‘It’s all for her’ – the man behind the Kensington Princess Diana café

Directly across from the wrought iron gates of Kensington Palace, a small café with red awning is tucked between a Chinese medicine centre and an estate agent.

Called Café Diana, it was opened in 1989, when owner Abdul spotted Princess Diana coming out of the gates across the street with the young Princes William and Harry.

Since then it’s transformed into a shrine to the late ‘People’s Princess’, with pictures and articles about Diana plastered on the walls.

Metro.co.uk popped over to speak with the café about the princess – who visited the establishment multiple times – on the 27th anniversary of her death.

What’s in a name?

Abdul was constructing his café for a few months before it opened in January 1989. He tells Metro.co.uk that he didn’t know his shop was across from the palace where Princess Diana and her children lived.

‘At the time, I was thinking, “Should I call it Abdul’s Café or something else?”’ he laughs. ‘Then I saw Diana walk out one day and decided to call it Diana’s Café.

‘The second time I saw her she was saying to her children, “Look, that’s my name!” The third time, she smiled at me.’

Eventually, Diana and her two young sons got into the habit of waving good morning to Abdul – then the Princess made a surprise visit to the premises.

‘It was electric,’ Abdul remembers. ‘I was in the back of the shop and asked my waitress to ask her what she wanted to eat and drink. She ordered a cappuccino for herself and an espresso for her guard.

‘When I took the cappuccino to her to introduce myself formally, my hands were shaking and half of the coffee was in the saucer. Within two minutes we became friends. She’s got this ability to make people at ease.’

Princess Diana asked Abdul why he named it ‘Diana’s Café’, saying: ‘Is it your girlfriend or your wife? Are they named Diana?’

‘She was being cheeky,’ Abdul explains. ‘I said, your highness, I’m very fond of you and your hard work. Her face was red, she was very humble.

‘She said to me, “Abdul, do you serve pita bread?” I said yes, and she told me her children loved it.’

Abdul then invited the royal to bring her children to eat. After this initial encounter, the pair soon struck up a routine – waving at each other each morning as Diana left the palace to bring Harry and William to school. 

A frequent visitor

Diana’s Café had a number of encounters with it’s namesake, while Abdul and his staff watched the young princes grow up.

Laughing, he recalled a time when Prince Harry came to the café with his nanny around 1990. 

‘I remember Harry saying, “I’m going to tell William I was at Diana’s.” His nanny said to him, “Keep quiet, you’re not supposed to be here and not supposed to tell anybody.”

‘I remembered William had enjoyed a Twix, Kit Kat and Orangina,’ Abdul adds.

‘So I got those and put them in a bag and gave it to Harry and said, “Give this to your brother, Prince William.” Harry took it, shook my hand and put the chairs back nicely.

‘The next day William came without his mum and he stopped the car in the middle of the street, put the window down and he called out, “Abdul!”

‘I thought I had done something wrong! I walked towards the road, and William said, “Good morning sir. I wanted to thank you for the Orangina and Kit Kat you sent me.”

‘He and Harry were gentlemen. He offered to pay for the goodies but I told them it was in the house.’

With a business across the street from the gates to Kensington Palace, paparazzi were not an unfamiliar sight. 

Abdul recalls one day when the photographers had camped out around 6.00am waiting for Diana to appear. 

‘They were waiting, waiting, waiting. Finally around 4.00pm, they gave up and packed up their cameras,’ he recalls.

At that moment, Abdul says, Diana came out as he was serving coffee to a customer sitting outside.

‘She stopped in the middle of the street in her car and called out to me: “Abdul, don’t serve them!” Then, she drove away,’ he chuckles.

Sharing in sadness

Just after midnight on August 31, 1997, a car carrying Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed crashed at a high speed in Paris.

News of the event spread quickly once it was realised the Princess was involved. Abdul turned on his television that night and said his eyes were glued to the television.

At 4am, the Princess was pronounced dead. An hour later, Abdul put on his clothes and made his way to Café Diana.

‘I looked at the palace gates and just thought, “What’s going to happen?” I didn’t sleep for two days.’

He thought of the time Diana met one of his daughters, played with her hair and told her: ‘You look like your dad.’

Café Diana shut for a few days after the Princess’ death, as waves of people made their way past the premises on their way to the palace. Some passerbys even left flowers in front of Café Diana, Abdul remembers.

Regular customers from years past stopped to see Abdul – ‘We were sharing our sadness,’ he explains.

Despite the Princess no longer being around to say hello to Abdul in the mornings, Prince William and Prince Harry still made sure they waved at him whenever they left the palace.

As the years have passed, the café has gone on to host parties to celebrate both Prince William and Prince Harry’s weddings, and the birth of Prince George. 

Abdul still sees Prince William every now and then, and said they make eye contact and wave to each other. ‘But he is too busy now,’ Abdul adds. 

A bouquet of lilies and small candles

Tday, one of the booths in Diana’s Café has fresh lilies, a framed portrait of the Princess and small candles lit by staff.

The walls of the café are covered in photos of the former Princess of Wales, beaming and laughing. Two customers place candles by Diana’s photo as they leave.

A family of four visiting London from Pakistan eat their lunch nearby. When asked by Metro what they remember most about Princess Diana, without hesitation, the father says: ‘Her smile.’

‘I wake up in the morning and she is still around me. We do miss her. It’s like she’s still here,’ says Abdul. ‘She came in to support me and she appreciated it just because of her name. Now this shop is here and keeping her name for her. It’s all for her.’

In fact, between 1989 to 1994, Diana’s Café was in a period of struggle, and Abdul wrote to Diana because he was considering closing his café.

To his surprise, he received a letter from Kensington Palace, telling him to keep going. 

‘She always supported me – she is still a force behind me,’ he said. ‘There’s a million stories how she affected other people, people’s lives.

‘I am just one of them.’

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