Stars join King Charles for Italian-themed dinner

King Charles and Queen Camilla have hosted an Italian-themed dinner with dishes including crab, ravioli and pork, along with English and Italian wine. Friday’s dinner, with guests including David and Victoria Beckham, Dame Helen Mirren and Donatella Versace, was a culinary warm-up for the royal couple’s state visit to Italy and the Vatican in early April, where they will meet Pope Francis. The trip is expected to coincide with Charles and Camilla’s 20th wedding anniversary and the King told dinner guests about his love of Italian food and culture. “Good food brings people together and what we choose to eat helps to define us – as families, communities and nations,” said the King.

The UK-Italy dinner, hosted by the King and Queen at their Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire, and with the Italian ambassador to the UK, Inigo Lambertini, was a celebration of “slow food”, which uses fresh local food and traditional cooking methods. Other guests included former British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful and chefs Raymond Blanc and Angela Hartnett. The King hailed this “most splendid evening which brings together two things very dear to my heart – slow food and Italy”. “A nation’s food culture is a priceless social and environmental asset, intimately bound up with its sense of identity and place,” said the King.

An enthusiast for art, culture and religion, he spoke of his enthusiasm for the state visit, which will be his 18th official visit to the country. “To say that we are looking forward to it would be to engage in a little British understatement,” he joked to diners, including Stanley Tucci, who inspired the choice of food. The reception and dinner menu, cooked by Calabrian chef Francesco Mazzei, featured Italian recipes with British ingredients. It was accompanied by English sparkling wine and Italian red and white wines.

Some of the British guests in attendance had strong links to Italy. Dame Helen and her husband have a house in Puglia, in the south of the country, where they spend six months out of the year. She previously told a local TV show that she is learning to speak Italian, and has found “nothing but kindness” in the area where she lives. And it is sometimes forgotten that David Beckham played 29 matches for AC Milan in two loans spells in 2009 and 2010 as he sought to prove his match fitness to play for England in the 2010 World Cup. But it was a bittersweet experience as the second spell was cut short by an Achilles tendon injury that ultimately ruled him out of the World Cup in South Africa.