EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Chelsea diner to the stars is off the menu trends now
It's the end of an era in Chelsea, where one of the fashionable area’s most popular restaurants has closed down after 28 years.
Family-owned L’Antico, in King’s Road near Chelsea FC’s Stamford Bridge ground, was a favourite haunt of famous figures including Olympic gold medallist Lord Coe, design expert Stephen Bayley and former England manager Roy Hodgson.
Its owner, Francesco D’Alessio, tells me that a huge proposed increase in the rent is to blame. ‘The rent used to be £78,000, but they were proposing to put it up to £100,000,’ he says. ‘They’ve got their own estate agent now to sell the place.’
D’Alessio adds: ‘There was so much history, and all the famous people. But everything’s going up and it was getting impossible.’
Its owner, Francesco D’Alessio, tells me that a huge proposed increase in the rent is to blame. ‘The rent used to be £78,000, but they were proposing to put it up to £100,000,’ he says
Family-owned L’Antico, in King’s Road near Chelsea FC’s Stamford Bridge ground, was a favourite haunt of famous figures including Olympic gold medallist Lord Coe, design expert Stephen Bayley and former England manager Roy Hodgson
James Hewitt may have hoped to head to the Alps at the first sign of snow and snap on his skis for some downhill exhilaration.
But not this Christmas: instead, he is intent on a very different kind of adrenaline rush.
I can reveal that the former Household Cavalry officer, 64 — notorious ever since selling the story of his five-year affair with Princess Diana — is driving thousands of miles across Ukraine to rescue civilians left homeless by Russian artillery.
The mission is being undertaken for Help4Ukraine, a group established by writer and campaigner Lord Monson to supply ambulances and aid and bring those in need to safety.
James Hewitt may have hoped to head to the Alps at the first sign of snow and snap on his skis for some downhill exhilaration. But not this Christmas: instead, he is intent on a very different kind of adrenaline rush
‘James Hewitt is not in this for personal glory,’ Nicholas Monson, 67, tells me at the launch party for Rory Knight Bruce’s memoirs, An Unanchored Heart. ‘He’s doing good work for the cause and will be on another run before Christmas.’
Hewitt, who teamed up with former Coldstream Guards officer Mikey Stewart-Richardson before throwing his lot in with Help4Ukraine, is fully aware of the challenges ahead.
In his first public statement about Help4Ukraine, he explains that each mission begins at Lviv, where the convoy — ‘four vehicles: two drivers in each’ — loads up with ‘hospital beds and essential medical equipment’, before embarking on a gruelling drive eastwards.
Hewitt aims to be back for Christmas — to be reunited with the woman in his life. Monson tells me: ‘He’s got to look after his mum'
‘We covered 2,500 miles in three days,’ he says of his last mission, when the convoy came within six miles of the nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia, which remains in Russian hands. They took on board ‘36 refugees — [and] a cat and a dog’.
Among them was a
