Meghan Markle entered royal life with a cookbook in her hands and a community kitchen at her side. Years later, the ovens that helped define her as a hands-on duchess are cold, and their silence lingers over her royal origin story.
TLDR
Meghan Markle’s first major royal project, the Grenfell-inspired Hubb Community Kitchen and its bestselling cookbook, has quietly closed, underscoring how far the duchess’s life and philanthropic focus have moved away from the London community that once helped define her.
From Grenfell Grief to Royal Project
After the Grenfell Tower fire in west London, a group of women who had survived or been displaced by the tragedy began cooking together at the Al Manaar mosque. Their informal gathering became the Hubb Community Kitchen, a refuge where grief met home-cooked food.
When Meghan, then a newly married Duchess of Sussex, discovered the group, she made their story her first solo royal project. She spent time in the mosque kitchen, listening, chopping, laughing, and encouraging the women to tell their own stories in a cookbook.
The result was “Together: Our Community Cookbook”, created with support from The Royal Foundation and publisher Penguin Random House. According to BBC News, the book quickly became a bestseller, raised significant funds, and helped secure a permanent kitchen space for the women at Al Manaar.
DailyMailUS later reported that “Together: Our Community Cookbook” hit number one on Amazon within hours, sold around 39,000 copies in the United Kingdom, and generated about 210,000 to redesign and upgrade the kitchen facilities.
The images mattered almost as much as the recipes. Photographs of Meghan cooking side by side with the volunteers, and embracing them in the heat of the kitchen, painted a portrait of a modern, hands-on monarchy that seemed to fit her background in philanthropy and Hollywood activism.
To launch the book, she hosted a lunch at Kensington Palace and invited the women of Hubb, along with her mother, Doria Ragland, who flew in from the United States. Meghan said at the time that she “immediately felt connected to this community kitchen” and called it “a place for women to laugh, grieve, cry, and cook together.”
A Quiet Close for Hubb Kitchen
That is why news of the kitchen’s closure lands with particular emotional weight. The Hubb Community Kitchen, once buzzing with activity and media attention, has now quietly stopped operating in its original form.
According to DailyMailUS, a spokesman for the Hubb Community Kitchen said, “I can’t talk about the Duchess of Sussex, but the Hubb community kitchen has stopped.” There was no glossy announcement and no high-profile goodbye, only the confirmation that the stoves had gone cold.
The winding down appears to have unfolded gradually. After Meghan and Prince Harry stepped back from full-time royal duties and relocated to California in 2020, her day-to-day involvement understandably became more distant. She reconnected with the group on key anniversaries of the Grenfell fire, including a video call in which she praised their work as “love in action”.
DailyMailUS notes that her most recent public outreach to the group came in mid 2022, marking the fifth anniversary of the fire. Since then, there have been no widely reported visits, calls, or new joint projects, and the kitchen’s closure has shifted the Hubb story from active initiative to completed chapter.
For the women who built the project out of loss, the end of the community kitchen in its original form does not erase the support it offered or the friendships forged over simmering pots. Yet symbolically, it closes the door on the royal project that once seemed to anchor Meghan’s connection to a grieving corner of London.
How It Shapes Meghan’s Narrative
Meghan’s public life has moved far from those crowded worktops at Al Manaar. Through Archewell, the foundation and media brand she runs with Prince Harry, her philanthropic focus has broadened to mental health, online harms, and American community initiatives, often intertwined with streaming and podcast projects.
In that context, the Hubb Community Kitchen was always likely to be a time-bound chapter rather than a lifelong patronage. Life in California, two young children, and a dramatically different professional landscape make it harder to sustain the kind of hands-on involvement that first defined her British royal years.
Even so, the kitchen’s closure subtly rebalances her legacy as a working royal. The images from “Together: Our Community Cookbook” once served as shorthand for a duchess who cooked her way into the heart of a wounded community. Now, without an active project to point to, that story sits in the past tense rather than the present.
For the Grenfell community, the needs that drew them into the kitchen have not disappeared. Local organizations, faith groups, and activists continue to support families affected by the fire. The Hubb chapter may be over, but the work of healing, remembrance, and advocacy carries on without the cameras.
Other Stars in the Spotlight
Elsewhere in the world of fame, romance, and reinvention are unfolding on very different stages. At London’s Ballet Icons Gala, “Strictly Come Dancing” professional Nadiya Bychkova arrived arm in arm with West End leading man Ian McIntosh, adding fuel to talk of an offstage partnership. She kept things light, saying, “I’m enjoying the Valentine’s weekend with good company.”
Nadiya, who has also appeared in big-name productions such as “Les Misérables”, called the gala “beautiful to see so much talent, artists, and creators for one night on the same stage” and said that sharing that space was “really special” for a professional dancer.
Love took center stage in a more formal fashion for Royal Ballet favorites Fumi Kaneko and Vadim Muntagirov, who recently married in London. Kaneko marked the moment by saying their hearts were “full of gratitude and love” as they became Mr. and Mrs., a rare glimpse into the private lives behind their poised stage personas.
In publishing, crime novelist Val McDermid, often described as a queen of Tartan Noir, has been candid about her fears over the rise of generative technology in her field. “I think AI is a massive threat,” she said, arguing that it can already produce a certain kind of book and is “learning all the time”.
She pointed to research from the University of Cambridge, cited by DailyMailUS, indicating that nearly 60 percent of British novelists believe their work has been used to train AI language models without permission or payment, and that more than one-third say their income has already taken a hit. McDermid added that she believes around 150 pieces of her work have been used “with no recompense” and without her consent.
On the Hollywood side, Margot Robbie continues to stretch her range in the wake of “Barbie”, appearing as Cathy in “Wuthering Heights” even as she shares stories from a very different arena. She told the “Smartless” podcast that when she joined an amateur ice hockey team in the United States, “When you’re in your gear, they can’t really tell you’re a girl. I just looked like a small dude on the team.” She laughed that opposing players would check her hard, only to apologize once she removed her helmet and they realized she was a woman on the ice.
Former “Downton Abbey” heartthrob Dan Stevens has embraced his own transatlantic transformation. After leaving the series when his character Matthew Crawley was written out, he moved to the United States with his wife, South African jazz singer Susie Hariet, and their three children.
More than a decade later, Stevens has now confirmed that he has become a US citizen, a milestone he shared on social media. Reflecting on life in Los Angeles, he has joked that any Brit who spends a winter there quickly understands the appeal of staying.
Join the Discussion
Do you see the closure of the Hubb Community Kitchen as a natural end to a chapter in Meghan Markle’s royal story, or as a missed chance to keep a powerful partnership alive?
