You can’t always buy local and there are times when you just want a great pasta to go with the bolognaise sauce you made with Manx beef, or some Italian olive oil to go on your organic Staarvey Farm salad.

Providing island customers with a genuine taste of Italy has made Laura King, at the Italian Kitchen in Castletown, especially vulnerable to the uncertainties of Brexit but she is fighting back by opening a new online shop.

’All of the products we sell come from the EU, from Italy, so at the moment it’s really hard to know how Brexit is going to affect us,’ says Laura.

She goes on: ’We think it could be shipping costs: we may get charged extra on customs. We have some products that come direct to us and some that come to us through England and whether or not we need to change that supply chain and go through Ireland, we just have no idea.

’We’ve been noticing changes in what we can get hold of for about a year: we’ve already seen some increases in shipping costs from some of our distributors.

’So far I’ve been able to keep prices held and I’m doing everything in my power to do that because we want to be accessible to people, but obviously if we’re being charged a certain amount all the prices are going to go up.

’You can’t plan for it and that’s the hardest part of it.’

It was Laura’s love of Italy that led her to open the Italian Kitchen, as she explains: ’It begin years ago, when I was travelling in the northern part of the country and I stayed on an olive farm in San Gimignano.

’My Italian hosts taught me how to cook simple, traditional meals and I developed a deep passion for the ingredients I was using. I still miss being able to pluck fresh apricots from the tree outside my bedroom window.’

Laura moved to the island in 2015 when she met her husband, Ross, who is originally from Port Erin. A year later their son, Toby, was born.

Laura says: ’Italian Kitchen originally started out as gift hampers online, when Toby was just coming up to a year old.

’I wasn’t quite ready to go back to work but I needed to focus on something too, and because there were so many Italian ingredients that I loved and couldn’t find on the island - this seemed like an idea that could work.’

A few months later the online business had turned into a stall at the food market in Castletown and the next obvious step was to open a shop.

Laura says: ’We’ve been very responsive to customers since we opened, so people come and ask us for products and now we don’t actually stock a lot of the products we started with but we’ve grown from people requesting things. Most things we can find but that has become harder in the last six months.

’The whole point of the shop was really my love of Italian foods and the simplicity of the cooking.

’You can buy pasta from anywhere but it’s the quality of the pasta that’s the difference.

’We sell Rummo, a special pasta from Castiliano that’s been made in the same way it has been for six generations: that’s the quality and that’s the difference. From Castigliano.’

Another supplier is Roi, from Liguria, who continue to use a traditional stone press for sustainable extra virgin olive oil, made from local Taggiasca olives, which are sweet and mild.

Laura also stocks a specially blended Italian Kitchen coffee.

She says: ’We’ve had our coffee made to complement the range. It’s 50% Arabica, that’s why it’s so smooth and our best seller.’

It also goes very nicely with the range of little Italian pastries she sells.

To widen her customer base, Laura has just made her products available online.

She says: ’Over the last few months, we’ve had so many requests for online shopping that we have changed our entire back order system, till system and the way we manage our inventory in order to fulfill online requests.

’Very soon, we will have our whole catalogue of products online and we are working towards delivery of our Italian pastries and chocolate slab cakes too.

’If you live locally, you can also order online and select collection. We will then let you know when your order is ready to collect from our little shop in Castletown.’

â?¢ You can find the online shop at www.italiankitchen.shop