Bites: Roman shells out on his Eternal love

Roman Abramovich has taken a brief respite from spending millions on footballers to drop €3.5m (£2.8m) on an Italian restaurant as a wedding gift for his fiancée Daria Zhukova. The 23-year-old Russian socialite and former model is said to have fallen in love with the 40-seat Julian Café, picturesquely set near the River Tiber in Rome's historic centre, when

the couple ate there on a recent trip to the Eternal City. Roman's Roman restaurant acquisition follows gifts for his wife-to-be including a $7m Swiss sculpture and a villa in Colorado. And they say romance is dead.

Meanwhile Jennifer Lopez has closed Madre's, her Cuban restaurant in Pasadena, California. By short-lived celeb restaurant standards (each year a star-owned restaurant survives is like a dog year), Madre's had staying power, having been in business since 2002. To put it in perspective, Britney Spears's Manhattan restaurant Nyla lasted less than six months.