FOOD & DR INK
IMAGES (Left) Luca Fiorio standing outside the Grain Culture Bake Shop in Ely. Above and below are a selection of the breads and pastries available on Wednesdays and Saturdays
“Ely’s dying for more businesses like this. You’ve got such a mix of people here, and it’s so pretty”
and one metre wide where I could walk. People would say: ‘Can I come have a look?’ But… there was no space,” he laughs. Luca set up the business to sell his bread wholesale and at farmers’ markets twice a month. “And then slowly, slowly I added on to that,” he says. “Eventually, I stopped working for Jack when I picked up a big customer – Provenance Kitchen – that was perfect timing. I had a steady income when I was delivering to them, and I added on various smaller customers in Ely – just slow, steady, at the right pace.”
Jack, which – along with caring for his children and supporting his commuting wife – filled up a great deal of the young chef’s time. But eventually an opportunity presented itself: like many of Cambridge’s food businesses, Grain Culture started life in their garage. “Imagine just a standard, new-build garage – that was the bakery,” he grins. “I had a double-door fridge for the dough, basically the size of the shutter: and then I had two tiny mixers, 25 litres each, and two tiny ovens. I had a door, and a bench, and a strip about two metres long
always knew that a bread-based business was in his future, and the young couple had this in the back of their minds while searching for a place outside the capital to call home. They found Ely by chance, and fell in love with the perfect commuter town, then decided to invest in a home rather than building a business – in part because Luca was ready for a break from kitchens: “I worked right until the day the removal guys came to pack up.” Once settled in Cambridgeshire, Luca started working a few days a week with
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