"I think I deserve a long holiday"

Because of the cafe book and blog I get a lot of emails, journalists etc wanting me to comment on or decry the closure of a cafe by rapacious landlords. This, from London Centric, is almost always the story of what's really happened.

"We do a lot of reporting at London Centric on small businesses struggling to cope with the city’s rising rents, rapid transformation, or greedy landlords.

Whether the threat is posed by developers or gentrification, we’ve found that the stories about the closure of beloved institutions can be more complicated than they first appear. Case in point: Madeira Star in south London’s Kennington, a Portuguese cafe that’s been open for 30 years.

We were alerted to its closure by an online petition to save the cafe, which said the “much-loved establishment” was being “displaced” by the landlord’s decision not to renew the lease. The petition called on Lambeth Council to grant the cafe community asset status and demanded that “consideration for the people and the community’s needs supersede interests that solely focus on the financial gain of property development.”

But when London Centric called the restaurant to find out about this apparent injustice, co-founder Luis De Freitas told us that it was the owners who’d initiated the closure, rather than the landlord.

He cited the difficulties of trading during a cost of living crisis and said he didn’t want to keep running the cafe. He said he “didn’t know who started the petition” and that “customers have been complaining, but it’s our decision.”

What will he do next? “It’s been 30 years. I think I deserve a long holiday.”