Exclusive: “I Shared My Chocolate Souffle With LeBron James On His Honeymoon”


So you’re on holiday in Italy having dinner at the hotel bistro and a familiar-looking black guy walks into the restaurant and sits down without earshot. The dude kinda looks like LeBron James. Nope that IS LeBron James. Pedestrian’s co-founder Chris – a major basketball enthusiast – almost flipped out when he spotted a pic of his friend Hugo turn up in LeBron’s Facebook feed with the caption “Friends we met tonight from Australia. Actually gave us some of their dessert”. Chris (who was fanning out vicariously at this stage) got Hugo on the phone to explain how he ended up sharing dessert with the reigning NBA Championship title-holder, the league’s MVP for the last two years running and the owner of a tattoo that reads “The Chosen One”.

That photo’s insane! So you met LeBron James… We were just having dinner at the hotel and got sat near the back entrance I said to my partner: check out this really tall guy who just walked in and he had two security guards with him and they stopped at the entrance and checked it out for a bit and pointed. Then I turned around and started shaking. I straight away thought he must be an NBA player and then thought oh my god that actually looks like LeBron James but I couldn’t really tell because he looked really different [in person]. He was really tall but slender – not built not like TV.

Yeah cause he looks massive on TV. Yeah but when he took his jacket off and was wearing a t-shirt, he actually looked small I thought hmm that’s weird! He was quite small and had tattoos. I went on Google and looked him up and it said he was on his honeymoon in Italy and I thought it had to be him. He was with his wife [Savannah].

So what happened did you guys share dessert or something? Yeah, so we had dinner there the night before and we saw this soufflé on the dessert menu that took 50 minutes to make. So on that night when we were ordering, they recommended ordering it before the meal so we did that. LeBron and Savannah were kind of eating at the same time as us and had ordered ice cream for dessert… I could kind of hear what they were saying, it was funny.

You could hear what they were saying? He didn’t want to look at a dessert menu, he just ordered ice cream for himself…

So he just said no to a dessert menu? Yeah he just said no, which was quite funny. And then when our dessert came out it was one big soufflé for two but it was way too big. We could only get through about half and we were actually thinking of offering it to LeBron and his wife because they were watching when dessert come out and looking at us and [my partner] said “do you want to try it?” And they said something like “I’d like some of that!” Then the waiter approached us and was like “do you mind if the people over here try some of your soufflé?” I was like yeah “sure!” So the waiter put the dessert on the plate, put the sauces on and placed it in the middle of the table for them to share and they thanked us and waved and we thought that was it. But then after the meal, when they were finishing LeBron stood up, came over to us and reached out his hand for me to shake. We had a bit of a chat and I asked for a photo and he said yeah I’ll get one too. He called over one of his security guard and he took it and we both got our pictures. I wished him a great rest of the honeymoon and that was about it. He was really nice and so was [Savannah]. Like they went out of their way to make our day.

So did you ever tell him that you knew he was LeBron James or did you just pretend you didn’t know? Well I did say things like “it’s nice to meet you” but I didn’t say his name. When he walked in I was staring and going “omg”. [LeBron’s wife] looked right at me as well when she sat down cause of all the staring. He was mainly looking at his phone. He spent the whole dinner on it.

He spent the whole dinner on his phone? Yeah.

So where was this at? It was at the hotel in Sardinia called Hotel Cala di Volpe.

So was he staying at the hotel? No I was surprised he wasn’t. He was staying at another hotel which wasn’t as nice. He said he knows the Miami Heat owner.

Who Pat Riley? [CORRECTION: As commenter ‘Trent Remix’ pointed out the Heat is owned by Micky Arison; Pat Riley is the GM] Yeah… he books and stays every year at the hotel we were at. Chris Bosh was here last year. I was just surprised at how nice and friendly he was, how he just came over to us and actually seemed like he wanted a photo with us instead of just me badly wanting one with him.

Well he took your dessert and took a photo with you so he was basically using you. Yeah I know.

Hit up Hotel Cala di Volpe in the NBA down season if you want to rub elbow with players. The new NBA season starts on October 29.

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