With its twin Chelsea to the south, Kensington forms the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The royal bit comes from the fact that Queen Victoria was born in Kensington Palace, currently the London home of the Prince and Princess of Wales and their children, Princess Eugenie and her family and the former digs of generations of royals from Princess Margaret to Princess Diana. Numerous local restaurants claim to have been Diana’s favourite place to eat, while Princess Margaret gave her nickname name to Maggie Jones’s (temporarily closed after an electrical fire last year, and much missed).
That visibly regal presence is why when anyone refers to the Royal Borough, they don’t mean Greenwich, Kingston or even Windsor and Maidenhead — they mean Kensington and Chelsea, a droit du seigneur that applies to a patrician local restaurant scene largely priced for local wallets and tourists here for the full London experience of museums and shopping, palaces and parks.
