Jeffrey Barnard’s choice of ‘King Bomba’ is a little surprising nevertheless. By the mid 60s there were other just as famous and certainly more successful stores in Soho. To mention the most famous in no particular order there was: G.Parmigiani Figlio on the corner of Frith St and Old Compton Street; the two Camisa stores, one at the Wardour Street end of Old Compton Street, the other in Berwick Street near the corner with Peter Street, Del Monico’s also at the end of old Compton Street, Wardour Street end if it still existed by then and of course Lina Store’s.

Clearly Jeffrey Barnard must have had a particular affection for King Bomba and the reason is not difficult to find. Even today the shop’s name is difficult to shake off like a tune that you can’t get out of your mind. Why had it been called ‘King Bomba’ in the first place. The shop's name acts as a sort of provocation in itself.

A little knowledge about Italian history takes you just part of the way.

King Bomba was the nickname given to King Ferdinand the second of Naples (1810-1859). Considered the last European Monarch who ruled absolutely, he had gained notoriety by ordering a particularly bloodthirsty bombardment of Messina, Sicily in 1848. An obvious conclusion therefore could have been to say that the owner of the shop had been a Neapolitan with possibly right wing sympathies and to have left it at that.

When you think of other Italian provision stores in London starting from around 1900, the name above the shop window tended almost inevitably to be that of the owner: F. Gennari, Terroni, Fratelli Camisa, G.Parmigiani Figlio. You'd be forgiven for thinking that the reality behind all these names was the same; an impoverished immigrant setting foot in the U.K. and importing provisions from his homeland in order to supply the local Italian community. And you’d be right most of the time. Yet F. Gennari had been a concert violinist in his homeland before leaving for whatever reasons. As an Italian immigrant he had no chance of practicing his chosen profession in London at the time and had therefore decided to open a provision shop – in this case initially in Wardour Street before moving to the corner of Frith and Old Compton Streets. Today, with our liking for irony, double entendre etc he might have chosen another name for his shop. Something more descriptive of the man himself such as 'Carta Musica’ maybe, after the wafer thin oil bread made in Sardegna.

Emidio Recchoni the founder of King Bomba (1864-1934) was not in fact from Naples, but from the village of Russi in Romagna, now Emilia Romagna.

His talents were not artistic but anarchistic if not downright terroristic. By the time he opened his shop in London Mr Recchoni had already acquired a very colourful past. The name he gave to his shop did indeed suggest the business he was, although more as a financer of worthwhile causes, as he saw it, than as a practitioner. With a wit that was unique for the times he named the shop to serve as a double entendre, referring to both himself and his favourite would be victims – right wing dictators and their sympathisers. He was said to have been implicated in the shooting of Crespi a former Italian prime minster as well as in several failed plots to assassinate Benito Mussolini himself. He was known to and monitored by the British Secret Service and even sued the Daily Telegraph for publishing what were essentially true facts about him, and won the then notable sum of £1117 in damages when the Secret Service failed to support the newspaper’s case for reasons that even today are unclear.

He was of course the darling of London Literary circles and could be described as having run a particularly raw form of import- export business that covered the importation of many Italian food specialities while exporting terrorism through his profits.

At this late point in time, we will probably never know whether King Bomba's freshly made egg pasta or fish roe sold in barrels for making taramasalata could be considered the best in town at that time, but for shear ‘front’ the story of King Bomba itself is surely unsurpassable.