JAN MOIR: The restaurant with a psychic owner a young Prince William would book to cheer Diana up...
Just one of the delicious anecdotes about San Lorenzo, the Italian the stars couldn't resist By Jan Moir for the Daily Mail Published: 07:11 EDT, 26 June 2024 | Updated: 07:11 EDT, 26 June 2024 e-mail View comments The napkins were folded away for the last time, the cutlery gathered dust and the telephone sat silent on an unmanned desk. The famous London restaurant San Lorenzo closed its doors for good in 2022. This marked not just the end of an era, but also the end of the kind of glamorous, ritzy, family-owned restaurant rarely seen in the capital any more, and that was sad news.
Throughout its vibrant history of catering to the rich and famous, San Lorenzo survived many things, including a young Rod Stewart wiping his liver and bacon on a napkin because he ‘didn’t like the gravy’; restaurant critic Michael Winner complaining that his melon was too ‘squashy’; and the Duke of Bedford smashing his head on the low ceiling, then saying: ‘Don’t worry, I’m told it is quite empty.’ Yet like many restaurants, poor old San Lorenzo was unable to survive the pandemic. It was supposed to reopen in September 2021 but the doors remained firmly closed.
With its passing, another delicious morsel of London’s restaurant history disappeared into the dust, never to be seen again. Princess Diana arrives at her favourite restaurant, San Lorenzo, with her sons in Beauchamp Plac.
