The Lives of 2 Italian Imports to UK Antonio Carluccio
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The lives of 2 Italian imports to UK Antonio Carluccio Antonio Carluccio was born in Vietri sul Mare, in the province of Salerno, Campania, the fifth of six children of Giovanni Carluccio, a stationmaster from a family of Benevento bookbinders, and his wife Maria Trivellone. He moved when he was young and to Castelnuovo Belbo and Borgofranco d'Ivrea. Living in an area with great vegetation, as a child he would hunt through the forest for different mushrooms and other funghi with his father. After leaving school he did his compulsory one year of military service in the Italian Navy. After the navy, he worked briefly as a journalist with La Stampa in Turin and then as a technician and sales representative for typewriter manufacturer Olivetti. Carluccio moved to Vienna at age 21 to study languages. He lived in Germany from 1962 to 1975, working as a wine merchant in Hamburg. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1975 to work as a wine merchant, importing Italian wines. He was appointed manager of Terence Conran's (his brother-in-law) Neal Street Restaurant in London's Covent Garden in 1981, and became its owner in 1989. Under Carluccio, British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver began his professional career at the Neal Street Restaurant, which closed in 2006. Carluccio wrote twenty books on Italian cuisine. He appeared on BBC television in the ‘Food and Drink Programme’, and in his own series ‘Antonio Carluccio's Italian Feasts’ in 1996. In 2011, his travels around Italy with Gennaro Contaldo were filmed for the four-part BBC Two series ‘Two Greedy Italians’; a second series, ‘Two Greedy Italians: Still Hungry’ was shown the following year. In 2012, he was awarded the ‘AA Lifetime Achievement Award’ and released his autobiography, ‘A Recipe For Life’. In 1991, Antonio and his wife opened an Italian food shop, named “Carluccio's”. They expanded this in 1994 to a wholesale business. In 1999, the first "Carluccio's Caffè" was opened in Market Place, London. An authentic Italian restaurant with integrated food shop, the premises opened to serve light, Italian-based breakfasts. The chain expanded, initially across southeast England, and subsequently across the UK. In 2005, “Carluccio's” was quoted on the Alternative Investment Market. In 2010 the company received a takeover offer from the ‘Landmark Group’, a Dubai-based enterprise, valuing Carluccio's at £90m. The transaction was approved by the shareholders and completed in October 2010. “Carluccio's” operated from over 80 UK locations. After ten years of development, Antonio rejoined the company as a consultant. The chain went into administration in March 2020, and was partially acquired by Boparan Holdings in May 2020. Charles Forte Charles Forte was born as Carmine Forte in Mortale, now Monforte, Casalattico, in the province of Frosinone, Italy on 26 November 1908. He emigrated from Italy to Scotland at the age of four with his family. He attended Alloa Academy and then St. Joseph's College, Dumfries as a boarder, followed by two years of studies in Rome. After Rome, Forte rejoined his family, who had moved to Weston-super-Mare, where his father ran a café with two cousins. Charles's main training at the age of 21 came in Brighton, where he managed the ‘Venetian’. At 26, he set up his first "milk bar" in 1935, the Strand Milk Bar Ltd. Soon he began expanding into catering and hotel businesses. At the outbreak of World War II, Forte was interned in the Isle of Man due to his Italian nationality, but he was released after three months. After the war, his company became Forte Holdings Ltd and bought the Café Royal in 1954. In the 1950s, he also opened the first catering facility at Heathrow Airport and the first full British motorway service station for cars at Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, on the M1 motorway in 1959. He purchased the ‘Hungaria Restaurant’ in Lower Regent. Trust Houses Group Ltd and Forte Holdings were merged in 1970 to become Trust House Forte or THF. Through mergers and expansion, Forte expanded the Forte Group into a multibillion-pound business. His empire included the Little Chef and Happy Eater roadside restaurants, Crest, Forte Grand, Travelodge and Posthouse hotels, as well as the wine merchant Grierson-Blumenthal and a non-controlling majority stake in the Savoy Hotel. Forte was the CEO from 1971 and chairman from 1982 (when his son Rocco took over as CEO) of the Group. Happy Eater and the five Welcome Break major road service outlets were bought from Hanson Trust PLC on 1 August 1986. In the 1990s, the company increased its nominal capital and agreed to the public listed companies compliance regime to become Forte Group plc. Forte passed full control to his son Rocco in 1993, but soon the plc was faced with a hostile takeover bid from Granada. Ultimately, Granada succeeded with a £3.9 billion tender offer in January 1996, which left the family with about £350 million in cash. On 28 February 2007, Forte died in his sleep at his home in London, aged 98. He is buried in West Hampstead Cemetery. .