Our History
My name is Nadia Luciani Howell, and the story of L’AQUILA is also my story. Although I was born and raised in London, my Italian heritage and frequent trips to Italy during my youth transformed me into an ‘Italian foodie’ from a very early age.
It was after one such trip to L’Aquila, the state capital of the Abruzzi region, that I first conceived the idea to start the business. As the owner of an Italian restaurant at the time, I was constantly horrified at the cost and difficulty of getting good quality Italian ingredients in the UK. Recognising the potential of the small office and warehouse that were attached to my restaurant, I decided to combine my local knowledge of the UK market together with my Italian contacts to establish a business venture.
All I needed was a name. And what better name than one that honored the place where it all began? Thus, L'AQUILA was born in the year 1987.
Truffle Hunting in Italy
I started by working part-time, importing and selling truffles. At the time, the UK truffle market was expensive, somewhat exclusive and truffles were hard to come by. However, I knew that if we bought fresh truffles direct, leveraging our established relationships with local hunters, and handled their processing and distribution ourselves, we could offer them to customers at a more affordable price.
We could and we did - and that’s how the business took off. Within a couple of years you could buy L’AQUILA products in all the top London department stores, specialist delicatessens and through numerous catering wholesalers.
We kept the focus on truffles and truffle-related products (such as Truffoil™) for the first few years, selling to the retail and catering markets, but then expanded into wild and exotic cultivated mushrooms, selling both to retail, and in bulk for the food service market.
Wild Fungi and Celebrity Chefs
By the early 90s, the L’AQUILA name was synonymous with truffles and wild fungi and the market was still rather niche - but as soon as celebrity chefs hit our TV screens and declared porcini a ‘store cupboard ingredient’, L'AQUILA's products started appearing on the shelves of the major UK supermarkets.
Always keen to stay on top of market trends, the food industry was quick to use wild mushrooms as flavour enhancers for their soups and sauces – and so began our relationships with food manufacturers.
Porcini, Packaging, and Park Royal
By the mid-90s we had diversified through our Sorriso brand of char-grilled vegetable products, bought our first van (and computer!) and grown to a staff of 10. We were constantly refining our production techniques to increase purity levels and satisfy the needs of an ever-growing client list. We also launched one of our most popular products - Shake O’Cini™ - a porcini powder tin shaker.
By 2001 we had moved to our bespoke 9,000 sq ft office and warehouse at Park Royal, automated many of our packaging operations and introduced aluminium pouch packs for catering and industrial use.
Food Manufacturing, Tailored Ingredients, and Love of Good Food
These last years have seen us specialising in highly bespoke vegan and vegetarian ingredients, and strengthening our collaboration with the food manufacturing and foodservice industries. Our expertise, technical know-how and commitment to ongoing trend research work in synergy with the most fundamental part of our job: love for good food and being a foodie for foodies.
Nadia Howell