Cafe Acoreano offered free coffee and Portuguese doughnuts last week in celebration of its tenth anniversary.

When the cafe was originally opened on Washington Street in the City of Hamilton, it served only coffee and Portuguese pastries, the cafe?s original owner and current managing director John Amaral told . Since then, it has expanded to offer a variety of pre-packaged foods and hot breakfasts.

Mr. Amaral said: ?We tried to keep (the anniversary) low-key. We didn?t want anything big, but for the regular customers that we have here, we offered them a free coffee and Portuguese doughnut, and a Cafe Acoreano pen.?

Attendance throughout the morning was so high that Mr. Amaral said, within a few hours, the cafe ran out of the hundreds of doughnuts that had been baked for the event. ?We were a little surprised about that, but it was good.?

Cafe Acoreano and The New Portuguese Bakery, which supplies the cafe with all of its pastries and baked goods, were originally set up by by Mr. Amaral, Anna Faria and Helen Pimentel. After about six years, the trio sold the cafe, though the bakery continued to provide it with fresh-baked goods.

Two years ago, the opportunity arose to buy the cafe back, and Mr. Amaral?s son John Amaral Jr. was helping his father with the bakery?s deliveries at the time and expressed interest in reclaiming the cafe.

Mr. Amaral said that, although he and his wife helped his son with the investment, the now 23-year-old John had been been managing the cafe up until ?he left a few months ago to attend a music school in Florida?. According to his father, John plans to eventually return to Bermuda and continue running the cafe.