What do you do if your friend’s restaurant is destroyed in an earthquake? This question faced restaurateur, Riccardo Longo when the original Gran Caffe L’Aquila, owned by his friend Chef Stephano Biasini, was damaged in the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake.

“So at that time we talked about it, and he realized that it would take probably 20 years to rebuild L’Aquila because things move very slowly in Italy,” explained Longo in a recent interview with AL DÍA News.