HOSPITALITY
ntil recently, there was little to note about Saturday mornings on St Mary’s Street in Ely.
“It feels like ages ago – but I only stopped working for Jack at the end of December last year,” Luca says. Prior to landing in Ely, Luca and his wife Robyn had been living in London. Robyn worked (and still does) for the NHS across Islington and Camden, while Luca was earning his keep in restaurant kitchens, where he’d been cheffing since he was 15 years old. “I didn’t want to go to school – I had no interest whatsoever in that,” Luca says of his childhood. “After many fights with my dad, I said, ‘That’s it. I just want to cook’. My dad said, ‘Fine – I’ll sort something out’ – and he found me an internship at Combal.Zero, a restaurant in a castle just outside Turin.” Led by Italian chef Davide Scabin, Combal.Zero is still regularly listed as one of the 100 best restaurants in the world, and has a strong reputation for innovative and extremely creative eating experiences. It’s quite the place to start your career. “I did that for six months – I didn’t get paid, but my dad was happy to give me money for fuel
Now, however, you can tell when the weekend’s begun, because of the long line of people – come rain or shine – queuing outside a stylish sage green store that’s become the public face of Grain Culture: the bakery everyone’s talking about. Expect rough-hewn sourdough loaves big enough to feed entire families, wire baskets of toothsome baguettes, a wall piled high with bread of every shape and colour – and tray after tray of tempting pastries, glossed to a shine, waiting to be thrust into a paper bag, torn into hunks and enjoyed greedily before you’ve even bustled out of the Bake Shop. Luca Fiorio is the baker and brains behind this latest addition to Cambridgeshire’s food scene, but it’s not even 12 months since he was scooping ice cream at Jack’s Gelato, where he worked after moving to Cambridgeshire from London.
WORDS CHARLOTTE GRIFFITHS IMAGES HARRISON BUNNING
Catalyst meets Grain Culture’s Luca Fiorio to find out the story behind his flourishing bakery in Ely
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ISSUE 04
cambridgecatalyst.co.uk
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