A princess of greasy spoons

Café Diana is a Princess Diana-themed greasy spoon in Notting Hill Gate. It is a mad place, but it is still the sanest part of Notting Hill because it has the integrity to state its madness bluntly. There is a huge photograph of Diana smiling in the window because she was happy to collaborate in myth-making of any kind. She delivered this photograph herself, and this café returns her love. Its website, which is formal, like a fragment of the Almanach de Gotha that flew away, remembers that she was Baroness of Renfrew when most people never knew it or forgot.

Café Diana is more thrilled by the object of its devotion than the average themed restaurant. I cannot, for example, imagine the Rainforest Café being as excited about any rainforest as Café Diana is about Diana. There are hundreds of photographs of Diana on the walls, in every composition, with every expression: Diana with children; Diana winning a race at sports day; Diana with chains of jewels. It is disorientating, partly because there is also a random photograph of Dustin Hoffman. I feel I am eating inside a colour magazine supplement that re-publishes the same content eternally; or with a very committed stalker. But it is more heartfelt, and so more pleasing, than the official café at Kensington Palace which serves typical English middle-class fare for outings to a palace: necrosis and afternoon tea.

Of course, Diana ate here. Is that fantastical or predictable — or both? She obviously found this dedication to her myth so delightful as to be edible, and she came here many times after it opened in 1988. The report of her initial visit is on the wall as well, in the form of a splash in the People.