’. I knew how many places had failed in this unit, and the only way it was going to work was if it was the best cafe in Brighton.”
A bubble, a hill and a neighbourhood
As Tony is not from the area originally, I’m curious as to what kept him in Brighton and his answer is instant. “It’s very different to anywhere else in the UK. We think differently here,” he says as we both agree that Brighton is a ‘bubble’ in the best possible way, “I live about seven minutes away. I drink in the local pubs. My little boy goes to school round the corner. I never leave this hill.”
What he loves most is the way the streets and houses bring people together. “In Hanover most of the front doors open straight onto the pavement, there are no front gardens. You step out of your door and your neighbour might be right there. It forces you to get to know each other.”
That sense of neighbourliness has spilt into the cafe. “We’ve been here eight and a half years now. I have customers who came in before they had children and now their kids are eight – I have watched them grow up. So many people feel almost an ownership of the cafe. It is theirs as much as mine. When friends visit they tell them, ‘you have to come here’ and that means a lot.”
I decide to put Tony on the spot by asking him to describe the community in three words. After a bit of thinking, it comes to him: “Friendly, happy, hungry. When people come in, they are friendly, happy and hungry. When they leave, they are friendly, happy and satisfied.”
Hospitality first
When visiting Starfish & Coffee, you can feel Tony’s radio background in the way he ‘works the room’ – he’s a people person and a connector through and through: “As a radio presenter you are a host. You welcome people into your show. Here I am still a host. The doors are open, I’m welcoming people in.”
He loves talking to people, whether they are long-term regulars or first-time visitors who have just dragged their suitcase up the hill from town.
“I want people to feel like they have been welcomed into someone’s home, not just sat down, fed and sent away.”
And there is a deliberate choice behind that. He goes on: “When I was 21 and working in Australia, someone said to me, ‘Do you know the one word people love more than any other?’ I guessed all sorts. He said, ‘It is their own name’.” That stuck with him.
“We learn our regulars’ names and their coffee orders. They walk in and I know who they are. It goes a long way.”
“Aware of Instagram, not slaves to it”
Brighton being full of brunch spots, I wonder out loud how he thinks Starfish & Coffee stands out – other than the community surrounding it. “There is the quality of the food, obviously, and the way we welcome people, but there is also the feel of the place. We have these big windows, natural light, you can look out at the arches. It feels cosy but not dark.”
When asked if amongst the 1.3K Google reviews there’s one or two that he remembers standing out to him, he recalls one early review that still makes him smile. “Someone wrote that we were ‘aware of the presence of Instagram but not slaves to it’. I loved that. Everything looks good, the food photographs well, but we are not doing it just for social media or looks. The food being good is the priority.” The location is both a blessing and a threat. “It is a strength because it’s beautiful and feels very neighbourhood, but it is also a weakness. In winter you don’t see anyone walking past. We would not survive just on people from Hanover and Queen’s Park. We need tourists and people from across Brighton and Hove.”
To keep people coming back, he takes nothing for granted, and it’s clear by the way the staff all work and the quality that is put into everything. “We work hard on the welcome, and I have never taken the awards or ratings for granted. You are only ever a few bad months away from slipping off people’s lists.”
That “best cafe in Brighton” standard
From day one Tony set the bar in his own head, deciding that his place was going to be the best. “I said I wanted it to be the best cafe in Brighton. If I was giving up radio, this had to be the thing I was known for.”
But how does he keep up the standard? Well, every new staff member hears the same speech: “I tell them about the BRAVO awards, the Google rating, the write ups in Time Out and The Argus. Then I say, people are coming here with a certain expectation. If we are telling people we are one of the best brunch spots in Brighton, we have to live up to that.”
The rule is simple. “Everything we do has to be worthy of the best cafe in Brighton. If it is not, we do not do it.” That philosophy shows up in the suppliers list, dominated by local providers; organic eggs from The Macs Farm, fruit and vegetables from Adams Wholesale in Worthing, pastries from The Flour Pot Bakery as well as Fika by the Sea, and specialty coffee from Brighton roastery Skylark, the only 100 percent non-profit specialty coffee roasters around.
I can’t help but wonder about the amazing bacon they make, and he confirms it’s dry cured, streaky bacon from Bodiam Meats in Bodiam: “you know, producers are cutting the time it takes to produce pork by adding water to it. And they’re filling out the meat itself and adding water to make it bigger. We would rather have more expensive produce to make sure it’s better.”
Small menu, big favourites
The menu at Starfish & Coffee is concise on purpose; it comes across as intentional. “We don’t have loads on there, but everything is solid. People who know us have their favourites.”
The full English is the bestseller, especially at weekends, but the cult item is the rotating seasonal eggs. “Seasonal eggs are our take on Turkish eggs. It is yoghurt and eggs as a base, then we change the toppings every few months.” Head chef Marcin Sulek (previous head chef of another Brighton favourite, No No Please) designs each version.
“Every time we change it I panic that people will not like the new one as much as the last, but they always do. We have just put the current seasonal eggs on today and you were probably the first to try them.” More on the seasonal eggs in our review of Starfish & Coffee.
Locals, tourists and where to sit
Although it has become a destination brunch spot, Tony still thinks of Starfish & Coffee as a neighbourhood cafe first, and always has: “If you have not been here, you should come. You will get a lovely warm greeting and some great food.”
Website: Starfish and Coffee – Brighton & Hove’s Best Cafe
Address: 32 Egremont Place, Brighton, BN2 0GA
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