SEEDS OF ITALY

As a child, having Italian parents and there being no Italian stores locally, our ‘pilgrimage’ every Saturday was to the Camisa and Lina stores in Soho’s Italian quarter to stock up on everyday essentials like regional pasta, salumi, cheeses, coffee, Italian wines and other hard-to-find ingredients. You might laugh now, but at the time (and I’m not that old!), you could only find olive oil at the chemist in tiny bottles, and that was for softening ear wax. And of course, who hasn’t heard of the famous BBC ‘Spaghetti tree’ hoax on April 1, 1957 that had many viewers calling in to ask how to cultivate their own – and subsequently causing many UK Italians to roll around with laughter.

ALL HAS CHANGED

Fast forward to 2018 and this has all changed, and in the most part for the better. Now you can find a good array of Italian produce