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Eddie Rabaiotti was in charge of organising the dinner for Pope John Paul II when he visited in June 1982
When King Charles – then the Prince of Wales – wanted dinner for his naval officers, Eddie Rabaiotti had to be tracked down on the golf course in order to open his restaurant for royalty.
The restaurant owner was born in Llanelli to Italian parents who arrived in Wales from London with little to their names, but Eddie rose to become a well-known character and business owner with cafes, restaurants and pubs across south Wales.
He catered for Charles and Princess Diana when they visited Caerphilly Castle in 1983 and when Pope John Paul II visited Wales in 1982, it was Eddie who held a banquet for him at Cardiff Castle.
Now, following his death at the age of 100, his family have paid tribute to a man who “would do anything for anyone”.
BBC specially shot
Prince Charles and Princess Diana dined at Caerphilly Castle in 1983
As is often the case with larger-than-life characters, the stories attached to his name got inflated with every retelling in the pubs and cafes of his hometown of Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan.
His son Andrew said there was one “crazy story that goes round” where Eddie refused to sell Queen Elizabeth II his number plate, which started with ER2.
Alas, this is not true, said Andrew, and it seems to have originated when Prince Charles, as commanding officer of HMS Bronington, arrived in Barry docks in 1976.
Andrew, 63, said the prince wanted to take his officers for dinner and “decided they wanted to come to the Caprice”.
“The police had to go and track him down on the golf course, saying ‘we need you back here because we need to sweep the place, the prince wants to come for supper.’
“The story goes that Prince Charles saw the number plate on the car outside and said ‘my mum would like that’. But whether that’s true or not, I don’t know.”
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Eddie Rabaiotti stands on the left behind his dad, sister Louisa and mum, and next to brother Don
Eddie opened his first business in Penarth in 1959 and Andrew said he turned “one cafe into four separate businesses”.
A hard worker, Andrew said his dad would come home from a day in the cafe, change, then head to the restaurant until about 02:00.
Then, after a few hours of sleep, he would need to get up early to get to the fruit market for the day’s ingredients before heading back to the cafe.
“It was a long old day”, Andrew said, but Sundays were different.
Eddie would come home at 19:00 and wife Patricia, eldest son Robert, Andrew and youngest Simeon would all eat together.
Andrew said his dad was a “family man” who did what he could for his community.
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Eddie owned the Caprice in Penarth
One of Andrew’s earliest memories of his dad’s character was when he rushed to provide sandwiches and teas to those trying to dig children out of coal waste after the Aberfan disaster in 1966.
He was a school governor, a founding trustee of the children’s charity Noah’s Ark, and one of the co-founders of the now-closed charity Round Table.
Eddie was also part of children’s charity Variety and it was through this he helped feed Prince Charles and Princess Diana at Caerphilly Castle in February 1983.
He was awarded a Papal knighthood of St Gregory from Pope John Paul II because he was “instrumental” in the organisation of his tour, as well as feeding him lunch at Cardiff Castle on 2 June 1982.
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Eddie was awarded an MBE in 1998 for charitable services in south Wales
Andrew said the city and the castle were not how we know them now: “You had to take everything, it was like a military operation.
“There were 12 in the private dining part of the castle but there were also 70 bishops in another room.
“We had done a night for all the bishops and the cardinals at the restaurant the night before, so there was not a lot of sleeping going on.”
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The menu from 2 June 1982, signed by Pope John Paul II
Eddie wanted it to be “a family affair” so “my wife’s grandmother crocheted the table cloth, she edged the napkins”.
“The cutlery was my grandmother’s – that was a wedding present – the china was when my wife and I got married. We topped that up to make up 12.
“Anybody who comes round the house, we go ‘you might be drinking from a cup the Pope drank out of’.”
Andrew said, because his dad never mentioned the things he did for people, “we just don’t know half of it”.
But there has been an outpouring of love since his dad’s death on 8 November and Andrew realised “he must have really touched people”.
Eddie’s funeral is being held on Sunday at St Joseph’s Church, Penarth, followed by a funeral mass on Monday.
