Pie high: Not content with winning the Best Delicatessen at the Suffolk Food and Drink Awards an Aldeburgh shop has now won the ultimate - Suffolk's first Great Suffolk Pie Competition at the Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival. Richard Lawson and Claire Bruce-Clayton from Lawson's Delicatessen in the High Street won the Pie of Pies best pie award with their Blythburgh Pork Pie;

A FAMILY-RUN delicatessen in Aldeburgh has been shortlisted in a competition to find Britain’s best deli.

To send a link to this page to a friend, simply enter their email address below.

The message will include the name and email address you gave us when you signed up.

Email address

  Send link

To send a link to this page to a friend, you must be logged in.

Lawson’s Delicatessen in the town’s High Street triumphed over more than 400 other nominations to make it to the final five.

Members of the judging panel, which includes Sunday Times food writer Lucas Hollweg and critic Lydia Slater, will now visit the deli in July posing as ordinary customers.

The overall winner will be announced at a speciality food fair in Olympia, London, on September 5, and will go on a trip to an olive harvest in Spain.

Claire Bruce-Clayton, 48, has owned the deli along with her partner Richard Lawson, 63, since they opened in 2006.

She said: “We were absolutely amazed and surprised to hear from the organisers, who phoned on Thursday to say that we were shortlisted.

“We would be incredibly proud if we were to win and we would be really thrilled for our staff because they all work so hard.

“Often it is the people who work behind the scenes who don’t get recognition, so it would be really fantastic for them to know they are part of an award-winning deli.

“It would be a wonderful achievement. It’s really nice to be considered good at what we do and love it as well, so we feel very lucky to have got this far.”

The judges will be assessing the finalists on customer feedback, how food is sourced and how much they do in the local community.

The competition is organised by Olives Et Al, a speciality food producer based in north Dorset.