Costantino Cicchelli, Academia Barilla
Costantino Cicchelli was born and raised in Rome, Italy. Ten years ago, he moved to Boston, MA for business school. After finishing his business studies at Northeastern University, he spent six months in Venezuela, South America for a splash of Spanish language and culture. He then returned to the U.S. and started his career in the food industry, participating in all major food industry events in the country.
Today, Costatino is based in Miami, FL and has more than eight years of food industry experience. He manages distribution for 12 states of the Southeastern U.S. region, which includes the Caribbean, for Academia Barilla. Academia Barilla, a subsidiary of Barilla, specializes in high-end authentic regional Italian food such as estate olive oils, aged balsamic vinegars, cheeses, prosciutto di Parma, salame, hand harvested Sicilian sea salts, and more.
In addition to overseeing distribution, Costantino focuses his passion and efforts on consulting, training and educating white-table-cloth restaurant chefs and staff, gourmet store managers, and food lovers on authentic regional Italian food and culture. Costantino provides his services to top rated gourmet stores, cooking school facilities and restaurants around throughout the Southeast.
Costantino also organizes and leads food lovers groups on custom-tailored gourmet tours to Italy that are centered around the Academia Barilla culinary school in Parma, Italy. During these trips. "foodies" have the opportunity to visit many different factories including production plants for Parmigiano Reggiano, the prosciutto di Parma, the balsamic vinegar of Modena, in addition to visiting wine estates such as Masi. The traveling group, typically composed of 18 to 20 people, will experience dinners in a medieval castle in the outskirt of Parma, visit great cities such as Firenze, Verona, Bologna and the famous Ferrari car museum. All while accompanied by a native English speaker.
Costantino has been featured throughout his career in magazines such as Food & Wine, Gourmet News, Miami Herald, The New York Times, Better Homes & Gardens and many more.
Everything you wanted to know about Italian food but you never asked --- with an authentic Italian accent!
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