The Seagull Café in Towyn is becoming the home of eating challenges in North Wales with a full menu of epic dishes to tempt brave customers.

Owner Maria Ayhan says the café's reputation sees people come from all over to pit themselves against giant breakfasts and humongous dinners all in the hope of earning the ultimate competitive eating prize - a free meal and a t-shirt.

"People absolutely love it," she said. "To be honest there's not many places you can get a 32oz steak for £25 but people really like to have a go and see if they can beat the challenge.

@rhyl_journal The Seagull Cafe in Towyn has a range of food challenges that are really putting customers’ appetites to the test. Could you finish one? #food #roastdinner #hotwings #breakfast #fullenglish #alldaybreakfast #steak #foodchallenge #foodcoma #foodwall #homecooking #smallbusiness #towyn #northwales #eatforfree #winateeshirt ♬ Happy Backsound - Vioo Sound

"It really does attract people too and everyone has fun, whether they complete or not."

The Seagull offers a number of food challenges - each of which has to be completed in 55 minutes, including a 32oz Steak Challenge - including two eggs, mushrooms, coleslaw, six onion rings, grilled tomatoes, chips, peas, beans or salad.

Maria also offers a Hot Wings Challenge, Steak and Rib Challenge, Burger Challenge, Roast Dinner Challenge and the legendary Breakfast Challenge - eight sausages, eight bacon rashers, six black pudding slices, six hash browns, mushrooms, four eggs, tomatoes, beans three pieces of toast and three pieces of fried bread. 

"They are not easy but the clue is in the word challenge," said Maria. "I've already extended the time to 55 minutes as we look to get the balance just right. 

Read more: 

Towyn café invites customers to take on eating challenge

Towyn café adds more daring eating challenges including 36oz burgers

"Currently our success rate stands at 39 to us, seven to the customers. You get a few people online who moan a bit and say it's too hard but it's not supposed to be easy."

The challenges are rooted locally too. As many of the ingredients as possible are sourced locally and any food waste from the challenges is sent back to local farms to be used as feed for pigs.

"We don't like to be wasteful," said Maria. "So anyone taking part can do so with a clear conscience.

"I'm currently looking at introducing some more," Maria told us. "I'm working on a lasagne one, a cottage pie one and possibly a hot dog one, once I work out how many hot dogs it needs to be."

Unusually for an eating challenge, customers can also swap elements they don't like.

"So long as the core of the challenge remains the same, you can have swaps," said Maria. "So if you don't like beans but you do like tomatoes, you can have extra tomatoes as a sub. It doesn't give you any kind of advantage."

And Maria issued a challenge to the growing army of competitive eaters on Youtube like Adam Moran (aka BeardmeetsFood), Max Stanford of Max vs Food and Leah Shutkever.

"We think our challenges are tough enough to beat you," she said. "Once you hit a food wall that's it. It doesn't matter how much you want to finish, you just can't."