Collector’s Item: Lucian Freud began each day with a pain aux raisins.

I t must have been one day in the early 1990s that Mr. Freud first wandered into our little shop. Then already in his 70s, he had bought a house five doors up from us on Kensington Church Street and was in the process of moving out of his painting studio in Holland Park in which he had been living. Over the next few months, he also began to visit our restaurant. He would ring up and announce, “This is Lucian Freud.” I would tease him, asking in reply, “Lucy and who?” There would be a long silence, after which he would ask to reserve a table.

He soon came to establish a routine whereby he would come in to see us three, four, five times a day to punctuate his sessions with sitters. I was conscious of the attention he received so, although our restaurant is not open in the mornings, I offered him a quiet table at the back so that he would not be troubled while eating breakfast. We looked after him in this way for the next 15 years, wrapping him in cotton wool, away from the public’s eyes and ears. The respect was mutual—though he would not necessarily open a conversation, he was always very polite.

The daily ritual began around 7:45 a.m. when he and David Dawson, his studio assistant and frequent model, would arrive for breakfast. David would have bought newspapers from the little cornershop, a stack of five, six, seven newspapers. Mr. Freud would slip in and head to his regular table, placing his order en route: a juice, a coffee or sometimes an Earl Grey tea, a pain aux raisins and scrambled eggs, eggs Benedict or eggs Royale. In those days, our pain aux raisins were even bigger than the ones that we make now, so it almost filled the whole plate. When he did order tea, he would add copious amounts of cold milk, so it was the most revolting color by the time he’d finished mixing it in his cup. He would also usually grab a bar of our nougat when cutting through the shop, slipping it into his pocket as a joke.

It was mostly just the two of them, but at times he used the table as his salon. On any given day, his breakfast or lunch guest might be the Duke of Beaufort, Bono or Stella McCartney. These people were not necessarily his sitters of the day, they could be collectors or just friends. I do remember he was painting Leigh Bowery when he first started visiting us. Leigh would come in with his wig on and his pierced cheeks. He was extraordinary. And there were lots of meetings with the late Robert Fellowes regarding the portrait of the queen.

Mr. Freud would always come in his working clothes, usually his baggy paint-splattered white trousers. In the summer, he wore an open-neck shirt, his beautiful brown and white scarf, which he tied with a knot at the neck, and his huge boots—the same boots that are so beautiful in his naked standing portrait, in which they’re the only things he’s wearing. In the winter, he would arrive in one of his beautiful Huntsman heavy wool coats.

Sometimes I was invited to sit with them. Mostly I just hovered though, as I always preferred to be the one serving them. I could be conscious of who he had invited, who was arriving later and the timing of when they needed to get up and go. I sketched him once, sitting at the table, for a charity event that I think the Royal Academy ran. It was a bit like a blind tasting, but instead a blind exhibition of sketches by anyone and everyone—famous artists and also-rans. Someone bought my drawing for quite a lot of money. I was rather proud of it, actually, as I got his nose right.

I also sat for Mr. Freud for three works. The first time, it all came as a big surprise. David asked to speak to me alone in the restaurant to relay the offer, so I was initially worried that I’d done something to offend him. I kept a diary each day I sat— it’s a private book of memories I’ve preserved just for my son, Samuel. I will say though, that house was beautiful. He’d had wonderful builders renovate it from the roof downwards. It spent months and months under scaffolding. Of course, within a few weeks of him moving in, the beautiful gray carpet was splattered with paint and marked from the dogs going in and out. He and David had a whippet each, Pluto and Eli, respectively.

I think we sustained him, together with Jeremy King at the Wolseley restaurant in Mayfair. We handled the daytimes, Jeremy did the nighttime slot. It was important to keep him going as his late sittings would go on until one or two or three in the morning. Even in his early 80s, he maintained gazelle-like speed and agility. I’d see him run across the street. Over time, his appetite got smaller, but I don’t think he reduced the amount he ordered. When he wasn’t able to leave the house, we would send chicken soup and tasty treats like pastel de nata—he loved those—and, towards the end, David sweetly allowed me in to say a quick hello.

I still have visions of him whizzing around in his Bentley. He nonetheless had a good reputation in the neighborhood. People wanted to think that they knew him enough to say hello on the street. I’m sure he was, most of the time, polite enough to say hello back. He would favor us all on the street in one way or another. When I was sitting for him, the last thing he’d say as I left the studio after a two or three-hour slot would be, “I’ll be in for lunch today. There’ll be two or three of us.”
—As told to James Haldane